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Jamie was cut off as Aled’s phone rang. He’d put it on the table earlier, face up, which enabled them both to see Jeremy’s name flash loud and bright.
Without even answering the call, Aled knew his date was over.
He grabbed his phone and answered, his heart already sinking. “Hello?”
“I held it off as long as I could,” Jeremy said straight away, his voice clearly stressed, “but Dawn’s having a breakdown.”
Aled sighed and glanced across at Jamie. “Alright, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Is it about me?” he asked as an afterthought, already scooting his chair back.
“Yeah,” Jeremy admitted. “She started watching YouTube videos about gay-bashing right after you left and, well, you know how she goes down those rabbit holes.”
“Right,” Aled said. “Let her know I’m on my way.”
He ended the call and took a moment, just a moment to seethe with resentment. He loved Dawn, but he wanted his own life. He didn’t want to forever be rushing to put out fires and to make Dawn feel secure in a world that was anything but. He loved her, so he would be there for her, but dammit, he wanted to love Jamie and have something of his own as well.
“Is everything alright?” Jamie asked, standing when Aled did.
“My sister is having a panic attack,” he said, turning to pluck his jacket, which he’d removed earlier, off the back of his chair. “I need to go and stop her from melting down to the point where we have to take a trip to the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jamie said, gathering up his coat and things as well. “Is it really that bad?” he asked.
Aled let out a heavy breath. “Yeah. I…I haven’t explained all the details of our parents’ deaths yet. It was…traumatic.”
Jamie nodded once. “I understand.” He paused, then asked, “Can I come with you?”
The simple request sent Aled soaring with emotion. It wasn’t a casual, curious request either. Jamie had that look in his eyes like he knew what sort of disorders Dawn might be dealing with and as if he had the experience and knowledge to deal with it.
And for the first time in God only knew how long, Aled didn’t feel like he was alone. Someone was there for him. Forhim. Someone with more than cheap platitudes who would add to his responsibilities instead of helping him.
“Yes,” he said, letting out a breath and possibly years of stress with it. “Yes, I’d like that.”
Jamie smiled at him, like he was the one in control of the situation. “Let’s go, then.”
THIRTEEN
Jamie was startingto see that he couldn’t have Aled without his family. That was a given with almost every relationship, because whether someone was close to their family or not, family had a tendency to form and shape who someone was. Jamie had written entire papers about the subject for academic journals and even taught a course on the psychology of the family. But it was his own, personal experience that underscored the point more than anything else.
It was a shame that he and Aled had to cut their wonderful evening short so they could dash to the Tube and head out to Ealing, where Aled apparently had a house, but ultimately, Jamie understood how important Aled’s family was. He was just glad they’d been dining at The Chameleon Club, where all he had to do was nod to their server across the room as he and Aled had grabbed their jackets and headed out so that the bill for supper could be put on his tab.
“Does your sister have attacks like this often?” Jamie asked, trying to assess the situation before they even arrived at the house as they walked swiftly from the Tube station.
Aled pinched his face, then said, “She hasn’t for a while. Things were bad at first.” A momentary haunted look came to his eyes before he squared his shoulders, as if with the memory of handling problems in the past, and went on. “Dawn has been going through a lot of changes this summer. She’s also a freshman at RUL. I held off going to uni until she was ready to go, mostly because caring for the family has sort of been my full-time job for a while.”
Jamie smiled despite the tension of the situation as they turned onto a quieter street. Some people might have seen delaying entry to university in order to take care of a family as failure to launch or some other nonsense. Jamie saw it for what it was—Aled’s natural dominant tendencies coming out in the most caring of ways. If he hadn’t already felt just how sharply Aled could make a flogger and a cane sting, he would have pegged him as a soft dom.
“This is us,” Aled said as they reached an cozy, semi-detached, pseudo-Tudor house in the middle of the street.
Jamie was surprised the house was so…grown up. For some reason, he hadn’t expected someone as young as Aled to own such a staid, middle-class property. Then again, he was learning new and unexpected things about his Sir every day.
“Dawn?” Aled called out as soon as the two of them entered the house. “Love, are you here?”
“We’re up here,” the stressed call of a male voice came from the top of the stairs.
Aled turned back to Jamie with a pinched look. “You don’t have to deal with this if you don’t want to,” he said. “This is my responsibility and not exactly fantastic first date material.”
He started up the stairs, and Jamie followed.
“That hardly counted as a first date,” he said, implying with a saucy look that they’d already shared and bared far more than people usually did months into a relationship. “And I want to help.”
