So This is Christmas: The Adrien English Mysteries by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon [Lanyon, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay Romance, holiday romance, Mystery
Publisher: JustJoshin Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2016-12-30T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“Did you hear from Kevin today?” I asked Jake over dinner.

I’d picked up a couple of bottles of Singha beer to go with the takeout from Saladang Song, our favorite Thai place. Jake swallowed a mouthful of beer, put down his mug. He speared a bite of shrimp Pad Thai. “No.”

“Me neither. I expected to.”

“Disappointed?”

My heart skipped, and I looked at him in surprise. He stared back, and for a moment his face looked like a stranger’s. Hard. Unfriendly. Come to think of it, not the face of a stranger at all. He looked like the old Jake.

As the thought crystallized, his expression changed, twisted into apology. “Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Why did you say it?”

I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then his mouth tightened as though he was in pain.

“Maybe because somewhere in the back of my brain is the fear that there are some things you can’t put right. That I had my chance and I blew it. And that all this”—he nodded at the dining room where we sat—“is just a way station on the road to wherever I’m going to eventually wind up.”

It was so unexpected, and hurt so much—for so many reasons—that I felt for a second like I couldn’t get my breath. Kind of like the bad old days when my heart had leaked and floundered like a sinking ship.

“Are you saying after everything we’ve been through, you think this is temporary?”

I thought I sounded steady enough, but his eyes turned dark with fierce, unreadable emotion. His chair scraped back, and he came around to me, folding me in his arms. “Don’t look like that, baby,” he said softly.

“Because this is it for me,” I told him, and that time my voice wasn’t so steady.

“This is it for me,” he whispered against my ear. “Till death do us part. Nothing could change how I feel about you.”

I pulled away to scrutinize his face. “You think I might change my mind?”

He shook his head.

“What, then?”

I know he could hear the pain in my tone because I could hear it. It just wasn’t possible to hide what I felt for him. Not anymore.

“It isn’t logic. It’s jealousy and fear. Because I didn’t appreciate what I had when I had it. And maybe deep down I don’t know that I really deserve another chance.”

“Jake. Don’t. Don’t say stuff like that. Those words don’t belong between you and me…”

He pulled me back into his arms, muttering, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just hard sometimes to believe.”

He was holding me so tight it was hard to breathe, like he was hanging on for dear life. I clutched him back. I was pretty sure this—whatever it was—had been triggered by his meeting with Kate and the continued ostracizing by his family.

How could they do this to him? When they knew better than anybody who he was inside. When they had to know how much they were hurting him.

I wanted to fix it for him, and since I couldn’t, I wanted to comfort him any way I could.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.