Chapter Ten
James
After reaching the reception area on B-Deck, James and Cassian both paused ahead of the corridor that led to the staterooms. James’s stomach sank as he turned to face Cassian, but he forced what felt like a weary smile and hoped that it was still convincing.
Even though he would have liked to walk Cassian to his room, the cabin steward who had been tasked with handling the keys would have probably thought it strange.
Therefore, James and Cassian would soon be forced to part.
And James knew that neither of them was ready for it.
Cassian seemed to have been in a state of mild shock ever since their time together in the swimming bath.
His eyes had a faraway look about them, his movements stiff and stilted.
James hadn’t meant for their time together to have become so physically intimate in the pool, but it seemed as though neither of them had been able to resist the closeness.
And while James knew what his own feelings were—he was irrevocably in love with Cassian now; he was certain—he wasn’t so sure that Cassian knew his own.
Yes, Cassian still planned to marry Ethel—that much was clear—but it seemed as though the poor man was struggling to know how to handle whatever this something was between them.
It was obvious to James that Cassian felt some sort of something for him, though he wasn’t certain what that something was.
Attraction, at the very least. And friendship.
Friendship that was . . . imbued with such fervent tenderness, James was finding it hard to believe that it was entirely platonic.
Or perhaps that was simply wishful thinking on his part.
Selfishly, James wanted Cassian to have feelings for him. Romantic ones. But he knew, too, that by wanting Cassian to somehow fall in love with him, he was essentially hoping for Cassian to suffer heartbreak as well, for their time together was, unfortunately and conclusively, limited.
Cassian had a life waiting for him in New York. One without James in it. It was one thing for James to break his own heart by falling for an unobtainable man, but it felt like quite another to be hoping for the man he now loved to suffer the same fate.
Looking into Cassian’s brown eyes—still somewhat unfocused but filled with unmistakable melancholy—James’s chest began to ache. Oh, God, how desperately he wanted Cassian to be happy. He wanted it more than anything.
“Here we are, I suppose,” James said, fighting to keep the lightness in his voice. “I had a lot of fun tonight.”
Cassian smiled back, though much sorrow still remained, evident in both the enduring look of heaviness in his eyes and the hard lines on his face.
“I had a lot of fun, too.”
“I’ll see you at breakfast?”
Cassian nodded. “I should think so.”
Silence hung between them for thirty or forty seconds, seconds that passed so slowly that even the nearby tick-tick-tick of the clock was starting to sound sluggish and labored.
James’s eyes fell to the floor for a moment before flitting up to one of Cassian’s hands, and then his chest ached even more.
By God, how he yearned to hold it, to intertwine their fingers and with them, somehow intertwine their hearts and futures and even the very core of who they were as well.
Unable to continue to be tortured by his wanting for even a moment more, James shut his eyes, only to then feel the warmth of Cassian’s fingers briefly brush his own.
He opened his eyes again to see Cassian’s pain-stricken face.
The man was looking at James with a longing that might have been equal to James’s own.
“Goodnight, James,” he said.
James swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Goodnight, Cassian.”
And then Cassian headed down the corridor. James watched him be let into his room, only turning to leave once he felt confident that Cassian was safe and warm inside, most likely settling in.
Afterward, James started back for Scotland Road, though the ghost of Cassian’s fleeting touch lingered, making the skin on his hand tingle as he traversed the ship.
***
April 12, 1912
In the morning, James was heading for Cassian’s room with a fresh cup of coffee in his hands.
Gaze unfocused, he nearly tripped over his own two feet as he neared the corridor lined with the first-class staterooms, and his movement caused some coffee to slosh over the brim onto the saucer.
Luckily, the floor was spared from his insomnia-induced ineptitude.
For the first chunk of the night, James had fallen into one of the heaviest sleeps he had ever experienced.
Dreamless and still. But then, after some other steward had inadvertently woken him around four, he hadn’t been able to fall back asleep.
Instead, he had kept on replaying the whole of everything that had happened ever since boarding the ship over and over in his mind, from the fast but thorough training he’d received to the time that he’d spent at the pool with Cassian.
And he wondered when and where, exactly, he had misplaced his sense of morality.
Bloody hell, Cassian was engaged. Cassian was engaged, and still James had fallen in love with him.
He’d fallen in love with Cassian and had let Cassian start to want him, too, either romantically or sexually or even only sensually.
He’d promised himself that he’d keep things innocent, but then he had broken that promise mere hours later.
And now, he needed to fix things. James needed to tell Cassian that the physicality of their friendship needed to come to an end, for both of their sakes.
Otherwise . . . oh, God, otherwise, he might not survive the rest of their voyage.
Not to mention the rest of forever. Every single obviously-not-platonic moment between them brought James closer to complete ruination.
Of his heart. Of his mind. Dammit, of his very soul.
“See, James, this is why you’re a writer. You’re prone to these overwrought, overly emotional patterns of thinking,” Maggie would have said, had she been there.
And, in response, James would have countered by saying that she was completely and incontrovertibly correct, only to then continue on to say that she was simultaneously completely and incontrovertibly incorrect as well.
“You’re being nonsensical,” the ever-pragmatic, ever-logical Maggie Byrne would have then countered.
To which James would have said, “Of course I’m being nonsensical! I’m in love!”
James shut his eyes and shook his head once, forcing the strange fantasy out of his mind. Good God, he needed more sleep.
“Excuse me, may I help you?” someone asked from behind him.
James turned to see the steward in charge of the keys.
“Yes. I think so.” James lifted the cup of coffee a little higher. “Someone named Mr. Livingston requested that I bring him coffee this morning.” He smiled. “Can you show me to his room?”
James braced himself to be refused, but the man only nodded and then turned to head down the corridor.
James followed. Once they reached what must have been Cassian’s room, the man rapped his knuckles on the door a couple of times.
Each knock sent a bolt of unease shooting through James’s veins, making his heart beat faster and his palms sweat.
He prayed that Cassian wouldn’t be irritated by his early impromptu visit.
After a minute, Cassian answered, cracking the door open only a smidge.
“Yes?” he said, his voice slightly raspy.
“Your coffee is here,” the cabin steward said.
“Coffee?” Cassian pulled the door open a bit more. “What—”
He cut himself off the moment he and James locked eyes.
“Cream, no sugar,” James said.
“Right. Right.” Cassian blinked a couple of times. “I forgot. Yes. Coffee.” Clearing his throat, he stepped back into the room. “Come in.”
James flashed the cabin steward a friendly smile before slipping into the room. Balancing the saucer and cup in his left hand, he immediately closed the door behind him.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to face Cassian. “I wanted to see you.”
Cassian let out a contented-sounding hum.
“Don’t ever be sorry for that,” he said, his previously sleepy voice now becoming slightly husky.
James tried not to like it too much.
Cassian took the coffee from him. When he lifted the cup off of the saucer, it revealed the pool of light-brown liquid there, and he sneered at it.
Immediately, James’s stomach lurched from seeing Cassian’s reaction.
Overcome with the pitiful, ever-present urge to please him, James took the saucer back, intending to clean it somehow.
But then James realized that he only had his one handkerchief with him (which he wanted to keep clean seeing as it was only five forty in the morning) and there were no other pieces of rogue cloth nearby.
Determined to follow through, he brought the saucer to his lips and slurped up the spilled coffee right off of the saucer.
He smiled to himself, feeling foolishly proud, when he lowered it.
“Fixed.”
He handed the still-wet-but-now-coffee-free saucer back to Cassian, who stared wordlessly for a couple of seconds before starting to chuckle.
“Sometimes I have the fleeting thought that you’re spoiling me.”
James’s stomach fluttered. He’d like nothing more than to spoil Cassian. Now and forever. Until the end of time.
“But then, I realize something,” Cassian continued, his mouth curling into an impish-looking smile.
“Is it . . .” James paused to think. “Is it that you’re Cassian Penn Livingston, and therefore, because of who you are and what you are owed, you cannot possibly be spoiled?”
Cassian laughed that haughty yet playful laugh of his. “Precisely.”
Stomach still fluttering madly, James exhaled a shaky laugh himself. “I beg to differ.”
“Do you?” Cassian asked, raising one of his eyebrows.
“Yes,” James confirmed, his stomach now in his throat, his heart slamming into his rib cage with every wild beat. “Because I think that I could . . . spoil you.”
Cassian’s smile faltered as James’s statement reverberated off the walls of the stateroom.
“James,” Cassian said.
His voice was hungry and exhausted and pleading and loving and reproachful. All at once.
Gazing into Cassian’s beautiful brown eyes, the sound of his own name echoing in his head, James felt his cheeks warm, and he nearly fell to his knees to beg for forgiveness.
Forgiveness for being so brazen and so improper, though whether he wanted that forgiveness from Cassian or from God, he wasn’t sure.
Worse, though, James wanted to fall to his knees for other reasons.
Reasons that were wicked and wonderful. Reasons that could only lead to more spoiling.
James and Cassian stared at each other for a while, and then James spun around in a little circle, raking his hand through his hair while wondering where his head had gone.
He had come here to try to have a conversation about this something that was between them.
He’d come to make things right. But it seemed like all he was capable of was continuously nudging both of them closer and closer to oblivion.
“I . . . oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Something is wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Cassian exhaled a soft sigh. “Or, if there is, then something is wrong with me, too.” He gestured toward the bed. “Let’s sit.”
James’s heart was thundering in his ears as he followed Cassian across the room. He said a silent prayer that they could make it through their time together without breaking in the plush-looking mattress in a horrible, magnificently sinful manner.
Cassian is engaged. Cassian is engaged. Cassian is engaged.
Over and over, James repeated these words to himself, hoping to etch them into his soul, for maybe their presence there would somehow revive the sense of morality he’d once had that he must have either buried or left ashore.
James sat still while Cassian sipped his coffee. Eventually, Cassian held it out for him.
“You look exhausted,” he said. “Have some.”
Even without Cassian clarifying, James knew that it wasn’t a suggestion. He took the cup from Cassian and eagerly drank most of it down, though he wasn’t exactly fond of the taste. Cassian nodded approvingly, which made James want to melt into a little puddle on the floor.
James returned the cup. “Thank you.”
“Next time, bring a whole pot of it,” Cassian said.
“I will.”
Cassian finished the coffee, and then he handed the cup and saucer to James, who set them on the nightstand. After that, they both fell silent. Cassian began to chew on his nails. James started picking at his cuticles.
The awkward silence between them stretched on for several minutes as James searched his mind for an idea that might help return them to a state of relative normality.
But he couldn’t find one. Because from the moment that he and Cassian had met, there had been a spark of something between them.
And so, perhaps, for them, there could never be normality.
Perhaps Cassian Penn Livingston and James Thomas Morrow couldn’t ever be something as innocent as only friends. And if that was the case, then . . .
“I think maybe I should change sections. In the saloon,” James said, the horrible, necessary suggestion making his throat feel tight and his tongue itch.
“Because I know this voyage was meant to be special. For you. And for Ethel. And for you and Ethel. And I feel like my presence is . . . complicating things.”
Cassian was quiet. He continued to chew on his nails. James hugged himself, crossing his arms over his chest and squeezing, as though maybe he could comfort himself through what he needed to say next.
“I still want to be friends. But maybe we should spend less time together. For now.”
More seconds of maddening silence followed. Then, Cassian let his hand fall to his lap.
“All we have is now,” Cassian said, his voice barely a whisper.
James shut his eyes as the truth of Cassian’s words smashed his heart in two.
“I know.”
Minutes and minutes of harrowing silence followed. James stayed frozen and endured it for as long as he could, but soon, the pain came to be too much. Eyes filling with tears, he stood.
“I have work,” he said softly, his voice wavering. “So long, Cassian.”
Heart hurting, James walked out of the stateroom.