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If he’d just known, if they had just thought to give him this information to begin with, then Chris could have….
What?
Not got involved? Would he have done that? Would knowing all this beforehand changed his entire opinion of Jamie from the start? Would their relationship even have developed at all?
It made Chris’s heart hurt to think of it. He couldn’t imagine his life now without Jamie in it. Of course he would have stayed away from Jamie, would have pitied him and never have known how happy he could be, how complete he felt when Jamie was with him. Chris would rather have died in that moment than go for the rest of his life and not know Jamie the way he did, to not love him.
“What happens now?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Natalie sighed. “Now, everybody gets dragged back to DC within the next hour. Jamie gets put on lockdown, probably under the watchful eye of some other agent, and you get suspended until you can be brought before a disciplinary hearing.”
“And what about me and Jamie?”
Natalie bit her lip again. “Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On how good Jamie is at talking his mother around.”
Just then, they heard raised voices from downstairs—Jamie and his mother yelling over the top of one another, and then the front door slammed. Chris and Natalie looked at each other in silence until they heard a car engine start. It wasn’t one of the Secret Service cars—it was the sound Chris imagined that only Jamie’s Aston Martin Vanquish would make.
Natalie’s eyes went wide, coming to the same conclusion. “Jamie isn’t supposed to drive,” she said. “His feet…”
Within seconds, they were both running for the door.
* * * *
Jamie felt numb. His mother had walked out of the bedroom, heading downstairs and leaving him to clean up. His back was still sticky with Chris’s come and he felt sore and empty from their abrupt ending.
He dragged on some clothes, limbs feeling like lead, and slowly went down the stairs, his feet falling heavily on each wooden step. Freddie Barratt was sitting on the edge of the couch, head in her hands and breathing like she was trying to stave off a panic attack.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Mama,” Jamie said weakly, hands shoved dejectedly into his pockets. “You weren’t supposed to find out this way. We were going to come clean once we were all back in DC—it was one of those future plans that I was wanting to talk to you about. It was all going to be done properly. You weren’t supposed to walk in on us—”
“Naked with his dick inside you?” she finished coldly. “Apart from the fact that I will never get that image out of my head as long as I live, I really thought you would have learned a lesson after Brett Reiss.”
“Mom, Chris isnothinglike Brett Reiss,” Jamie replied.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?”
Jamie set his jaw, squaring his shoulders. “I’m in love with him. Chris Roberts is a good person, possibly one of the best I’ve ever met. He is genuine, sweet, non-judgmental, and patient. He understands me, understands my background, my experiences, and he’s not afraid of it, and neither is he out to exploit it. I’m happy for the first time in a year—”
“And you’ve latched on to him just like you latched on to Reiss!” his mother interrupted. “Can’t you see that? You’ve just swapped one for the other!”
“He’s nothing like Reiss!”
He looked around the room for Boomer, but the dog was nowhere to be found, right when Jamie needed him most. If he couldn’t have Chris, the very least he needed was his dog before he freaked the fuck out.
His mother sternly looked at him. “Even if he isn’t, James…he has to go.”
“Why?” Jamie replied, on the brink of tears and digging the fingernails of both hands into his palms in an attempt to keep himself grounded.
“I hired a man who was supposed to be dependable and professional. Natalie personally vouched for him, said that he would be a grounding influence and that he wouldn’t put up with any of your bullshit. I put my trust in him and he let me down. How the hell is he supposed to do his job properly when he’s too busy thinking about ripping your clothes off the second you get behind closed doors?”
“Mom, we were going to ask for his old job back on general security!” Jamie said desperately. “We want to be together; we both knew we couldn’t carry on like this! I was going to tell you—”
“So why didn’t you just tell me? We could have talked about this days ago!”
“Why? So, we could have had this conversation on my birthday instead?”
