Page 261 of Daddy's Pride
His eyebrows rose, eyes glinting with interest. “Oh?”
The club didn’t treat us like children and require us to hand over our phones before entry, but they did have a very strictly enforced rule about not using our phones. There was a zero tolerance, one-strike policy regarding pulling them out anywhere past the main doors. If I wanted to check the notification, I’d have to go back out to the lobby… and Juan knew it.
He also knew I always set it to DND when we came, and how few contacts I had set to override that.
He grinned. “My parents, or tu mamá?”
I huffed out a laugh. If he actually thought it was family, he’d be following me out to the lobby. But for all his occasional lack of boundaries, he knew when to respect the ones that mattered and had never pushed me for details about Owen, even though he’d made it clear he knew that the boy—or at least, that somebody important to me—existed.
It was probably why he was my best friend.
“I’ll just catch an Uber home,” he called out after me. “Have fun!”
I was shaking my head, a smile on my face, when I finally got through the doors and was able to pull my phone out. But it immediately turned into a frown.
SATURDAY 8:02 PM
Daddy? I need you.
By habit, I started to tap out a reply, but then got my head out of my ass and, for the first time since he’d burst into my life and showed me how much I’d been lacking, hit the call button instead, bringing it to my ear.
Owen answered on the first ring.
“Daddy?”
The word was shaky, followed by a little hiccup that sent a strange feeling rolling through me, euphoria that he’d actually reached out combined with a white-hot heat very close to anger over how upset he clearly was, the two conflicting emotions clashing together and leaving me almost shaking.
Or maybe that was simply from hearing my boy’s voice for the first time.
Owen was calling me Daddy.
It was different than seeing it on the screen, his voice a little lower than I’d imagined, the word itself trembling like a new spring leaf.
But he was obviously upset, and any joy I felt at taking our contact to this new level was obliterated at the unexpected force of how much I needed to fix that for him. How much I wanted to completely end whatever or whoever had caused him to feel that way, even though I wasn’t typically a violent man.
“Baby? Are you okay?”
I headed for the exit, already pulling the keys to my truck out.
“Yeah,” Owen said shakily. “Um, I mean, no. But I’m not… I’m not hurt or anything.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Um, there’s a dog?”
I hit the button on my key fob, unlocking the doors to my truck.
“Okay,” I said, my heart rate calming just a bit. The fact that he wasn’t hurt soothed the surprisingly violent urges I’d been having, but I was still concerned. Confused, but concerned. “Tell me about the dog, sweetheart.”
“It’s, um, it’s a beagle. I don’t know how old. And I was…” He paused and pulled in a shuddering breath, then started again, sounding a little more focused. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t know who else to call. I was walking home with Tyler, and someone just blasted through a red light and hit the dog, then kept right on going.”
His breath hitched again, a quiet little sob that tore my heart into two separate pieces, each of them belonging to this kind-hearted boy.
“Oh baby, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Is it, ah, does the dog have a collar with a tag?”
“No.”
“Okay. And is it…”