Callum was losing his fucking mind. Jack wasn’t answering his calls, his texts weren’t being read, and Jack wasn’t showing as being online on Skype. Callum didn’t have another way to get in touch with Jack, and the idea of something happening to him and Callum never knowing was enough to send his blood pressure through the roof.

Friday night.

Saturday.

Sunday.

Monday.

Tuesday.

Wednesday.

Thursday, his phone rang.

Callum didn’t know if he was relieved or enraged to see Jack’s name light up the screen on his phone. The last weekend at work had been rough with Landon gone, and to not even have Jack to come home and talk with had been torturous. The whole week he’d been met with silence.

All his fears had come true in spectacular fashion.

Looking at his caller ID, Callum accepted the call, but didn’t say anything.

“Kitten?” Jack finally said after the silence had drawn itself out.

Callum’s eyes filled with tears and he hated how warm his stomach felt hearing Jack’s voice. He didn’t answer.

“Callum, baby. Are you there?”

Callum wiped his cheeks. “I’m here.”

“God, kitten. I missed you. I’m so sorry. Daddy is so fucking sorry.”

“Where were you?” Callum managed to ask. He hoped his voice didn’t betray his emotions.

“I was in the hospital. I just got home today. I didn’t have my phone or anything. I wanted to call you so badly.” Jack pushed the words out in a rush.

“What happened?” Callum’s anger at Jack quickly morphed into worry and fear.

“My appendix ruptured. It was bad. I had sepsis, blood poisoning.”

“I know what sepsis is.”

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t get in touch before. Please understand. Please forgive me?”

“Are you okay?” Callum asked, his voice small.

“I’m fine now. I have some mobility restrictions, but I’m home.”

Callum swallowed. “Is someone taking care of you?”

The idea was a bitter thought that stuck in the back of Callum’s throat. He should be the one to help. Jack was his, and he wanted to cook for him and tuck him in and repay even half the kindnesses that Jack had shown him. The idea of someone else being in New York to take care of Jack in the ways that Callum should be was painful.

“My friend Landon is out to stay with me. He’s the one that I told you about before. He lives in LA.”

Callum dropped the phone and stared at it in shock.

“Landon Miller?” Callum managed to ask after he’d recovered the phone.

“Yeah, how did you know?” Jack asked.

Callum put the phone on speaker and set it on his kitchen counter, then rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“He’s my boss.”

“What?” Jack asked, shocked.

“My boss. Landon is my boss.”

“Shit.” Jack breathed out.

Callum felt a pang of momentary relief, but it quickly turned into angry disappointment.

“So my boss is the one who gets to come take care of you. Great.”

“I didn’t know you worked for him.”

“It shouldn’t matter if I work for him or not. What matters is someone else is there with you and I’m not because you’re so stubborn with your August, August, August shit.”

Callum walked away from his phone, Jack’s silence echoing through the apartment. He paced back across the floor and took the phone off speaker, holding it up to his ear.

“I’m having a lot of mixed feelings right now, and I need to go,” he finally said.

“Kitten, wait,” Jack begged.

“I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry, okay? I just need some time to sort through how I’m feeling because it’s a little frenetic and I feel like I’m losing my mind.” Callum rubbed at his lower lashes.

“Callum,”

“Jack.”

Callum’s use of Jack’s name seemed to stop him in his tracks.

“Alright, kitten.”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

Callum hung up the phone and pushed it away.

His online boyfriend was friends with his boss. His boss was the person in New York taking care of him. Landon had known Jack was sick. Landon had been with him for almost a week, and Landon hadn’t told him. Of course Landon hadn’t told him. Why would Landon tell him? He didn’t know.

Nobody knew.

This online relationship seemed so real to Callum, but in actuality, it was possible that no one even knew he existed. It didn’t matter what Jack told him because Jack was across the country and Callum had no way of proving any of the shit Jack said to him was true or not. Callum hated this doubt, this concern. It chipped away at him and ate at the edges of the feelings he’d developed for Jack.

He called Jack back.

“Hello?”

“Does he know about me?” Callum bit out.

“No,” he admitted.

Callum hung up the phone. Then he called back.

“Callum,” Jack said in way of answering.

“I’m sorry for hanging up on you. I’m just… I’m not taking this well.”

“I know, baby. It’s okay,” Jack assured him.

“I think I need to take a step back.”

“What do you mean?” He sounded as scared as Callum felt.

“I don’t know. I just feel really overwhelmed. And I’m mad that my boss is there and not me, and I’m mad that you know my boss in the first place. And I hate that I didn’t even know something was wrong with you. I’m sad that no one knew about me and I had no way of finding out anything was wrong with you. I feel like a pinball right now.”

“Talk through it with me, kitten.” Jack’s voice sounded calmer now, still tired but more assuring, more Daddy.

Callum bit his lips between his teeth.

“Are you going to tell Landon about us?”

Silence.

That was the answer.

“He’s dealing with some shit of his own right now. It’s not a good time.”

“If I was someone you met in a bar, would you have told him about me?”

“That’s not a fair question,” Jack countered. “I don’t talk about my private life with other people.”

Callum scoffed. “So you haven’t told anyone about me?”

“I told my friends Joseph and Bowie. They know about you, with the most minimal level of detail because it’s not their business.”

That eased the smallest corner of Callum’s tension, but not enough to chip away at the wall his heart had thrown up when he heard Jack’s voice for the first time in a week.

“Let me come take care of you now. Send Landon home, and let me come.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this,” Jack answered with a self-deprecating laugh. “I have bags under my eyes and bruises on my arms from the IVs. I haven’t slept well in a week. This isn’t the way I want you to know me.”

“I want to know all of you, though!” Callum protested. “I don’t just want the pretty online parts. That’s stupid. That’s not a relationship.”

“You are not the Daddy here,” Jack said, an edge of finality in his voice that sent new tears to the front of Callum’s eyes. “And I can’t be the Daddy you need until I’m better. So all the more reason now to look forward to August.”

Callum huffed. “August.”

“I will come to you, and I will make you mine,” Jack whispered to him. “Just like we’ve talked about.”

“I am yours,” Callum grumbled, resolve and anger weakening.

“I’m not going to be around as much the next couple weeks, kitten, but it’s not you, okay? Landon is in town and I’m just not ready to share you with him yet.”

“Fine.”

Callum splayed out across his couch with a sigh.

“Daddy?” he asked.

“Yes, kitten?”

“Will you watch a movie with me?”

“Of course, baby. Go get your computer.”

“I have it.” Callum stretched his arm to the coffee table and flipped the top of his laptop open and waited for Jack to share his screen.

When the movie started playing, he laughed softly. “We’ve seen this one, Daddy.”

“It’s my favorite. You’re my favorite.”

Callum nestled into the couch and watched the movie, the sound of Jack’s breath steady in his ear.

When the movie was over, Callum felt simultaneously better and worse. The glaring absence of Jack was sharp as a knife. He could have died, gotten axe murdered himself or hit by a train or an errant taxi cab. He would have died without knowing…

“Can we Skype?” Callum asked.

“I look like a hot mess, kitten.”

“I don’t mind. Please. It’s important.”

Callum already had Skype open on his screen by the time he received the incoming call from Jack. Once it connected, Callum ended the call on his cell phone and brought the computer up onto his lap.

Jack was right. He did look like shit. The bags under his eyes even visible digitally, but Callum hadn’t ever seen anyone he adored more.

Jack’s eyes lit up when he saw Callum, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“I missed you,” Callum admitted.

“I missed you, too. I thought about you every day I was in the hospital.”

“I’m still upset, Jack.”

He visibly winced at Callum’s use of his name, but he nodded in understanding just the same.

“It’s going to be a hard couple of weeks. But I promise that things will get back to normal as soon as Landon leaves.

“Nothing about this is normal,” Callum grumbled.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“I don’t know. I still can’t make sense of what I’m feeling. But more than before, I know what I want, and what I want isn’t to be ignored for a week because you don’t want to tell Landon about us.”

“That’s not it, kitten…”

“I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who lives across the country!” Callum shouted, then sealed his hands over his mouth in shock.

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t even know. I don’t know. I want to be with you, but I can’t do last week ever again. So I think it’s time that I got to add some rules to the list.”

“Anything.”

“I think I need some time to think about it. About this.” Callum rubbed at his eyes, feeling emotionally beat.

“Of course, kitten.”

Callum closed his eyes.

“And you can call me anytime. If you want to talk before then, call or text. Day or night, Callum. I mean it.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Callum whimpered and tears slid down his cheeks. Jack frowned and wiped at his own face, the wetness glistening on screen.

“Any rules you want,” Jack promised.

“’Kay. I’m gonna go then,” Callum whispered.

“I understand.”

“Alright.”

“Take care of yourself, kitten.”

Callum slammed the laptop closed. He held his head in his hands, fingers pulling furiously at the roots of his hair while he doubled over in agony and cried.

“I love you, Daddy,” he whispered to no one but himself.