Chapter 24
When Joe woke the next morning, his first thought was I told Kaden I loved him.
He slid out of bed before Kaden woke and went to the bathroom.
Should I have said it? From the small amount he knew about relationships, mostly based on Kaden’s experiences, which Joe knew more about than Kaden should ever find out, no one had said those words to him before.
Not including his parents. Did I make a mistake? Too soon?
But Joe did love him.
It was the simplest, clearest truth in the middle of everything else they were embroiled in.
Joe leaned over the sink, gripping the edge as he stared at his reflection.
His hair was a mess, there were marks on his neck he definitely hadn’t had yesterday—so I’m not healing fast—a brightness in his eyes, a tremble in his lips…
He wouldn’t take the words back. They hadn’t slipped out by accident, even though emotions had been running high.
Would Kaden pretend he hadn’t heard? Maybe he’d joke about it. Maybe he’d panic. Joe winced.
Or maybe, just maybe, he’d say it back.
Joe straightened, exhaling slowly, and turned to leave the bathroom. He liked the marks Kaden had left on his neck.
The bedroom was quiet when he stepped back in, streaks of morning light spilling through the curtains. Kaden lay sprawled on his stomach, one arm half-tucked under the pillow.
“You’re very loud.” Kaden’s voice was rough with sleep.
Joe froze halfway across the room. “I tried to be quiet. Sorry.”
“You were thinking very loudly.” Kaden rolled to look at him. “Very inconsiderate.”
Joe huffed, but some of the tension eased from his shoulders. “I’ll try to keep my existential crisis quieter next time.”
Kaden’s lips twitched. He pushed himself up a little. “You disappeared.”
“Only into the bathroom. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” A pause. “You said something. Last night.”
There it was.
Joe’s stomach flip-flopped, but he didn’t look away.
“I said a lot. I moaned a lot and whimpered. Gasped too, I think. There was a lot of whimpering.” He chuckled.
“It was all good. I liked it. Everything. What you did… It felt perfect. You felt perfect. I meant what I said. I need to shut up and I can’t. Sorry. That feels a human thing.”
Kaden sat up fully now, dragging a hand through his hair, suddenly looking less certain than Joe had ever seen him. “You didn’t just say it because…”
Joe let out a breath that felt like it had been stuck in his chest since the moment he’d woken up. “I meant it.”
Kaden looked down for a second, then back up at Joe. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
I know. No, don’t tell him that! “Oh. I should be glad but I’m sad too. You deserve to be loved.”
Kaden huffed out a small laugh. “You probably knew no one had ever said it.” His gaze flicked back up, steadier now.
“You always figure things out, know stuff I didn’t think you’d know.
I forget sometimes that you were inside me, reading me.
If you learnt English from me, what else did you find in my head? ”
Joe thought quickly. “Not how to tie shoelaces, clearly.”
Kaden smiled.
Joe stepped a little closer. “Is it bad that I love you?”
Kaden shook his head immediately. “No.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Kaden’s fingers caught Joe’s wrist, and tugged him forward until Joe had no choice but to follow. The mattress dipped under his weight, the space between them closing until it barely existed at all.
Kaden’s thumb brushed over the inside of Joe’s wrist, and Joe felt it everywhere.
“You don’t have to take it back,” Kaden said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
Joe swallowed. “You don’t have to say it back either.”
He searched Kaden’s face for hesitation, for doubt, anything that might tell him he’d gone too far.
Kaden held his gaze for a long moment. There was something fragile in it. Then Kaden quietly said, “I know.”
Joe swallowed, the words rising up again, impossible to keep in. “I will always love you. I owe you everything, but it’s not just that. You make me happy. I didn’t think I could ever feel like this.” He let out a small breath. “You listen to me. You make me feel…real. As if I matter.”
Kaden’s grip tightened slightly.
“You help me to be the person I want to be,” Joe went on.
“And I want to look after you. Protect you. I used to hate that part of me, the protector, but with you…” He shook his head faintly.
“Now it feels like something good. I can look after you through the part of me that’s still inside you.
I won’t do anything without making sure it’s what you want.
I can’t make you live forever. I doubt I’ll live longer than you. But I can keep us both healthy.”
Kaden didn’t interrupt. Didn’t look away.
“The hospital knew my blood wasn’t quite right, but it will be normal by now. No one will ever know how I came to be what I am. Only you and I. You could tell your dad if you wanted to.”
“No. It’s a burden he doesn’t need. I don’t know if he’d believe us or not. But he’ll see that you love me. He’ll understand that. He’ll love you too.”
“You’re kind,” Joe said. “And funny. Strong in ways you don’t even see.
You give so much to people. To me.” He hesitated, then forced himself to keep going.
“And I know I hurt you. What I did— I didn’t have the right.
I didn’t have your consent, and I’ll regret that for as long as I exist. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it. ”
Kaden’s expression flickered, but he didn’t pull away.
“I hope you want me in your life,” Joe said.
“Because I desperately want to be there. To have fun with you.” He drew in a shaky breath.
“But if at any time you ask me to leave, I will. Though I’d still love you.
Until the day I die. And when there’s nothing left of me but atoms…
” A faint, almost embarrassed smile tugged at his mouth.
“I think they’d still be trying to find yours so we could end up in the same place again.
In the stars. Or in those bits of dust you see floating in sunlight. ”
“Oh Joe.”
“I know it must feel strange to have me around, to look at me and think I was inside you. I created myself through knowledge of your body, but I’m not a replica of you. I’m me. Joe. So…please don’t ask me to leave. I don’t think I’d survive it.”
For a second, Kaden just stared at him. Then “Oh, God, Joe!” Kaden pulled him down, arms wrapping tight around him. “How could I not want you? How could I not love you?”
The words hit Joe harder than anything else had. For the first time in his existence, his body wasn’t a weapon. Wasn’t a tool. Wasn’t something to be used or feared. It was just his, full of love for Kaden. And Kaden loved him too.
They didn’t have a permanent home. Didn’t have certainty, or definite safety, or any kind of clear future. But they had this. And somehow, that felt like everything.
Then Kaden showed him it was everything to him as well.
Later, when Kaden had settled at his laptop to write the article on Blake, Joe chose one of Malik’s books from the shelf and curled up on the couch to read it.
It was a thriller about scientists stranded in the Arctic, and Joe found himself distracted by the setting more than the plot.
Snow. Ice. Endless night and endless day.
He tried to imagine what it would feel like.
The cold biting at his skin. The silence.
What it would be like to not see the sun for half the year, with stars and the Aurora Borealis the only lights in the sky.
There was so much Joe wanted to see. So much he wanted to experience. But only with Kaden. Then reality nudged its way back in. He had to get permission to stay in this country first. Permanently. Properly. They’d done what Alistair asked. Would he keep his word?
The thought made his chest tighten.
Maybe he should do something practical. Use some of the money he’d won. Buy a car. Kaden could teach him to drive. That felt like a normal thing. A human thing. Joe liked the idea of that.
He finished the book and picked up the remote instead. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped on Kaden’s headphones and scrolled until he found a romance.
If he was going to do this—be this—he might as well learn.
Unlike reading, which he did at speed, he could only watch the film in the normal way.
It wasn’t a bad thing to learn to be patient.
Though the film was confusing. People did idiotic things that made Joe want to yell at them, they kept leaking when nothing objectively bad had happened, not everything made sense, but everyone was happy at the end.
Joe frowned at the screen. Why cry when something wasn’t sad? Though hadn’t he cried at the giraffes? But they were real. What he was watching, wasn’t. Even so, he’d felt pressure in his chest, a surge of emotion filling him up as the characters on screen kissed. His eyes had leaked.
Kaden took a break for lunch, which Joe had prepared, then continued writing and Joe searched for something to do. Malik had said his record player was broken. Maybe it could be fixed. Though he wasn’t sure what the machine did so he looked it up.
Ah, that was what all those flat black discs were for. Malik had a shelf full of them below his books. Joe found tools and took the record player apart, carefully checking each piece for damage.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” Kaden had come up behind him.
“Trying to mend this.”
“Can you?”
“Not sure yet. I might have to get a few new parts.”
“Do you know where everything goes?”
Joe looked around at the pieces spread out on the floor. “Yes.”
“Good.” Kaden laughed. “Want to go swimming?”
“Okay.” He’d enjoyed it last time.
“I have a spare pair of trunks.”
“Does this place have a wave machine?”
“No, but the pool is outdoors, which is different. Bus or walk?”
“Let’s walk.”
Kaden tucked Malik’s keys into his inside pocket and they set off.