Page 104 of Season of Gifts

“Shall we have her ride you tonight?”Henry stroked Jay’s back, broad hands roaming both sides of his spine, knuckled fists massaging above his ass.“Re-create the scene without the shower for me.I’ll enjoy seeing how you’ve entertained each other while I’ve been away.”

Had Alice packed her teeny-tiny buzzy toy?He’d have to check with her.But he’d be well on his way to earning the reward she promised if he could get Henry out of the pajamas and accepting what he needed to relax.Maybe Jay wasn’t being pushy enough.Alice getting pushy in a scene turned Henry growly and rough.If he could just do what she did, he could be having his face fucked right now.The way he’d wanted to when he was tonguing his new collar and cuffs for Henry.

“I’ve been entertaining myself with a lot of fantasies.”The final button on the top gave way.He had full range of Henry’s chest, his flanks, the trail of dark hair calling him to follow it below Henry’s waistband.“I didn’t bring your gifts, but I can’t wait to wear them.On my knees.With my leash in your fist.With you using my mouth.Owning me.Maybe—” His heart churned and his throat dried, but fuck, he’d come so far.Flogging was back on hisyes, pleaselist.He’d written the words in his wish book this week.He could say them to Henry.“Maybe my hands cuffed behind me.”

Chapter fifty-five

Alice

Sooftenatthebeginning, Alice had imagined what a vulnerable Henry would look like.What he would act like.Now she knew, and she’d missed every warning sign.But Jay, with all his intuition and empathy?He would realign their husband emotionally.She only needed to listen and analyze the context Henry’s mother could give her.With those insights, they could move forward.

Mother folded her hands across her stomach and rubbed her knuckles.“I considered reaching out to you earlier, but I thought I could coax Henry to open up on his own.”Head bowed, she exhaled slowly through her nose.“He refuses to hear me.”Raising her chin, Mother revealed vivid and bottomless eyes.“I worry for him.”

They shared that in common.

Alice struggled to stifle a shiver.The room was warm—the whole house was warm, probably Henry’s doing to keep his mother comfortable—but fear grew its own chills.“I can see how tired he is.How not himself he is.”

“Yes.”Keen eyes so like Henry’s assessed her.Worry lines flickered in and out around them, a tiny tell for the calculus going on behind.“I don’t mean to interfere with your marriage.I suppose I might have tried speaking to young Jay, but I sense you are made of sterner stuff.And, of course, I didn’t know what Henry might have already told you.”

Alice might have quibbled with whose spirit could withstand the most pain.Jay had been through the wringer far more than she had, and he’d come out with an open heart and an optimism she could never match.Dread soured in her stomach.Another fairy tale about love proved false would crack the door to the caustic cynic lurking in the back of her mind.“It’s starting to feel like a lack of knowledge is going around these days.”

“Contagious and spreading.”With delicate shoulders, Mother heaved a sigh beyond her weight class.“But let’s see what we can do to quarantine and treat, shall we?”

Alice folded her fingers around the cuffs of her sweater and tucked her fists at her sides.This bedroom was enormous, even larger than Henry’s, and the two of them were tiny figures huddled in a circle of light that illuminated less than half of it.Anything could be waiting beyond that border.“I don’t know where to begin.”

“I do.”Mother gently raised Alice’s hand and uncurled her fingers, clasping them between her own.“What do you know of the year Henry turned seven?”

A strangely specific opener.Nothing, except—he’d woven a bedtime story about that summer for her and Jay all those months ago.

“You spent the summer at the shore, teaching him to paint.”How magical Henry’s childhood had seemed, that an entire summer vacationing by the ocean was normal for him.How empathetic he’d been, to care about not disturbing the wonderful treasures he found.The thoughtful man she loved had grown from that boy.“And how to capture beautiful things without hurting them.”

Mother gripped her hand with unexpected strength.“He’s told you, then?Why we were there?”

“I thought…” Had he said, or had she assumed?An engineer knew better than to assume.“That’s not how you usually spent your summers?”

“Ah.”

The single syllable crashed through every assumption, splintering Alice’s framework down to the foundation, leaving her crouching in the wreckage with her arms wrapped around her head.Funny how the tornado drills from elementary school stayed with her.If she could squeeze into a tight ball and bury her face in her knees, nothing bad would happen.

Stretching across herself, Mother lifted her water glass from the nightstand and took a long sip.Her other hand stayed clenched around Alice’s.“That summer was an anomaly never to be repeated.The cottage was a place to recover, like stepping outside the flow of time.”

The back of Alice’s throat dried with the sour tang of certainty.“You were sick.”

No wonder Henry had left for Maine without even considering taking them along.He just needed to go, to see for himself that his mom was okay.

“I had been.The previous Christmas—” Shaking her head, Mother sipped again and set the glass aside.“A few days earlier—” She breathed through her mouth, loud and ragged.“Thirty-three years ago tomorrow, as it happens.”

Henry had said once that he went home for Christmas every year because it was a difficult season for his mom.Asking then would have been too personal, too much like prying.Alice added her other hand to their hold, pressing her fingers to the pulse in Mother’s wrist.She wouldn’t know, not like Henry would, what a too-fast flutter felt like.Making his mom upset wouldn’t fix anything, but it sure as hell could create more problems.“We don’t have to talk about—”

“I gave birth to the last of my children.”

But Henry only had an older—

A flash freeze took hold.The lightest tap, and she might have cracked into a thousand pieces.Henry had had another sibling.One who’d almost certainly died young.One he never talked about.“I’m so sorry.”

Mother sucked in a deeper breath, this one steadier, though tears slipped down her cheeks.“She was the only one Henry was old enough to remember.Two living boys, and four dead little girls, that’s what my body wrought.”

Seven years old—no, six.Henry’s birthday wasn’t until March.Six.He’d have been expecting to be a big brother.Had he been excited?Unsettled about not being the baby of the family anymore?Had he gotten to meet his sister?To hold her?

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