Page 109 of Season of Gifts

Yes.Yes, that was true.And he’d proved himself spectacularly incapable of such an endeavor.“I failed you all.”

“No.You miscalculated how much of a load you could bear.Even the toughest materials crack when you stress them again and again.Besides, we’ve had plenty of failures to go around.Don’t go claiming more than your share.”She lay her cheek against his head, her fingers kneading the back of his neck.

She dug her thumbs into the slopes rising from his shoulders in counterpoint, and he bowed his head.His shoulders dropped with a relief that burned.Stroking up and digging in at the base of his skull, she dispelled an omnipresent pain, a headache that hadn’t left him in days.

“You are stressed beyond belief.”She crooned to him, her voice thick and warm and soft.“We all want to help you.You need to let us.It hurts your mother to see you stretched so thin.”

Mother had tried to tell him, and he’d waved her feelings aside, intent on protecting her from—her feelings.All the while, his own feelings had been the danger.Childhood fears had guided him, and he’d urgently dashed everywhere they led.

Alice carried healing in her hands, dull aches melting away beneath her touch.She hummed a low note.“That dark reservoir of pain you told me about once, the one I keep filling?You have one too.That’s how you know.”

“It is.”He’d pretended he could weather this crisis without slipping into that well.Instead, he’d pulled his loved ones in after him.Alice would have understood if he’d explained.She would have challenged his decisions, just as Mother had been doing, with one difference: Alice wouldn’t have allowed him to hide and deflect.Countless times now she’d seen how effective a show of dominance could be in peeling back the painful layers to uncover the seed of the trouble.And even if she couldn’t dominate him, her attempts would have drawn his attention to the problems she illuminated.“I am sorry beyond measure, dearest.I compounded error upon error.”

Until he’d reached nothing short of a panic attack tonight.His breathing had calmed, but the fear-sweat had left a chill on his skin.Every cell in his body had been screaming that Mother would die if he didn’t check on her immediately.That he would die if he didn’t see for himself that Mother was all right.

Unfolding his arms, he pulled Alice into a proper hug there on the floor.She embraced him with equal fervor, her arms wound tight across his back.Why had he not done this last night, upon her arrival?“I shouldn’t have attempted to shield you.I should have trusted in your strength.”

“We’re both guilty of that.”Her inhale hissed between her teeth; her exhale vibrated gently.Her shoulders tensed.“I went home this week.Visited my parents.”

Dear God.He’d missed more than he could have imagined.“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, sweet girl.”

“I wanted to talk with you about it, but it didn’t seem right when you were already juggling so much.And I thought I understood what you were juggling, so I didn’t ask.”Her headshake rattled against him, their faces so close the sideways shift of her jaw swung into his cheekbone.“Worse, I kept Jay from following his gut and coming here sooner, when that would have been better for both of you.”

Jay.He’d left Jay—

He staggered to his feet, Alice yet clasped to him.His memory held no sound.Only Jay’s stricken face.

“Henry, what—”

Grabbing her arm, he dragged her with him.“Hurry.”

Chapter fifty-nine

Jay

Jayjerkedawayfromthe blast of the door shutting, sharp as a starter’s pistol.He hadn’t relaxed Henry, not even a little bit.If anything, he’d made Henry more tense and angry.Or—

Scared?

Maybe he wasn’t an expert seducer, but he was earnest and eager to please.He’d never needed to be more than that for Henry to love him.And Henry had seemed into it until he suddenly wasn’t.Like,at all.

Jay curled his fingers toward his palms, lying face-up on his thighs.A bassy laugh, a low growl, a hand thrust into the hair at the back of his neck—any of those would’ve been expected when he made a move to get in Henry’s pants.

But he’d made Henry safeword.

Henry didn’t have a special word; hisstopmeantstop.

His cock wilted in fits and starts.The rug grew hundreds of needles that scratched at his legs.The itchy, crawling tingles climbed his chest and down his arms and spread into his head, buzzing like angry bees.Henry had told him to wait here.If he couldn’t do anything else right, he would at least kneel in this empty bedroom where his thoughts echoed until Henry returned.

“Still have some work to do on the whole taking initiative thing.”The whisper crackled in his dry mouth.Danny hadn’t promised every time would go perfectly.The wedding photos had been a win.Calling Alice on Thursday had been a win.Seducing Henry had been like standing in the way of a falling tree and getting kicked in the nuts while he lay pinned under the trunk.“Not really a win.”

He’d gathered important information, though.Sex was one hundred percent not the way to relax Henry right now.He could let Alice know before she tried it and got rejected too.“Silver lining.”

He did the breathing exercises, the ones with the long breaths out to empty his lungs and force his muscles to let go of the buzzing.Should’ve tried that with Henry.Should’ve— “Okay, brain, we’re not doing that.That’s one of those well-worn paths we don’t want to go down again.Things went wrong.That doesn’t makemewrong.”

The simplest things to say were the hardest to believe.Therapy was a workout, a strength-training session for muscles people didn’t even know they had.

The house was warm—warm enough he’d kicked free of the sheets last night and held nothing but Alice—but he shivered anyhow.How could waiting feel so good in a scene and so awful now?Maybe—no, it had probably only been minutes.And sticking his head out the door to check would mean more than leaving the waiting pose Henry had left him in.It would mean getting dressed again and trying to hide the tears he’d scrubbed off his cheeks.He didn’t have a poker face; whoever he ran into outside would know something was up.

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