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Chris rushed forward and scooped him upright, setting him back on his feet again. “Easy, soldier. No need to hurt yourself on my account.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jamie breathed, gripping Chris’s forearms. “You’re totally worth the pain.”
Chris smiled and it was beautiful, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, warm and soothing and absolutely wonderful. Jamie felt himself smile back.
“I’m sorry, should I give you boys the room?” Aunt Helen asked from the couch.
Chris’s smile dissolved into giggles and Jamie followed him.
“No, Aunt Helen,” he replied, taking hold of Chris’s hand. “We’ll go somewhere else.”
“Well, just let me know if I have to go for an hour’s walk or something, okay, honey?”
“Will do, Aunt Helen.”
The short walk across the hall to his chosen sleeping quarters—a room that for more than a century had been known as the west bedroom—was painful, but Chris still had a tight hold of his hand and it gave him the strength to keep going. Once inside and the door safely closed, Jamie turned and wrapped his arms around Chris’s waist, his head resting on Chris’s shoulder, nose brushing his neck. He breathed in deeply and suddenly all the pain and anguish of the last few days was gone.
“You have no idea how much I missed you,” Jamie murmured against Chris’s skin and felt his strong hands rest gently on his hips.
“If it’s close to how much I missed you, then I might have an idea,” Chris replied.
Jamie smiled. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again. My phone ran out of battery, and I left the charger at the Hamptons…”
“Oh, so that’s why you never answered my texts.” Chris chuckled. “You’re going to get flooded with them when you get back your phone.”
Jamie laughed and immediately winced as his broken ribs throbbed. “Do you think we could move to the bed?” he asked weakly. “This is actually starting to hurt a little.”
Chris let him go and allowed Jamie to lead him to the bed, kicking off his shoes, then slid onto the mattress beside him.
Jamie reached for his painkillers. “Natalie said that you had a meeting with my mom today,” he said, popping the cap. “What did she say?”
Chris sighed and leaned back against the pillows, loosening his tie and popping open the top button of his shirt. “Well, I thought I was going to get murdered, but it turns out she was pretty mellow. She said that she just wants you to be happy.”
“Yeah?” Jamie smiled.
“Yeah.”
Jamie started to lean forward, attempting to go in for a kiss, but his ribs twinged again, and he grimaced. “Well, I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t have three cracked ribs, but hey, that’s life!” He popped one of the pills into his mouth and dry swallowed it as
Chris sat up and took the bottle from him. “Tylenol? What are you, a six-year-old?”
“Shut up!” Jamie grinned at him, then more seriously said, “I don’t like taking opiates.”
“I know.” Chris bit his lip. “I know about Reiss.”
Jamie looked at his feet, bare and almost hanging off the bottom of the bed because of how far forward he was sitting. “Who told you?”
“Natalie.”
“Figures…”
Chris shuffled forward so that he was level with Jamie, and slid an arm around his waist. “I made her tell me. I wouldn’t have really understood this whole thing otherwise.”
Jamie sighed heavily, his ribs hurting once again but a little less this time with the painkillers already starting to kick in. This had not been the way that Jamie had wanted Chris to find out. Telling people about very important things was just not at all going his way this week.
“I really wanted to tell you myself,” he said quietly. “I wasgoingto tell you myself…”
“I know,” Chris murmured, pressing a kiss to Jamie’s shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, if I ever came face to face with him, I’d kill him.”
