CHAPTER 25: GONE

CHAPTER 25: GONE

James cleared his entire schedule. He told me at breakfast, setting his phone face down on the table as if it were something dangerous.

"No meetings and no calls. Arthur will handle anything urgent." He reached for his tea. "Today we do whatever you want."

"Whatever I want?"

"Within reason. You're supposed to be resting."

I tried to remember the last time anyone had asked me what I wanted. I picked the market on the east side because Charles used to take me there when we were students. James had never been. He walked through the stalls in jeans and an old grey sweater with his sleeves pushed up and his hands stuffed in his pockets, a Prime Alpha surrounded by crates of oranges, and a woman selling dumplings called him sir three times before she asked if he was lost.

I laughed until I had to hold the edge of her stall.

We ate dumplings from paper boxes standing in the cold. We ate sugared nuts and a pastry that fell apart in James's hands. In the afternoon we found a small arcade at the end of the pier and I made him play a racing game. He lost four times in a row and took it badly. By the fifth he had stopped pretending to be dignified and was leaning into the wheel and swearing at the screen.

"You're enjoying this," he said when I could not stop laughing.

"I'm enjoying you."

He looked at me for a moment and his face went soft in a way I wanted to keep. Then he kissed me in the middle of the arcade with a child watching from the next machine.

That evening we stayed home. James changed into a worn T-shirt and soft trousers and we built a nest of blankets on the sofa and ordered far too much food. I put on a BL drama on N*****x called 10 Dance, and James, who had never watched one, settled in with the grave expression of a man preparing for a board meeting. I had not laughed that hard in years. He kept pausing it to ask me questions I could not answer because I was laughing too much. At one point he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder and woke up claiming he had seen everything.

"What happened in the last scene?" I asked.

"Something very moving."

"You're lying."

"I was moved by your company." He pulled me closer. "Come to bed."

What followed was slow and careful. James treated me as if I were made of glass and I kept telling him I was not. He kissed me like a man learning something by heart and I held onto him and tried not to think about the morning. Afterwards we lay tangled in the dark, his hand resting on my stomach, and neither of us spoke for a long while.

"Do you know what?" James said at last. His voice was quiet. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me in all the years I've been alive. You and Junior. You're the best thing I have."

I turned my head. "Who is Junior?"

Even in the dark I could tell he was embarrassed. "It's the name I picked for the baby. I've been calling him that in my head for weeks. You may not like it, so I'll let you choose when he's born." He cleared his throat. "Whatever you pick, I'll love it."

My throat closed. I pressed my face against his chest so he would not see it.

It was almost midnight. I could hear his heartbeat under my ear and the clock in the hall counting out the last of the day.

"James," I whispered. "I love you."

He went completely still. Then his arms tightened around me.

"I love you too," he said into my hair. "I love you so much it frightens me."

I did not answer. I lay awake until the window turned grey, memorizing the rise and fall of his breathing, and when I was sure he was deeply asleep I slid out from under his arm.

I put the key fob on the pillow where my head had been. Beside it I laid a folded note. My phone stayed on the nightstand with the screen dark.

I dressed in the bathroom with the door shut. At the door to the hall I stopped and looked back once. James slept with one hand open on the sheet where I had been.

I went down the back stairs and out through the servants' entrance. Two streets away a van waited with its engine running and Charles's face pale behind the glass.

I climbed in without a word. He drove.

James

James woke reaching for him.

The sheet was cold. He lay still for a moment with his eyes closed, telling himself Soren had gone downstairs for water. Then he opened them and saw the key fob on the pillow and the folded paper beside it.

He read the note standing at the window.

James. I am leaving by my own choice. Please don't look for me. You said the day I wanted it back it would be yours. I don't want it back. Don't buy me back. Thank you for everything. I meant what I said last night. Soren.

He read it twice and then a third time and the words did not change.

"No," he said to the empty room.

He picked up the phone from the nightstand and dialed Soren's number out of habit. A buzz rattled the wood beside his hand. Soren's phone lay on its back with the screen lighting up James's name.

He had left it on purpose. James stared at it and felt something cold open in his chest.

He searched the house room by room. He searched the gardens and the garage and the back lawn. He pulled the security captain out of bed and demanded the night logs.

"The night shift was reduced, sir," the captain said, pale. "Mr Arthur changed the rotation. He said it was routine."

"Where is Mr Arthur?"

"On his way, sir."

James drove to the bakery himself. A sign hung in the window. Closed for renovations. The back door was locked and the ovens were cold. No one answered when he pounded on the wood.

By evening the estate was full of men with phones. Arthur arrived when the light was going and stood at the edge of the study with his hands folded.

"We have checked the airports and the stations," Arthur said gently. "The hospitals, the hotels, and every address he has used. We still haven't found him, sir."

"Keep looking."

"Of course." Arthur hesitated. "But sir, the note was in his own hand. He left his phone and he left the key. He left by choice."

"He told me he loved me." James's voice cracked on the words. "Last night. He said it to me."

Arthur lowered his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir."

When the door closed behind him James sat down on the edge of the bed. The room smelled faintly of light rain. He pressed his hand against the watch on his wrist, the one Soren had given him with a velvet box and a silk tie and a quiet thank you for the car. He held it against his face.

And James cried the way he had not cried since he was a boy, without a sound, with the watch pressed to his lips, until the light was gone.