Chapter 18 Where The Light Still Shines #2
“Oh, lord god!” Joshua sputtered, giving Colin’s arm a soft smack.
David handed each of them a brandy snifter, then sat down next to Nate. “Josh? This is your moment.”
Joshua drew in a trembling breath, then turned to face Colin. “This will be our last night in David and Nate’s wonderful home.”
Colin’s mouth fell open. He didn’t speak, but the brandy glass in his hand trembled.
“Tomorrow we’re going home, my yedid.”
“H—home?” Colin stammered. “To our—our house? It’s–it’s fixed? It’s ready? Honest to god, Josh?”
“It’s not finished,” Joshua told him, reaching to caress his cheek. “There’s still a lot of interior work to be done. Kitchen cupboards aren’t up yet. Other stuff too. Mostly cosmetic like wallpaper, paint”—he smiled and lifted his brandy glass—“curtains.” Then he sipped. “But it’s… livable.”
“All our stuff…” Colin began.
“Back from Mara’s restoration team. Everything she could save—and it was a lot—is home again.”
“My suits?”
“All cleaned and ready to wear.”
“My wedding suit?”
“Like it was the day we got married, my love.”
“No smoke smell?”
“A tiny bit here and there, but that will pass in time.” Joshua set his brandy glass down and clasped Colin’s face between his palms. “Not everything is perfect, my darling husband. Some things,” he hesitated and lowered his head, then lifted it and met Colin’s eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was choked, strangled.
“Some things will never be the same. But then again, neither will we, so it all seemed to fit.”
The brandy snifter in Colin’s hand trembled again, and Joshua gently took it from him, setting it on the table.
For a long moment, Colin’s gaze locked with Joshua’s.
Then he nodded, his eyes filling with tears.
“We swore we’d take every step of this journey together, but we both ended up on pilgrimages of our own, didn’t we, mo chroí? ”
Joshua didn’t speak. He leaned in, forehead resting against Colin’s, his breath warm between them.
For a long moment, they simply sat—hands entwined, hearts still catching up, tears streaking their faces.
Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said: “Yes. We did, my love.” He kissed the corner of Colin’s mouth.
“But I would walk it all again, every single step, if it brought you home to me.”
The next morning broke gently, with a warm wash of light pouring through the tall windows in David’s dining room.
The kind of light that didn’t demand anything—just offered quiet company.
Colin sat at the kitchen table, hair still damp from his shower, a cup of coffee between his hands, steam curling up around his face.
Joshua was downstairs packing, folding their things with the same careful reverence one might use when tucking away a beloved keepsake. Colin could hear drawers opening and closing in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
In the kitchen, Nate moved with the precision of a man on a mission, cracking eggs with military-like efficiency while simultaneously buttering toast and adding chopped chives to the pan. David stood at the espresso machine, muttering dark threats at its blinking light.
“I heard that,” Nate called over his shoulder without turning. “Don’t insult the espresso machine before it’s had a chance to do its thing.”
Colin huffed a soft laugh into his coffee. His body still ached, and his bones felt heavier than usual, but the sight of Nate fussing and David brooding was a balm. Something about their rhythm—comfortable, lived-in—settled into the air like a lullaby.
Joshua appeared, his bag slung over one shoulder, and leaned against the doorframe. “The suitcases are in the hall by the door, and the jacket’s packed,” he said. “So do not panic.”
Colin gave him a crooked smile. “I make no promises.”
Joshua set the bag on the floor and collapsed into the seat next to his husband. “We’ll need to make a couple of trips to get it all—we’ve been here a while. But we can get the rest later.”
Nate arrived at the table with a plate piled high. Scrambled eggs, toast, and sliced fruit arranged in an almost absurdly symmetrical circle. “Eat everything,” he said firmly, tapping the plate, like a general issuing orders. “You need the protein.”
“God help me,” Colin muttered, reaching for a fork. “He’s gone full-on Florence Nightingale.”
Nate tilted his head and leaned on Colin’s shoulder. “It’s going to feel so damned weird not having you here.”
“For us too,” Colin said, patting his hand. “Hard to be going, so it is.”
David set a glass of green juice beside the plate. “And it seems I’ve gone full Gwyneth Paltrow. You’re getting supplements, Campbell-Abrams.”
Colin looked between them and smiled. “I don’t deserve you.”
“No,” Nate said. “But Joshua does, and you came attached.”
Joshua turned and pressed a kiss to the top of Colin’s shoulder. “I happen to like the attachment.”
They ate quietly for a while, the occasional clink of cutlery and hum of espresso the only sounds. When the plates were mostly empty and the last dregs of coffee had gone cold, Colin sat back and looked around the room.
“I don’t have the words,” he said. “For how much you’ve both done for us. I’ll spend a lifetime trying to repay it.”
David waved him off. “Just don’t ever lose Colin Campbell-Abrams again. That’ll be enough for us.”
“Always my intention,” Colin murmured.
Joshua stood and reached for his travel bag. “Ready?”
Colin nodded slowly, then turned back toward the window, where a breeze nudged the curtain. He could see the curve of the driveway, the early-morning glint of sun off the Charlottesville skyline in the distance.
He stood, walked to Joshua, and took the bag from his hand.
“Let’s go home, so,” he said softly. He hadn’t meant to let it slip, that Irish turn of phrase.
But the road lived inside him still—and Ireland still spoke through his bones.
It clung to his voice like mist, like memory.
Like something ancient that had always known the shape of him and had finally led him back to himself.
He looked at Joshua, their hands brushing as they turned toward the door.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, going home didn’t feel like an end.
It felt like a beginning.