Page 110 of Season of Gifts

The door slammed open so hard it bounced off the stopper that kept the handle from making a divot in the wall.

Jay’s back tensed, but he held his pose: knees spread, cock deflated, head bowed.

Two sets of feet stampeded toward him.Henry sank to the floor in front of him, knees touching knees, and cupped Jay’s face in shaking hands.

“I am so sorry, my love.”Henry lifted Jay’s chin, until Jay couldn’t avoid the green gaze.Henry’s cheeks wore tear tracks too.His eyes were still wet, spilling over like the creek flooding its banks when spring melt coursed down the mountain.“I have handled everything so poorly, most especially you.If I had listened to you, we wouldn’t be where we are.I should think”—Henry choked on a laugh-sob—“I would have learned by now that you arrive directly by the heart’s path at the place Alice and I eventually discover by the twisting maze of the mind.”

Henry spoke in mazes all the time.But Jay didn’t have to solve them to take their meaning.He breathed out slow.When saying a scary thing, start from a calm place.That was Henry’s rule, too, not just Danny’s.“I wish you’d let me drive you up here the very first night.”

Pressing a kiss to Jay’s forehead, Henry nodded.“I wish that, too.I wasn’t myself.No—” He drew back, frowning, and ruffled his fingers through Jay’s hair on either side, tucking the longer strands behind his ears.“I was a version of myself that I haven’t been in many years, longer than you’ve been alive, and I couldn’t see it.I wouldn’t let myself see it.And because of that, I have hurt you, and I have hurt Alice, and I have hurt my mother, and…” Henry laughed with air alone.“I owe Will an apology, and probably Emma by extension.I will have a fair bit of work to do to make all of this right.”

“You forgot someone.”Longer than Jay had been alive meant Henry had been a kid.“In your list.”

“Did I?”Confusion looked odd on Henry.Most of the time he knew all the things, and it was rare that Jay could surprise him.But his eyebrows dipped together, and his lips pushed out.“Who else have I hurt, my brave boy?”

“You.”

“Ah.”Closing his eyes, Henry laid his head on Jay’s shoulder.Shudders rippled through him.Harsh breaths broke the silence of the bedroom.

Jay lifted his gaze to Alice, crouching on one knee beside Henry, whose breaths gusted against Jay’s chest.More questions bombarded him than mouthing or gesturing could get across.If she could beam the answers straight into his head, that would be awesome.What the hell had happened?

He’d had moments like this—during nightmares, or when he’d tried to push himself for something he wanted and set himself back instead.Times when his body froze and his mind blanked and every drop of blood in him rushed like a freight train past his ears.But this was a first for Henry.At least the first time he’d seen Henry this way.Alice wore the dazed stare of a marathoner stumbling around at the finish line.

He carefully slipped his arms around Henry, twitchy-alert for any sign ofstop.Alice added her hand, rubbing Henry’s back below Jay’s grip.She squeezed Jay’s forearm in three little pulses, smiling at him like he’d done a good job.Obviously Henry hadn’t told her how lousy the seduction had gone.

“Henry?”Alice pitched her voice low, the way Henry did when he was reading to them.“I’m thinking we need to have some knowledge-sharing, so we’re all on the same page.”She met Jay’s eyes, and hers held a painful forest of thorns and bramble patches that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to fetch the walkie-talkie.“And then I think we need to sleep.Before we do that…” Her mouth twitched in a tiny sideways tug.“If you need to look in on her, I’ll go with you.”

Henry sat up slowly.Jay let his arms fall, but Henry snatched his hands and held them tight.“No.”His voice was hoarse.“Thank you, Alice.I think you have the right of it.Better to break the pattern.”

“I think it’s gonna be a year for breaking patterns.”Laying her hand on Henry’s shoulder, Alice kissed the top of his head and pushed to her feet.She unhooked the walkie-talkie from her pants and set it on the nightstand.On her way to the closet, she stripped all the way down to her underwear.She came back wearing Jay’s lounge-around-the-house tee and holding the shorts he’d brought as pajama bottoms.Kneeling beside him, she palmed his ear on the opposite side, her fingers rocking in his hair.She pressed kisses above his near ear.

“I steered you wrong, sweetheart, and I am unbelievably sorry for that.We’re gonna talk about it, okay?”Her sigh tickled.“But as fabulous as this rug is, I think we should move this conversation to the bed.I could really go for soft pillows and cozy blankets right now.”

She and Henry levered themselves up in sync, and they both reached a hand down to him.He didn’t actually need one; he could hold waiting pose way longer than this without his legs falling asleep.But he took hold of both, because their shaky faces said they needed him to.And maybe, a little, because he needed to.

He skimmed the shorts she handed him up and over his legs.Henry sat on the walkie-talkie side of the bed and leaned back against the headboard, tipping his face toward the ceiling.Alice nudged Jay to join him, and he nudged her back.“I’ll fill the water glasses first.You climb in.”

Her eyes flickered, but she didn’t fight him.She scooted into the center and stuffed her pillow vertically behind her while he distributed water glasses.Not that he didn’t want to sit between Henry and Alice.The middle was the best.Not always for sleeping, since he kinda flung his limbs out and took up more than his fair share.But for snuggling and sex, the middle couldn’t be beat.

That was the problem.His dick was earning a doctorate in dangling for now, but if he got in the middle?A conversation that made Henry cry and Alice hurt was not the place for a hard-on.He tossed his pillow to the foot of the bed and sat cross-legged facing them both, balling the pillow in his lap as an armrest.“So I guess I missed a lot.Who wants to start?”

Chapter sixty

Henry

Brightsunlightstreamedthroughthe curtains.For the first time in uncounted days, Henry had missed the sunrise.To his right, peaceful, even breathing softly sang the merits of slumber.To his left, the faint scratch of pencils came through the portable monitor.

Nothing had happened to Mother in the night; she was sketching, possibly amused by his lateness.Almost certainly relieved not to have found him dozing in the bedside chair.

His heart maintained its slow, steady beat.His body lay easy.Having Alice and Jay beside him, knowing what weighed upon him, made a profound difference.He knew that, when he was thinking clearly.Hadn’t he often held Jay to chase away nightmares?

He tipped the blanket back and slid from the bed.Thrusting his arms toward the ceiling, he stretched his back and neck.The omnipresent headache had left him.Relief made him giddy as he slipped into the bathroom for the morning necessities, carrying the monitor with him.

The night’s talk had laid bare their stresses and how concealment had compounded those stresses.Alice and Jay would never have agreed to him operating alone had they known his mother’s history.He told them of all he should have shared at the start, until fatigue demanded they set revelations aside.

Experience with therapy had given him a false impression of himself as a new man.In some ways, he was.Certainly he’d gained self-knowledge and grounding exercises that had served him well.But logic and rationalization were a linguistic trick that had fooled him into believing that the silence of the emotions grasping at him, goading him, was equivalent to their eradication.True healing would be re-integrating the wounded child into his psyche.

A lilting hum came through the portable.Mother was pleased with her sketching, it seemed.Or perhaps with a message from a friend.He ought to have immediately recognized the value of such an outlet, not attempted to shut it down.He owed her any number of apologies.Perhaps he might do that now, before breakfast.

---