by Anna Martin
He flopped over onto his back and let out a deep sigh.
“Fuck.”
And yet….
And yet.
He made Leo laugh. He had a heart of gold and was so generous with his time and his wealth. There was something about his skill and passion for his business that was not just inspiring, but oddly arousing too. He was hot. That mattered.
For a while there, Leo thought he was breaking through some of those barriers that Jackson had put up the very first time Leo had met him. Sometimes it felt like Leo’s whole focus was battering at those walls, throwing all his effort at trying to get through. Even in Jackson’s most exposed moments, there was still something stopping Leo from reaching him.
And it was exhausting. Leo was a patient man; he worked with children, sometimes children who were so fucking mad at the world, and he drew them out and helped them express themselves. That was what he loved about his job. He could play a long game, work toward a goal that might not be immediately achievable.
Playing the game Jackson’s way had broken him down, though, in ways Leo didn’t really think about at the time. Now he was left with the broken pieces of his heart and his pride, with no idea on how he was going to rebuild either.
On Tuesday he got up, shaved, washed his hair, and went into work.
The weather was suitably gray and miserable, the rain drizzling and hanging in the air, sticking to Leo’s eyelashes as he dashed from the parking lot into the hospital.
He was early, his attempt to make up for missing the previous day. Leo wasn’t important enough to have his own office. Neither was his mentor, so they shared a common office with a few other services. Fiona hadn’t arrived yet, so Leo dumped his stuff in his locker and went to log on to one of the hot-desk computers.
For the next hour, he answered emails and updated his plans and charts and the notes he kept for each of his classes. The children on his caseload each had their own file too, but those he updated after each session.
“Morning,” Fiona said, startling Leo away from his spreadsheet.
“Morning.”
“Are you feeling better today?”
She was referring to the nonexistent stomach bug that had theoretically plagued him the day before.
“Much better, thank you. I guess it was just one of those twenty-four-hour things.”
Fiona nodded sagely. “It happens, when you work with kids. Sometimes you pick up the weirdest illnesses.”
Leo didn’t want to elaborate on the lie, so he hummed in a noncommittal way, and Fiona dropped the subject.
During the week, Leo had three classes that he ran, with Fiona sitting in to supervise, though he led each session. One was a composition class for older kids who wanted to learn about songwriting. Another was for younger kids, or children with disabilities that meant they had limited communication skills. That was more about singing and signing, giving parents a chance to learn different ways to communicate with their children. The third was a drop-in session for anyone who was around. Leo liked that one best; it gave him the opportunity to improvise and build the class around whoever happened to turn up.
“Rain” seemed to be a good subject for the session. It matched both the weather and Leo’s mood perfectly.
As with all of the drop-in sessions, the class had a whole range of ages and abilities. One eight-year-old girl with a cast on her leg looked less than impressed at being seated next to a younger boy who had physical and learning disabilities. He sat next to a nonverbal four-year-old and two five-year-old girls to round off the group. All of the kids except the eight-year-old had an adult partner with them, a nice mix of parents and caregivers.
When he asked the group if they knew any songs about rain, he was not expecting “Purple Rain” to come up as a suggestion.
“Fantastic,” Leo laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”
He knew some ASL, not enough to hold a full conversation with a deaf or hard-of-hearing person, but enough to sign along to most children’s songs. The signs for purple and rain fit in really well as actions to the song, so after he’d taught the group the signs, he figured out the chords on his guitar, and they sang it together.
After that he found rainmakers from the music box. His sessions were a mix of music and sign language, singing or vocalizing, giving the children a chance to explore their surroundings through music. Sometimes Leo worked to a theme; other times his plans went to hell and he had to think on the spot, adapt to the mood of the group, and lead them back to a good place.
Rain turned out to be a good topic. He felt the frustration pouring off the little girl with her broken leg in a cast—the opportunity to vent with maracas was clearly something that benefited her.
He finished the session like always: first giving each child the chance to say what they liked and didn’t like, then bringing them together with a thank-you song.
“You did well,” Fiona told him as the kids started getting ready to leave. “That was a challenging group.”
“Thanks,” Leo said. “I wasn’t sure if they were going to work at first.”
One of the parents wanted to debrief, so Fiona stepped away to talk to the suits who had appeared in the doorway during the last song. Leo was used to different people looking in—his sessions often got noisy and drew attention. That didn’t mean he thought it was okay for people to stare, though.
“There’s a lady who wants to talk to you,” Fiona said in low tones as Leo packed up the instruments from the class and waved goodbye to the last few parents and kids. “She’s on the board.”
Leo nodded. He knew how things worked: his position at the hospital was partially funded by a charity. That meant he had to play nice and schmooze from time to time. It also meant the charity board felt they could swan in and out of his sessions as they pleased… but that was an argument for another time.
The well-dressed lady was talking to a large man Leo recognized from around the hospital. Neither of them had deigned to talk to Leo before, though.
“Leo, this is Mr. Grimes and Mrs. Lewis, from the charity board.”
The name would have been enough, but her soft smile and hazel eyes were a siren. She was Jackson’s mom. Leo forced a smile onto his face as he shook both their hands.
“Pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, Mr. Gallagher. I hope you don’t mind us dropping in on your session.”
“Not at all,” he lied easily. His sessions weren’t a fish bowl, his kids not specimens to be studied. He hated people coming by uninvited. “Thank you for coming.”
The man, Mr. Grimes, took over the conversation, picking up on Leo’s relationship with the kids and how he interacted with each of them individually, even though it was a group session. Leo half listened, half studied Mrs. Lewis.
She couldn’t know. She was watching Leo with calm interest, her features schooled into a mask of pleasantry. If Jackson had told her about his mate, she didn’t know it was Leo.
Leo attempted to mirror her expression, nodding politely and answering her questions as best he could. But his heart was hammering in his chest, his stomach rolling, and his palms sweaty. He hadn’t felt this nervous since the first time he met Jackson.
“Are you okay, Mr. Gallagher?” she asked. Of course, she was a werewolf. She picked up on those tiny cues that humans wouldn’t notice.
“I am, thank you. Still recovering from a little stomach bug.”
“Oh, how horrible. I hope you feel better soon.”
When they were done, Leo slipped away with more pleasantries and promises to come back soon, then dashed from the recreation room to the nearest bathroom and threw his guts up. It took a few minutes for him to get back in control, sitting on the closed toilet seat with his head between his knees.
He washed his face and hands and tried to look normal as he made his way back to the office.
“You okay?” Fiona demanded when Leo walked in. “You didn’t look so good back there.”
“
I guess I’m not all the way better after yesterday.”
His faux-illness was a half-decent cover. Fiona looked sympathetic. “Do you want to take the rest of the day off?”
“No,” he said emphatically. Going home now would only make things worse. He needed to power through. “I’ll be fine, just felt a bit queasy there for a second.”
“Okay. But if you’re sick, you should really go home. You don’t want to pass anything on to the kids.”
“I’m not going onto the wards today,” he said, hoping to reassure her. “I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t expect Fiona to actually enforce that statement, but she surprised him with a huge pile of reports that needed to be written for each child on his caseload. Leo got the impression she’d been saving them for when he needed the downtime. Even though the thought of a mountain of paperwork was almost as nauseating as meeting Jackson’s mother had been, he appreciated the distraction.
For the rest of the day, Leo let himself get lost in memories of the kids he worked with and how music therapy was impacting each of them as individuals. Some of them were long-term inpatients who would keep seeing Leo for as long as they were admitted. Others were day patients, or children who stopped in to one of his planned sessions around their chemotherapy. Each of them had their own story, and his work would always impact them in unique ways. That was part of what he loved about his job.
At the end of the day, it was still raining. Leo packed up his stuff, waved goodbye to Fiona, and headed home. He’d barely eaten for most of the day, but his stomach wasn’t gnawing with hunger like it usually did when he skipped a meal.
Mitch was out when Leo arrived home, which was a blessed relief. Leo took a shower, grabbed some water from the fridge, then locked himself in his room.
And turned Jennifer Hudson back on.
Chapter Fifteen
CHRISTMAS HIT him like a tinsel-covered brick to the face—harsh, painful, and unwelcome. Jackson didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it, since he was shipping orders up until only a few days before the big day itself. His parents were expecting him, like they did every year, and he wouldn’t have the excuse of needing to tend to his beers to escape early. That didn’t work anymore, not since his mom did her own research and figured out that he didn’t actually need to babysit them twenty-four seven.
Jackson agreed to stay with his parents for two weeks, if only because his mother was willing to feed him almost constantly and his father disappeared off into his workshop, content to let Jackson and Brandon be coddled while he got some work done. Plus, Brandon had taken time off work to be home for the holidays, and Jackson wanted to catch up with him.
Halfway through the visit, Jackson took his brother to his house, mostly to show him around and let him pick a few beers to take back to California with him.
“You’ve been quiet,” Brandon commented as he wandered through the stock room.
Jackson hummed. “Been busy.”
He’d been thinking a lot about what Valerie had told him—that Brandon was asexual. He’d done his research on that too, trying to understand what made his brother that way.
“You’ve spent the past four days on the sofa getting fat and letting Mom wait on you hand and foot. Hardly busy.”
“I’ve been working,” Jackson protested. It was almost true. He’d brought his laptop home with him, meaning he could monitor sales through the website and respond to any emails. There hadn’t been many. Everyone else, it seemed, was enjoying the holiday.
Brandon pulled a few bottles of IPA from the rack and set them to one side, then picked a bottle from the next row.
“You don’t want that,” Jackson said, taking the beer Brandon was studying out of his hand.
“I don’t?”
“No. I’ve got a new Stout you should try instead. It’s more like dessert than beer. It tastes almost like treacle.”
“That does sound like something I want,” he said, scratching at his beard.
Even though they were brothers, Jackson and Brandon looked nothing alike. Brandon took after their dad—taller, broader, and darker hair. These days he wore a beard too. San Francisco did that to a guy. When they were younger, Jackson was always the more middle-of-the-road student. Valerie was the dreamer, and Brandon was the intellectual. It hadn’t surprised Jackson when Brandon went off to UCLA to study math and later got a job that he couldn’t really explain in layman’s terms, though Jackson thought it might have something to do with manipulating stock markets.
“You’re never going to make any money if you keep giving away all your product,” Brandon said, even as he selected another beer.
“I’m cultivating loyal customers.”
“Is that what you call it these days?”
“It’s a solid business decision.”
Brandon laughed at that. “Sure it is.”
Jackson watched him for a while as his brother slowly walked up and down the aisles in the stock room. This was as close as he came to a storefront, and he treated the space with due respect. His dad had outfitted most of the room, from the dark-paneled boxes that housed the beers to the bigger crates and the little placards that held Jackson’s handwritten notes on each beer. With the cobbled stone floor and dim lighting, this was the perfect atmosphere for beer. According to Jackson’s sensibilities, anyway.
“Can I ask you something personal?” Jackson asked.
“Probably.”
“Valerie told me you’re asexual.”
“I told you that myself,” Brandon said mildly. He paused at the end of an aisle and looked back at Jackson. “It’s not a secret.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Apparently I didn’t really get it the first time round.”
“I didn’t think you had, but I wasn’t about to give you a pop quiz.”
Jackson huffed a laugh. “So… what does it mean in terms of your soul mate? Do you even have one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve never found them, so I can’t really say for sure.”
“Oh. Did you know Dad found his soul mate?”
Brandon turned back again, wide-eyed and horrified. “No.”
Jackson recounted the story quickly, wanting to ease his brother’s obvious concern for their parents’ marriage.
“I was just wondering,” Jackson continued. “Because Dad obviously walked away from his soul mate. He wasn’t even curious. And you’re not attracted to people, right? Like, not sexually, anyway. Valerie and Mom haven’t found their mates either.”
“And you?” Brandon prompted gently.
“Mine’s a man,” he said, feeling an overwhelming rush of shame come over him.
“Ah.”
Brandon walked over to the little antique desk in the corner of the stock room and grabbed a bottle opener from the drawer. A moment later, he popped the lid from one of the bottles in his selection and handed it to Jackson, then did the same for himself.
“Not supposed to drink these from the bottle,” Jackson muttered.
“Cheers,” Brandon said, clinking the bottles together and ignoring Jackson entirely.
They drank in silence for a minute, Jackson considering how well the temperature was regulated in here without him having to do a damn thing about it, and trying very hard not to think about Leo.
“I have wondered,” Brandon said after a while, “about my soul mate. Probably not Valerie levels of wondering, but I do think about it. I guess I came to the conclusion that I might have a platonic soul mate out there somewhere.”
“You believe in platonic soul mates? Valerie doesn’t.”
Brandon nodded. “I think so. I like that more research is being done now, trying to find out more about the soul mate phenomenon. One of the theories I read was that your soul mate fixes something within you. Something that you’re lacking. And the reason why some people don’t have a soul mate is because they’re complete as they are.”
“You really think there’s perf
ect werewolves out there?”
“I know—” Brandon laughed. “—it’s a stretch. I like the idea, though. I’d still like to find someone to share my life with and have a family with, even if we don’t have a sexual relationship.”
“You want a family?”
“Sure.” Brandon shrugged. “Just because I don’t want sex doesn’t mean I don’t want kids.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s generally how babies get here,” Jackson joked, earning him a shove.
“Plenty of kids out there who need adopting.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
“If your mate is a man, though, and you’re not interested in men….”
“I’m not,” Jackson supplied for him.
“Then I wonder if I’ll end up with someone and have to have some very awkward conversations with them.” He lifted the bottle of beer to read the label. “This is good, by the way. The asexual dating scene isn’t all that roaring, despite living where I do.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I expect so, yeah.”
“I have another question.”
“Go on,” Brandon said, clearly amused.
“You’re not sexually attracted to anyone.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Fuck off. Are you romantically attracted to anyone?”
“Mostly women. Though I wouldn’t rule out a nonsexual romantic relationship with a man. The opportunity never came up, though. You seem very confident in your own sexuality.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jackson snapped.
“You’ve never even been curious? I mean, I was curious a lot when I was a teenager. About all sorts of things. Got into a hell of a lot of interesting situations while I tried to find something, or someone, that would turn me on.”
“I’m not sure I ever needed to hear you say that.”
Brandon laughed. “It’s funny. I’m part of a forum for asexual people, and a few of them have said the same as me. Before I came to the conclusion that asexual is the best label for me, I explored plenty of other options.” He shrugged. “I wanted to know I was normal according to someone’s standards. Gay stuff, BDSM stuff—a lot of that, actually, it’s a very interesting subculture—transgender people, all sorts.”
