Page 33 of Binding Their Hearts

“Nothing since then?” Danny tipped back in the chair and rested his notepad against his chest. “No collaring? You’ve been with Henry how long?”

“More than five years.” And so many more ahead of him. Henry and Alice were promising all their years to him once they got to the altar or whatever. Probably not an altar. Maybe a flogging horse. He should pitch that tonight at dinner, see if he got big laughs or thoughtful hmms. “But we didn’t do club nights for a long time. Not until this summer, not until Alice.”

“So you met Alice, and Henry agreed to return to the club?”

A big ol’ snort escaped before he could stop it. “Not even close. It was a bajillion months before Henry felt we were ready. Eight or nine at least.”

And then Jay had let him down anyway. Redeemed himself this summer by helping to get Cal banned, sure, but that wouldn’t undo Alice’s awful first night at the club.

“You wanted to go sooner?” Danny’s pen scratched against the paper.

“I always want to do things too soon.” He should watch that, with the wedding stuff. Do the steps like Henry and Alice wanted to, in stages, even if that gave them time to back out. “I’m impatient, and that’s how I get into trouble. Doing without thinking, and then I gotta live with the consequences. I brought it on myself.”

Danny stopped writing, his dark eyes locking with Jay’s. “Brought what?”

“Everything.”

The silence held, and Danny still prodded with his stare, so that must’ve been an incomplete answer. Jay dug a finger into his sneaker and smoothed a wrinkle in his sock. Those could cause real trouble on a ride—blisters would rub a foot raw.

“Everything bad that’s ever happened in my life.” He checked the other sock just in case. “It’s my fault for not being smart enough or patient enough.”

“Huh.”

He wasn’t gonna tell Danny how to do his job, but “huh” did not at all sound like a thing therapists should say. “What ‘huh’?”

Danny tapped a finger against his notepad. “When you say things are your fault, is that your voice saying that?”

Now his questions didn’t even make sense. Maybe he’d had one of those aneurysm things. Or Jay had, and his ears and his brain spoke different languages. “Umm, yeah? Whose voice would it be?”

“Well, we’ve talked a little about the ways other voices get stuck in our heads, right?” Danny’s tone matched his face, gentle and open, stepping light as a water strider across a pond. “We get told things over and over until we repeat them to ourselves.”

Fuck. They had talked about that, and he should’ve remembered. He wouldn’t graduate from therapy if he forgot all the lessons. Wasting time and money just so he could be a disappointment at something new. Same old Jay Michael. He should be more thoughtful and appreciative of the effort Danny was putting into fixing him.

Danny cleared his throat. “What’s the voice saying now, Jay?”

“That I’m a disappointment.” He plucked at the waffle weave of his long-sleeve tee.

“Have you heard that before? Is that Henry’s voice?”

“What?” He jerked his head up so fast his neck protested. “No, fuck no.” Danny didn’t get to say that, no matter how many fancy degrees he had. “Henry is the only—him and Alice—I don’t—” He slowed down, blew out a long breath. Conversations at his pace. That was one of the lessons too. The clamp in his throat eased. “I’m not a disappointment to them.”

“But you’ve heard that message a lot?” Danny didn’t get rattled by emotional stuff, didn’t tell him to grow up or stop mewling like a barn kitten.

“My whole life.” The mistake nobody asked for. “My mom and dad. My brother.” But he and Kev would keep patching things up now that they’d sorted out the money. “My sisters Beth and Peggy, Peggy especially.”

He sipped the strawberry water. After the trip home last month, that break might not be fixable. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Alice said the relationship wasn’t healthy for him, and Henry hadn’t contradicted her.

Danny’s hum didn’t have nearly the depth of Henry’s. “Will they be at the wedding?”

Good thing he’d swallowed his drink, or he’d have spat water all over the carpet.

“Not on your life. They don’t want anything to do with me.” Not now, and maybe not ever. No more—fuck. Thanksgiving. Christmas. He’d, what, sit in the apartment and mope? Him and Alice. She didn’t go home to her family, either.

“That sounds like it’s their choice.” Leaning forward, Danny rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers. The red in his hair matched his pants today. “Do you want them there, Jay?”

His brother and sisters had had church weddings. He’d been a kid for all of them, no choice about attending, but of course he’d have wanted to be there. That’s what folk did. They filled up all the pews, and they cheered for the happy couple, and they came over afterward and ate until their pants wouldn’t button.

“No, not really, I guess. They’d make it awful. They think I’m disgusting.” He’d declare his love for Henry and Alice to an empty room because the other option was Peggy interrupting his vows to tell him how horrible he was and Dad walking out on his disappointing son. Although—“Except Nat. She’s cool.”

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