I stare at the floor. “Sorry about that,” I mumble. “I just thought –”
Bo merely chuckles and pulls me into his arms. I’m stiff for a moment, but then melt against the hard wall of his chest, resting my forehead against his shoulder. This is where I feel safest, and only in his embrace am I truly home.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he murmurs into my ear before trailing a kiss down the length of my throat. “What I want to know is why you didn’t reach out earlier? It’s been a month honey, and each day felt like a year.”
I tremble like a leaf.
“Well, after the phone sex, or alleged phone sex,” I correct myself. “I thought I’d been an idiot. I’d assumed that we were in a relationship, but then I felt so betrayed hearing you talk like that with another woman. I guess I just panicked and ran out,” is my lame explanation.
“But you came back when you realized you were pregnant?” he asks, now nibbling at my shoulder. My heart is racing because it feels so good to have Bo’s mouth on me, but I nod and speak.
“Yes,” I pant. “But Bo, why didn’t you reach out? Why did you wait a month? I missed you so much!” I say, hating how my voice has an edge of desperation.
He merely pulls me closer and kisses me slowly, savoring the taste of my lips.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, sweetheart. Among them, the fact that I was crazy for my personal assistant, and that I was a fool to let her go. Secondly, I confronted my father after about two decades of avoiding him and it took a lot out of me.”
I pull back for a moment, blinking.
“Wait, you haven’t talked to your dad in two decades? You never mentioned this!”
He shrugs, his gaze going dark.
“Paul and I have talked, but I haven’t seen him in person for about that long. It’s a convoluted story, honey, but the long and the short of it is that my father abused my brother and me. The physical part was bad enough,” he adds when I gasp. “But the psychological mind games were even worse. Paul was a cruel motherfucker and always made Calvin and I feel that we would never amount to anything. The pressure was so strong that my little brother and I cracked in different ways. We both got into BDSM, but for me, it happened in a more predictable manner. I bought Club Om and became a Dom who also happens to be the boss. It was an issue of control for me.”
I stare at him.
“But your brother?”
A dark cloud crosses the handsome man’s face and my heart aches for his pain. “For Calvin, it was different,” Bo reveals in a slow voice. “Calvin got into fetishes. He was private about them, and we had no idea how he toed the line again and again.” My boyfriend inhales deeply again. “Basically, Calvin was exploring self-asphyxiation when things got out of hand. The police found him dead one day with a noose around his neck, wearing nothing. Evidently, he’d been playing with himself while trying to induce hypoxia and the scene got away from him. Calvin accidentally killed himself, we think,” Bo adds bitterly. “But I blamed it on Paul, and his dick personality. My father was a monster who didn’t care who got hurt, even if it was one of his sons.”
I stare at the handsome man, my heart aching.
“Yes, but your brother was an adult, wasn’t he?” I ask tentatively. “How could Calvin’s death have been your father’s fault? Calvin made his own choices, right?”
Bo jerks his head angrily, his expression intense.
“Yes and no. We were kids, and Paul was such a fucking asshole all the time. We had to be perfect, and BDSM was how Calvin and I escaped our pasts. But,” he says, inhaling deeply once again and turning to look at me. “I hear what you’re saying, honey, and that’s one of the reasons I relented and went to see Paul. Calvin did make his own choices, even if he was only nineteen when he died. I’ve come to realize it, which is why I visited my father about three weeks ago. The meeting took a lot out of me because my dad’s still an asshole who likes to play mind games, and that’s one reason why I didn’t follow-up with you immediately, Haley. I was a fucking headcase for a while, and I wanted to be able to think clearly before dumping all this shit into the open.”
I stare at him. “It was that bad?” I ask in a trembling voice.
Bo shrugs, his blue eyes flat.
“Yeah, it was. The meeting was pretty fruitless. Paul’s dying,” he adds in an expressionless tone. “Stage four colon cancer, which I hear is a painful way to go. We made our amends, but it’s been too long, and I can’t fully forgive what he did to me and Calvin. I’m glad I saw him, but I’m also glad that his days are limited. My life, and my mother’s life, will be better for it.”