TWENTY TWO
The words hung between them, and John just stared. For a moment, he was even angry, not with Brett, but with his own subconscious for revealing that this was obviously a dream. Maybe he had drifted off to sleep, and his anxiety about the baby being born had led to his sleep being uneasy.
It just wasn’t fair of his own mind to do this to him. To tease him with everything he wanted, and knew that he couldn’t have.
But then he looked into Brett’s eyes, and he knew that it wasn’t a dream.
“You love me?” John echoed, stunned, utterly amazed, because he not only heard the words but he saw them echoed in those earnest eyes. No matter how much he looked up into them, searching them for a joke, he found nothing but emotion—nothing but the love that John, in all honesty, had never expected to find.
“Yes. I love you,” Brett informed him, his hand still on John’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “And I want to be in your life. Whatever that means. If you want me around to help you raise the baby, I’ll be around. I’ll be your friend if you decide to be with a woman because it’s better than not having you at all.”
John’s head was spinning, trying to make sense of everything that Brett was saying, but he just couldn’t do it.
“Wait, a woman? What woman?” John demanded.
“I thought Sidney, at first. Or maybe this Madison who is going to have your baby.”
“Sidney? That girl you work with?” John was still struggling a little bit, but one thing he knew was that he didn’t want Brett to think that any woman had a chance. Or any man, for that matter. So he wrapped his arms around Brett’s waist and pulled him down onto his lap, hugging him tightly. In that one moment, somehow, everything was right again. Everything would work out.
Brett nodded but didn’t comment, simply wrapping his arms around John’s shoulders, clinging to him like his life depended on it. Brett was shaking a little, but maybe that was okay because so was John.
“I had a good reason for talking to Sidney. Something I want to show you later,” John admitted, not quite willing to tip his hand yet, not sure how ridiculous his plan even was. “And Madison, baby, she doesn’t want to date me. I’m nothing but a mistake that she made while drunk one night. She’s a cool girl, and I hope she does choose to be in the baby’s life, but there’s no chance of us getting together.”
And it was true. Madison was young, way too young for John, and she was focused on her school, on building her career.
“Oh,” Brett murmured, somewhat muffled by how his head was now firmly lodged against John’s shoulder, buried in it. And it was only then that it even occurred to John to wonder where the shame was. He was sitting in a place where people could see him, with his arms around the man on his lap, and he didn’t even care that people might judge him for it.
“You idiot,” John murmured affectionately. “I couldn’t be with anyone else, anyway. Not Sidney, not Madison, no one.” He took a deep breath, and because Brett had said it first, he found that the words came out pretty easily, actually. “Not when I’m in love with you.”
Nor did he just intend to say the words. Talk, as the old saying went, was cheap. He would show him, not just now but every day of his life, for as long as Brett put up with it. So he hooked his finger under Brett’s chin, raised his head, and kissed him right there in front of God and the nurse who was scurrying by and anyone else who cared to watch.
The kiss was not about sex. There was always heat between them, always passion, and that lingered in the background, but the background was where it stayed. This kiss was about affection, and commitment, and love—all of the things which John had been so sure that he didn’t want that he had tried to tell himself over and over again that he didn’t want them.
“So you’ll let me and the baby stay?” John finally murmured, when the long, complicated kiss came to a natural end. “I think I can do it by myself if I have to, but I really don’t want to.”
Brett smiled, and the uncertainty which had been blurring his features and turning him grim melted away all at once.
“Yes. I’ll help you.” Brett stroked lightly over John’s cheek, fingers rasping over the stubble there just a little. “As long as you can forgive me for being such an idiot. I thought I was going to lose you and I couldn’t stand it.”
“It seems to me,” John murmured, his hands resting on the sweet curve at the base of Brett’s spine, just above the tempting swell of that gorgeous ass, “That we’ve both been idiots.”
Brett actually grinned at that, that real, beautiful, sincere grin that seemed to burst out of him like a beacon of light from a lighthouse, and which spread warmth and brightness to every corner of John’s heart and soul.
“Maybe.” Brett paused for a moment and then tilted his head at John. “So what’s going on with Madison and the baby?”
There was no hesitation to the way he asked this. No trace of that negative influence, which John now recognized must have been jealousy, which had been tainting the clear blue surface of those lovely eyes. It was this which made John really, truly realize that he wasn’t alone in this, that Brett was going to be here to help him, that all of the unpleasantness which had happened between them had flowed away as smoothly as the proverbial water under the bridge.
“I don’t know. No one will tell me,” John admitted, and he knew that his frustration was showing through in his voice. “They kicked me out. I don’t think things are going very well in there, but the doctor said that he would tell me when there was something to tell.”
“Okay. All we can do is wait, then,” Brett told him, and John sighed and nodded. Waiting was a special sort of hell at the moment, but the truth was, it was a little bit better with Brett there by his side.
Maybe better than he had thought because John only meant to rest his head against Brett’s shoulder for a moment. He fell asleep. He didn’t realize it until he woke up, still against Brett’s shoulder, his body cramped from trying to rest in the small chair, hunched over so that he could rest against the much tinier man’s shoulder.
“John, sweetheart,” Brett murmured, and for a moment, John felt like he must still be sleeping because in the waking world Brett did not call him by affectionate pet names. But Brett was shaking him awake, and John straightened up, wincing as his cramped muscles protested, then slowly, painfully started to unknot.
“Mmph?” John asked, highly coherent, and he felt the sweet, soft press of Brett’s lips against his cheek, which helped him rouse a little more. Blearily, he opened his eyes fully, to see the doctor from before standing in front of them, looking exhausted, but slightly amused, and much happier than before. There was no blur of worry in his eyes.
“Sorry to wake you.” Brett was stretching, too, and John realized that his muscles must be sore and cramped, too. Brett had stayed still, just so that John could rest, and he hadn’t even realized that it was possible to adore this man more than he already did, but he did. “I made him wait until you were awake to tell us.”
