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“Sure. We’ll see about that.”
“Yeah, we fucking will.”
CHAPTERTEN
Bennet
Jasper is eyeing me as we make our way out of the house the next morning. I swear to god I can still taste him, still feel him. The fact that he let me do that to him just makes me hornier. I’m so damn ready to have him again. He always says it’s never happening again, but I know he wants it to. He’s just doing a piss poor job of convincing himself to stay away from me.
He can’t stay away. I can see through that hard shell. He wants me just as much as I want him.
“You don’t need to come with me,” I say, stuffing my feet into my boots and shrugging on my jacket.
Jasper eyes me, so eerily quiet. He has been in a thoughtful mood all morning, and I’m not sure if I like it. Usually, he broadcasts how he’s feeling, but this morning, he’s broody.
“I can help,” he says. “We can get it done in half the time.”
We aren’t going to visit my mom today since the women from her church group are heading over to see her, and I don’t want to exhaust her. Plus today, Kristy, Samantha, and their families are headed home, needing to get back into the swing of their lives. It’s left the house eerily quiet.
But I’m kind of glad, to be honest. I need a break. The past few days have been hard, but yesterday was draining.
After I’d arrived at the hospital, my mom was sent for more tests and I went with her, wheeling her squeaky wheelchair through the illuminated hallway, trying to squash the dread that had been building up within me every time I made the drive into the city.
It seems like my mom will be able to come home tomorrow and will be set up with a busy schedule of physical therapy and speech therapy to help her get back on track. And hopefully, back to her normal self. Her language is still stilted and she isn’t walking completely right, but each day her recovery seems to make a marked improvement.
Yesterday, after rolling her around to different departments for various tests, I sat with her in her room and just chatted with her. I updated her on my life in San Diego—not mentioning anything about my actual job—and told her about Jasper, who had been waiting in the waiting room, most likely editing content to send to Carter. And she’d listened intently, her eyes on me, her mouth slightly parted as if she was processing it all.
I tried to refrain from asking her questions because I didn’t want her to struggle to answer, so I just barreled on like a freight train.
I didn’t want to exhaust her with my endless blathering, but the guilt of not calling more often was settling on me like a heavy weight. I felt like I needed to catch her up on my entire life in the span of a few hours.
So I’d just chattered nonstop, making sure to leave out the camboy bits until she stopped me with a wave of her hand.
“Are…” She cleared her throat. “Are you…is happy?”
I swallowed because I think I am…or at least I was. But now the weight of my mom’s new condition is really putting a damper on things. Not that she meant to have a stroke, but fuck, how am I going to go home after all of this? How can I leave my sisters to deal with all of this alone?
“I am,” I’d said.
And she smiled at me. For a moment, I wished I could tell her about how successful I really was, about how I was able to provide for myself. But she’d never approve. I don’t think she’d survive the news.
Sometimes I think Kristy knows. How? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure she hates me a little for it…for shaming the family. I don’t think it has anything to do with me being gay. I think she hates the fact that I fuck on camera and monetize off of it.
“Bennet,” Jasper says, pulling my thoughts back to the present. “You okay? You were a million miles away.”
I shake my hands and pull the back door open and step outside into the chilly spring air.
“Was just thinking,” I say.
Jasper walks by my side for a minute before saying, “You know, we can talk about it. If you want.”
I eyeball him because he has a soft side I didn’t expect. I can see it in the way he takes care of my family…in the way he takes care of me. It’s subtle but it’s there. And it’s so goddamn adorable.
“You getting all mushy on me?”
He scoffs. “No. Never. I am hard as steel. Cold as stone. Just…if you want to talk about things, I can listen. You don’t share things with me after the hospital visits…”
“Didn’t think you’d care to listen.”
