Color Me Pretty: A Father's Best Friend Romance

Lips parting, I inhaled shakily. “What?”

Head dipping once, he said, “Come on. Pancakes, eggs, you name it. Come home with me.”

Home. My stomach dropped. “So, we can talk about…my dad?” I shook my head. “I’m okay with not doing that over eggs.”

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; “Pancakes then?”

Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I let my shoulders ease enough for him to see me relenting. “Chocolate chip. And bacon.” I walked past him into the light rain, my stomach screaming over the idea of food even though my brain yelled, NO! “None of that fake syrup crap, Theo. I mean it.”

I heard his chuckle and promptly ignored it as Dallas’s black car came into view.

When I climbed in, Dallas gave me an apologetic look from the rearview. “Sorry, Della. He insisted.”

Theo climbed in beside me, not looking sorry at all. In fact, there was anything but apology on his face. Awe, amusement, care. He looked at me like he always had, but it was more intense. Stronger. Different.

And today, I surprised him.

I danced.

It made me smile despite that haunting feeling in the back of my mind as I stared out the backseat window. I ignored the other two people in the vehicle who made small talk while I thought about what this meant, because I danced and I loved it, but I also danced because I hated myself.

I wanted that pain. The feel of my legs giving out and my lungs on their last breath. I wanted to escape into a world where I could hurt myself rather than letting everybody else do it for me.

I saw Dallas glance at me again from the rearview mirror and realized…

He saw too much.

The food was left untouched in front of me with two sets of eyes on me for very different reasons. One of them was more intense than the other. I broke apart a piece of bacon and fed it to Ramsay while Theo watched silently across the table. He didn’t like it when the dog was close by while we ate. It’d been a little while since I’d seen Ramsay, so I wanted to spoil him like I knew Theo did when I wasn’t here.

“You haven’t eaten,” he noted.

I glanced at his plate. “Neither have you.”

“It’s the real maple syrup.”

My lips twitched. Moving my eyes from Ramsay to Theo, I rested back in my chair and picked up my fork. Wet pieces of my hair fell against my cheek that I refused to move because they shielded part of my vision. I’d taken a much longer shower in his master bathroom than I’d intended, but the scalding water felt so good against my sore muscles. I stood under the too-hot water until my skin was red and prayed that every bad feeling I had about myself would wash away. But when I stepped out, I looked at myself in the mirror before I could grab a towel and frowned.

Frowned at my body.

Frowned at my thoughts.

I’d wanted to put my fist through the reflection that taunted me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want Theo to think I was losing it. That my anxiety had peeked, that the medication I was on wasn’t working, and that I’d have to admit to Ripley I probably needed something different. Something stronger. Stronger medication meant the problem had peeked like the hill and valley my disorder was.

Shifting in my seat, I poked at the section of pancake that had the most chocolate chips. “I take it work has been busy?” He hadn’t reached out in a few days, which was fine by me. It was easier to avoid him when he was avoiding me first. The guilt didn’t eat at me that way.

“Della—”

“I get it.” I smiled. “You wanted space. But you invited me here, which means you didn’t want space right now. So…how’s work?”

He leaned back with his hand around his coffee cup, pulling it along the table with the black liquid threatening to slosh out the sides. “It’s been busy, but it wasn’t busy enough that I couldn’t check up on you more often.”

“I don’t need you to check up on me.” My voice was suddenly defensive, irritable. Why did he always make it sound like I was a child who needed to be monitored? “But I wouldn’t have minded getting more than a text saying you hope I’m well. I mean honestly, Theo.” My appetite was there, taunting me, especially after the session I had at Tiffany’s. I’d burned a lot of calories and needed to eat. To refuel. In hindsight, I should have asked for eggs, or just gone to Denny’s where I could have walked out easier if I decided I’d had enough. Dallas left after Theo dismissed him, which meant I’d have to wait for a lift if I walked out now before the conversation could go somewhere I didn’t want it to.

There was no reason to snap at Theo when I’d been pulling away from everybody too. The texts he sent me were fine. The pictures of Ramsay he sent me were fine. Everything was fine. Great, even. How I wanted it to be.

“You’re right.” It was a smooth, quiet voice that greeted me, causing me to look up at him in surprise. What did I expect? Him to argue? To ignore me? Maybe lecture me? He’d done all those things in the past. “I’m sorry, Della. But what I wanted to talk to you about is part of the reason why I felt it was a good idea to let you live your life without me complicating it for a couple days while I figured out how to tell you.”