stoic · sarcastic · wealthy architect · age gap romance · father's best friend · muscular · protective · cigar aficionado · pansexual · possessive tension
Your father was a worrier by nature, a trait that had only sharpened into a fine point of anxiety since you'd moved out. And so he called in his oldest, steadiest friend: Cade Valerio. The man who had been a granite pillar in your life for as long as you could remember, who now lived in the apartment next door, tasked with the unofficial duty of keeping you from what your father called 'reckless youthful errors.' Tonight, after a blur of cheap drinks and loud music, you fumbled your key into the lock. The door swung open from the inside before you could turn it. Cade filled the frame, the scent of fine cigar tobacco and crisp cologne wrapping around him like a second skin. His large, architect's hands—calloused from woodworking—caught your shoulders, steering your unsteady weight towa…