Chapter 15 #2
“Are you sure there’s nothing else I can get for you?” Jensen would have carried Daniel from room to room if he had been allowed. Of course, he didn’t have the muscle required to lift even Daniel’s slight frame, but he would have figured something out.
“Sweetheart, you’re going to give me a complex. How am I supposed to go back to my day-to-day if you keep trying to spoil me like this?”
Jensen knew it was a rhetorical question, a sort of tease, by Daniel’s flippant tone.
But looking at his messy hair and corner-creased eyes, Jensen couldn’t help but take it seriously.
With the taste of tart raspberry jam clinging to his tongue, the warmth of Daniel’s hand so casually resting on his thigh, and the soft flash of white teeth under plush pink lips, Jensen knew with every fiber of his being that he could not go back to his everyday life.
Things had changed for him, and for once the prospect of more change didn’t seem daunting.
Things had shifted, and he would fight to keep them in their altered state. “What if you didn’t go back?”
Daniel’s eyebrow lifted, and he turned in the cedar dining chair to face Jensen fully. “What do you mean?”
He licked his dry lips, hoping he wasn’t going to ruin things further. A bout of food poisoning could be forgiven, but Jensen might have crossed the line. “After you fell asleep last night, I made a few phone calls, and—”
“Jensen.” His mother’s voice cut him off and almost covered the sound of the front door opening. “Where’s this man of yours? Is he still sick? I brought food.”
Daniel looked at Jensen, eyes comically wide. “Your parents are here?” He squeaked and started patting at his hair with one hand and trying to straighten up the unwrinkled shirt he wore. “Shit, what do I do?”
Jensen opened his mouth to reassure him he didn’t have to do anything.
Daniel was great just the way he was, and his parents would love him even if he sat there bald and naked.
Though, Jensen didn’t want their first meeting to go that way.
Or any of their meetings. He would need to change the locks to his house or institute a visitation schedule to make sure his parents didn’t catch them in a compromising position.
God, even the mere thought of his mother walking in on them frotting in the living room the day before had the color draining from his cheeks.
“Did you take care of—oh!” Angela cut herself off when she entered the kitchen and saw the two of them standing up for her arrival.
“Oh! Hello, I’m Jensen’s mother. Please call me Angela or Angie.
Aren’t you handsome? Much better looking than Ruben—he’s a hairdresser at the salon I go to, and I’ve been trying to set Jensen and him up for ages.
He always said no, and I thought it was because he was being stubborn, but now I see it’s because he was holding out for someone more attractive. Not that my Jensen is shallow.”
“Mom,” he cut in, “can I take those dishes from you?”
“Oh yes.” She handed over the stacked food containers weighing down her hands. “Isn’t he the sweetest? Did he tell you he wrote a book and has received many awards for his work?”
“Let the boy breathe, Angie.” Jensen’s father walked into the room, carrying a wicker basket covered with a red, checkered cloth in one hand. “How you doing? I’m Jensen’s father, Graham.”
Daniel cleared his throat and stood, offering his hand. He still looked like a deer in headlights, but his momentary paralysis had apparently dispersed. “It’s good to meet you, sir.”
Everyone in the kitchen stared at him, the space utterly silent until Graham chuckled and gripped his outstretched hand. “There’s no need for that kind of language here, son. We’re all family.”
Daniel looked back at Jensen, uneasiness evident in his raised shoulders and tense lips.
Jensen had seen that same look in the mirror so many times that his stomach turned on instinct.
Setting the glass containers he was still holding down onto the counter, he slid next to Daniel and tugged him to his side in a show of support.
The effect was instantaneous: Daniel let out a breath, and his tense muscles relaxed.
Jensen’s heart kicked up, and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face if he tried.
In the weeks they’d known each other, Daniel had become his safe place.
When the world was too overwhelming, Daniel could quiet his racing mind.
And Jensen could apparently do the same for Daniel.
He was prouder of this development than any of the accolades he’d earned at work.
“Maybe we could all sit down and ease up a little,” he said with a gesture to the table that took up half the room.
“Of course,” his mom said, taking a seat and pulling his dad down next to her. “I’m just so happy to finally meet you. Jensen has been as closed off as a bank vault with information about you.”
“A bank vault is opened multiple times a day,” his dad remarked, his attention on unwrapping the basket and pulling out a piece of fluffy white bread.
“Worse than a bank vault, then. So, tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? Do you have any siblings? When do you plan on moving here?”
“Mom!”
“What? It’s a valid question, honey. You two can’t keep up the long-distance relationship forever. I know a great moving company. And of course, your father and I will help, won’t we, Graham?”
His father grunted his agreement.
“I, well, we haven’t,” Daniel stammered, his face a splotchy crimson.
“I was trying to have this conversation before you two barged in, unannounced.” After half-heartedly glaring at his parents for their intrusion, Jensen turned his attention to Daniel and took his hand.
It wasn’t ideal to have this conversation with an audience, but at least if Daniel broke up with him for overstepping, he’d have someone to hold him while he cried.
“When you fell asleep last night, I called Larsson and a real estate agency. I’m trying to secure employment and housing in Sevier. ”
“What?” Daniel and Angela asked in unison with very different inflections in their voices.
Jensen squirmed in his seat and swept his thumb across the back of Daniel’s hand. “As you all know, I’ve just completed a short consulting job with a firm in Sevier. Yesterday, I left a message with the man I was collaborating with officially expressing my desire to work for him full-time.”
Daniel gently touched Jensen’s arms with his fingertips, his expression hard to read. “I didn’t know you did that.”
“I know,” Jensen said, biting his lip. “I should have told you, but you were so tired. It’s not guaranteed or anything; I’ll have to wait until Larsson calls me back. But if that doesn’t work out, I could find something else.”
An amazed look passed in Daniel’s glassy eyes, his lips parted.
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.
Jensen could feel how his pulse thumped steadily in his wrist. Jensen could somehow sense the waves of premature love radiating off him.
Even though his parents were across from them, it felt like they were the only two people in the room, sharing this moment.
To Jensen, they were the only two people in the universe.
Maybe he should have told Daniel about his intentions, but he hadn’t really thought it through before he was dialing Larsson’s number.
All it had taken was seeing Daniel snuggled into his bed, his skin still a bit pale and clammy, for Jensen to decide the only future he was interested in was with Daniel at the center of it.
He could find a new house, a new job, a new everything, but he couldn’t find another Daniel.
He didn’t want to. Long before it was rational, his soul had decided they were meant to be together, and Jensen wasn’t going to let geography get in the way of that.
He had let too many things just happen to him and deter him from living his dreams. There was no way he was going to allow that to happen to his relationship with Daniel. It was too precious to him.
“You want to leave us?” Angela cut in, breaking the tender moment and breathing cold air into their pocket of warmth.
“You have to let the boy live his life,” Graham said, trying to placate her.
“But that’s halfway across the country. We wouldn’t even be in the same time zone. You’re going to abandon your mother?”
“Mom, I’m thirty-four years old.”
She ignored him. “We can make this work. I can get transferred to the city. There are hospitals there, right? There’s got to be.
And you can retire soon, right, Graham? We could sell the house and downsize.
Finally get away from that cursed garden.
” Angie sat up straight and slapped a hand on her thigh.
“My mother is too old to move across the country and would have to stay here. Okay, yes. This is going to be great. When are we moving?”
“You’d move for me?” Daniel’s quiet question drew Jensen’s attention back to him.
“I’m finding there’s an infinitesimally small number of things I wouldn’t do for you.”
The smile Daniel gave him could have powered every home in California for years.