“Yes,” Danny said smoothly.“He’s well set up for places to stay.Felix, Julia, do you want to make the appointments?Leon, Grace, could you tell everybody they can breathe again?”He glanced at Liam.“Liam my boy, you can stay if Josh wants you to, but Josh, since you’re not checking out until….”He glanced at the doctor.
“Noon,” she said adamantly.“After his first infusion.”
“Yes,” Danny said, forestalling any argument Josh would have made.“Then you and I have something to talk about.”
Josh felt Liam standing up as well, and he turned to him in confusion.
“Oh no, boy-o,” Liam said softly.“This, I think, is a conversation you have to have on your own.”
Josh realized he was pouting and shifted it to a scowl instead.“Coward,” he muttered.
“Lover,” Liam said simply.“You need this convo, boy-o, or I haven’t been paying attention.”
Everybody shifted then, with the line of parents hugging Josh, because in spite of the scolding ithadbeen good news, and then Grace—who was the last to go—glared at him and swatted the back of his head.
“Dumbass.”
And suddenly Josh found himself saying Grace’s line.“But you love me, right?”
And then Grace—who cuddled or swatted or broke into Josh’s room or flat at fuck-all in the morning for a conversation—was hugging him.
And Grace didn’t hug.
“You made promises,” Grace said.“You and me, going out as old men, bungee jumping off an airplane.Don’t break my heart.”
“I won’t,” Josh said, his eyes burning.
“Going to go eat schnitzel,” Grace muttered.“Fried meat—it’s delicious.”And then he drifted away like angry smoke.
Liam leaned forward, the last in the room, and kissed Josh’s forehead.“This won’t hurt much,” he murmured.“But I think it’s a long time coming.”
And then the room had cleared out, and it was just Josh and Danny.
Danny wasn’t particularly tall—a thing that Josh had always loved about him becauseJoshwasn’t particularly tall.Sure, Liam could pass for tall at five ten or so, but after being surrounded by Carl and Chuck—both in the six four/six five range—for the past year and a half or so and being visually dominated by Felix all his life, Josh appreciated Danny’s slender five seven.
Danny wasJosh’s.Josh had never needed to share Danny with a job or a spotlight.When Josh was a child, Danny had been more like a nanny than Josh’s actual nannies.And right when Josh had grown out of needing a caretaker twenty-four seven, Danny had still been the fun parent.
Until Danny hadn’t been there anymore.
Josh sucked in a breath to kill that thought, like he’d killed it for the last eleven years, and Danny blew out a breath and sank down next to him on the bed.
“Josh,” he said softly, “you know how much I love you, right?”
Josh swallowed and nodded.“Of course I do.”That terrible rift so Danny could clean up, get sober.Those postcards and letters and gifts.The surreptitious visits, the trips to Chicago where everything hurt so Danny could be there for Josh, who was the one person whodidn’thurt.
Josh knew.
“Then you need to trust me,” Danny said, leaning against him.Josh leaned back, his eyes burning.Fucking anemia.
Sure.
“I do,” Josh reassured.He’d poured out his heart in his letters, telling Danny things he hadn’t trusted with Felix or his mother.Of the three parents, Danny had been the first to know Josh was gay.He’d been the first to know Grace had been using drugs, the first to get Josh’s panicked, anguished letter when Grace almost let that dangerous preoccupation kill him.
Danny had known about Josh’s high school boyfriend, his doomed affair with Sean the closeted policeman, and his stupid, helpless attraction to Nick, who’d been married.
Danny had even suspected the thing—the tremendous, amazing, heart-changing thing—with Liam, probably long before Liam had.
Certainly long before Josh allowed it to happen.
