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He opened and closed his old laptop over and over, checking for responding messages. None from Henry. Then one from Brandon.
Cameron: Dad’s not home. I’m crashing here anyway.
* * *
Brandon: Didn’t he tell you? He’s back in Melbourne until Friday.
No, he hadn’t. He didn’t tell Cameron anything.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids and felt an inevitable snap at his bellybutton. It didn’t ache nearly as much as he’d feared.
Calmly, he rolled out of bed, found the kitchen scissors, and stepped into the front garden.
Cameron woke well into the afternoon, flung over his bed, his face covered by an Agatha Christie paperback. At some point in his extreme turmoil, he’d stripped out of his clothes and dressed into the breeches and cutaway coat. Henry’s gargoyle socks were pulled to mid-calf.
He groaned as he rolled into a sitting position.
Henry would be arriving home soon.
Cameron opened his laptop. No email.
Had Henry not had a chance to respond? Was he in the thick of processing it all? Had he not even read it yet?
If he left right now, Cameron might catch him on his hike home. He had to see him again. Especially if it was goodbye.
He messaged John, hopped to the bathroom to brush his teeth, then opened his wardrobe.
The buzzer rang.
Too late, John was already there.
He stared at himself in the mirror. “You’ve got this.”
A knock.
“Coming.” He grabbed his boots and raced to the front door, opening it as he stuffed one foot into his boot. “Thanks for helping me out.”
The zip stuck as he tried to pull it up.
“You look flustered.”
“I’m in a hurry—” He bolted upright.
Gravity swept through him, rising and falling like great swelling waves.
Henry was standing on his sun-soaked porch, a sea of headless lilies fluttering behind him.
Cameron stared.
“I got your email.”
“I thought you’d head home. . . . Your dad. Georgie.”
Henry’s dark gaze, reddened at the edges, roamed over Cameron’s face, studying it like a philosopher might a moral quandary.
“I spoke to Georgie.” His voice faltered, and he cleared his throat. “She found your phone. She was crying when Dad told her this morning.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. It should never have happened.” Henry slammed his eyes shut. Cameron shook his foot free of the boot and tugged him gently over the threshold to the kitchen.
His nerves fritzed as he made coffee. At either end of the island—divided by six feet, an open laptop, and a vase of lilies—they stirred the dark liquid.
A reflective silence settled between them. Henry raked a hand through his hair and fixed those dark eyes on him. There was nothing accusatory in them at all.
Cameron’s stomach hopped.
“Why aren’t you angry with me?” he murmured.
“Angry?”
“Upset.”
“I am upset. Very upset. My dad threw you out in the middle of the night. You were on your own, unable to contact me, thinking it was all your fault. Thinking I’d blame you.”
Cameron eyed Henry’s slumped form.
“It hasn’t . . . ruined your life?” Cameron asked softly.
“I don’t know yet. I guess that depends how it ends.”
Cameron’s heart squeezed, and his voice trembled. “I think I might understand why you’re here, but . . . it feels traitorous to hope such a thing, with you so torn.”
“You’ve hoped then?”
“You’re torn.”
“I’m not. I always thought I would be, but the second I got your email, all that mattered was that I got to you.”
Cameron’s chest fluttered. He tried to compare it to something, but there was nothing. This indescribable lightness, the relief of being able to make mistakes and still be accepted . . .
He raised a finger. Just one moment. He pulled the laptop to him, logged on, and told John to forget the ride.
The laptop clicked shut.
He closed the gap between him and Henry, until they were standing eye to eye. Henry’s look of soaring hope matched what Cameron had been battling for weeks. “You’d choose us.”
“I planned on telling him. From the moment I met you this was inevitable. This is just off schedule, and perhaps caused more pain than it needed to.” Henry touched the side of his face. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know yet.” Cameron lifted a brow. “Guess that depends how it ends.”
A surprised laugh leaped out of Henry and in a butterfly-flapping moment, Henry’s hands were on him, hefting Cameron over his shoulder.
Cameron shrieked. “What? You’re supposed to be emotionally exhausted.”
“That’s extremely difficult when you look at me the way you do.”
“I was looking at you tenderly, like I want to make everything better.”
Henry’s palm feathered down the back of Cameron’s thigh. “You do,” he said softly, and then with a slap on his ass, he jounced into Cameron’s room.
An unmade bed and the spine of a book greeted him.
Henry kicked off his boots and crawled over the feather quilts. He pulled the mystery from under Cameron’s shoulder and straddled his waist. Every part of Cameron was alert, from the tips of his hair against the mattress to his ankles at the edge.
