CHAPTER SIX

BRAND FORSYTHE DID NOT LIKE feeling helpless.

But that was how he felt, as he stood against the wall in an unobtrusive place and watched as the elder Master Harrington was bundled into a wheelchair by attentive nurses. The man was a fragile bundle of sticks, clearly exhausted, drowsing and listing in his chair. Even Brand was worn out; it was almost dawn, after a long night of extensive testing, examinations, monitoring, and negotiating with the facility staff and doctors. Were the patient anyone else but one of the richest men in New York, the elder Harrington likely would have been told to go to bed and wait until morning and normal hours.

But Calvin Harrington wanted to leave, despite his frail and weakened state—and so Calvin Harrington intended to leave, even with his son watching him with worried eyes and fretting his hands, clearly torn between urging his father back into bed and wanting to get him out of this place.

Frankly, Brand doubted the wisdom of this. The elder Harrington looked as if he would collapse again at any moment, and his sudden return to consciousness didn’t necessarily indicate he was actually healthy, or his prognosis was any better.

But it wasn’t Brand’s place to say. Nor was he here to attend to Harrington the elder.

His concern was Harrington the younger, and at the moment Ashton looked as if he was on the verge of collapse himself. Hollows of exhaustion darkened his eyes, his pale, gold-tinged skin turned so ashen his pink mouth stood out like a bruise, his posture heavy and slumped. He’d tossed his coat off hours ago, leaving him pacing in his trim, well-fitted waistcoat, an elegant and graceful figure despite his agitated tension. More than once he’d nearly started arguments with the doctors, with his father, with Brand, before snapping his mouth shut and subsiding to restless silence full of simmering, muted glances. Resentment.

If his young Master didn’t collapse, Brand thought, he might well explode.

And there was nothing Brand could do about it—and he hated it.

Ash was too keyed up, not to mention focused on his father; the one time Brand had attempted to soothe and calm him, Ash had turned on him with a snarl and pulled away in a way that shouldn’t hurt as much as it did. Brand…did not feel right, at the moment. Something inside him felt strange and shaken, and it was tied directly to the hot-eyed, impetuous young man currently hovering over his father’s wheelchair while the nurses packed Calvin Harrington’s suitcase.

Brand was not accustomed to talking about himself, he thought. His life had been spent with the same family; his sister was still head housekeeper at the Newcomb estate in Liverpool. When one served with the same family since childhood, there was little need to disclose details that everyone knew as intimately as their own entangled life stories. And Brand…Brand was not prone to relationships. Not when few relationships could survive the level of service and attentive dedication required of a valet. The few dalliances he engaged in to explore physical urges and learn his own desires? Meaningless. They required no personal disclosure, no attachment, no loyalty.

They were nothing against the devotion he saved for his Masters, young and old alike.

And so Brand had never had occasion to speak of himself this way. To tell another his life, his thoughts, his feelings, and have them look up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes that seemed to need those bits of himself, vouchsafed and precious, to offer some anchor point in an unmoored world. He didn’t think Ashton would ever understood how shaken it had left Brand, to speak of such things and have his young Master lay his head to his shoulder and simply, quietly take them into himself.

He didn’t think Ashton understood many things, but Brand doubted the wisdom of telling him. Not when, at the moment, if he chose to act…he might do something reckless.

Like pick Ashton up in his arms right here, right now, in front of his father and the nurses alike—and carry him from this place and home, so that Brand could force him to rest.

It was setting his teeth on edge, watching Ash reel with exhaustion and be able to do nothing about it. To leave Ashton’s needs unattended, to stand here a stiff and useless statue, was anathema to Brand’s every existence. And if this took much longer, he didn’t know if he would be able to control himself.

Ash glanced up from watching the nurses and caught Brand’s eye, before offering a wan smile and looking away again. Brand grit his teeth, hands slowly clenching into fists behind his back.

Ten more minutes, and he was putting an end to this whether Calvin Harrington was ready to depart or not.

He closed his eyes, taking a slow, measured breath and attempting to settle the snarling agitation under his skin. This…wasn’t like him. He was being irrational. Unreasonable. Possessive. He wasn’t even sure why, yet young Master Ashton…

There was something in Ashton. A quiet and aching need, a wordless plea that seemed to have gone unanswered for years. A question, searching in those dark blue eyes, and raising a buried and hungry thing inside Brand that whispered an answer.

Even after he had told Ashton exactly what it meant to him to serve…no, he didn’t think the young Master understood.

Brand was not whole unless he was shepherd to a lamb, and right now every soft and tender and vulnerable thing about Ashton Harrington was begging for Brand to protect him, possess him, do for him so that he might never need do for himself again. That hungry thing inside Brand needed someone to depend on him. He’d never wholly understood it—if it was about care or about control or about something else.

He only knew that it roused with a fierce and demanding need to young Master Ashton, in ways it had never roused to anyone else.

“There,” the nurse said, and snapped the suitcase closed. Her smile was skeptical, her voice dubious, but she remained pleasant and polite, expression almost frozen. “All ready. Your checkout paperwork is finished, Mr. Harrington, so you’re free to go. We’ll forward your records of care here to your regular physician.”

Calvin Harrington only made a tired sound, nodding forward in his chair. Brand stepped forward without thinking to take the handles of the wheelchair, but Ash shoved his body in the way with a fierce look.

“I’ve got it,” he hissed, and took the handles to ease the wheelchair forward.

Brand inclined in a bow. “As my young Master wishes,” he said, and exchanged a nod with the nurse as he took the suitcase, instead.

As long as they were getting out of here and getting Ash home, he didn’t care.

They made a quiet procession, moving across the dew-dampened sidewalks in the chill predawn gloom, the sky that strange luminous shade of washed-out night that came when the stars had set but the sun was just beginning to whisper golden morning-song. Ash pushed the wheelchair almost too slow, as if he was afraid of pitching his father forward, but before long they were in the lot—where a sudden bright flash nearly blinded the night.

A camera.

Ash jerked, flinching; Calvin Harrington didn’t even respond. Brand hissed under his breath, positioning his body to shield the Harringtons as he pulled the back door of the Mercedes open.

“Get in,” he said, pressing his hand to the small of Ash’s back.

Ash balked. “But Dad—”

“I will handle your father,” Brand said, as another camera flash went off in the dark, from somewhere beyond the bushes ringing the main drive. “Get in.”

Ash watched him with doubtful eyes for one moment longer, then ducked into the car. Brand bent to carefully bundle Calvin Harrington into his arms, lifting him from the wheelchair and easing him as quickly as he could into the backseat without jostling him when he felt as though he were made of straw, thin and ready to snap. Harrington stirred enough to fix him with an irritable look, but seemed to understand the necessity when he kept his mouth shut and didn’t struggle as Brand buckled him in, then slammed the door shut.

A few more flashes came as Brand folded the wheelchair and stowed it in the boot along with the elder Harrington’s suitcase. He shut the boot, straightened, and flung a searching look toward the source of those bright bursts of light. He couldn’t make anyone out, but he knew they were there.

Bloody vultures.

He slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, and backed the Mercedes out of the drive. The drive back into the city was as silent as a funeral march, and when he glanced in the rear view mirror he found the elder Harrington asleep, Ash staring out the window with a brooding and vacant stare, the faint gold of sunrise washing him in the colors of whatever memories haunted his heavy brow.

It was nearly seven by the time Brand turned the Mercedes in at the estate and pulled it through the roundabout. An unfamiliar car was in the drive, a little blue Prius with a rental sticker on the bumper. He frowned, but busied himself with helping Calvin Harrington out of the car and into his wheelchair. The moment the elder Harrington was safely settled, Ash took the wheelchair again with possessive insistence.

Brand sighed, gathered the suitcase from the boot, and followed his young Master up the walk.

Yet before they reached the front door, it opened; a woman stepped out, small and plump and trim in a neat pencil skirt and stylish leather boots and a slouching cashmere sweater. Her graying black hair was swept up out of her amber face, but a few tendrils drifted across her brow, swaying with her rushed, pattering steps as she came tumbling down the steps and pulled Ashton into her arms.

“Ash,” she said softly, her accent making a lyrical sigh of his name.

Ashton went stiff, arms held out from his side, eyes wide; they darted to Brand as if pleading with him for help, before he finally creaked into motion and wrapped his arms awkwardly around the woman.

“…okaasan?” he croaked, while Calvin Harrington stirred, lifting his head, staring at the woman with haunted eyes.

“…Amiko?”

Ah. So this was the runaway mother who had made such headlines over a decade ago, when she’d publicly abandoned Calvin Harrington and her son to return home to Japan. Brand had been in the UK at the time, but the scandals of American new royalty tended to make even the gossip rags back in the old country; he’d thought little of it at the time, the stories sensationalized to make her sound quite terrible indeed. It was hard to see the salacious rumors in the warm, smiling woman who stood on the red stone cobbles and hugged her son so tightly.

It was easy to see much of her in Ash’s features, though, and in a certain softness to his mannerisms—but little else, as if her well-known departure had left him devoid of an entire half of his cultural heritage, his mannerisms and speech so entirely Western. Brand wondered if Ash ever felt the absence. If he ever felt disconnected from himself. If—

If perhaps Brand should stop fixating on his young Master, before the ache within him grew too overwhelming to bear.

If he were to be entirely honest with himself, it was disturbing. This sudden, sharp sense of need, attraction, possession. And no doubt, were his young Master to know of the dark and covetous thing rearing its head inside Brand…Ashton Harrington would be more than disturbed. He would be incensed, possibly even frightened, when such craving bordered on obsession.

And it made no sense.

Brand forced his mind back onto his responsibilities, and dutifully hung back, waiting until the Harringtons finished their conversation. Ashton’s mother pulled back enough to look at him, smiling and cupping his cheek.

“You look too much like your father when you make that face, little Ash,” Amiko said, then laughed. “Both of you, please close your mouths. And stop staring, you’re embarrassing me.” Her sharp black eyes suddenly snapped to Brand, curious and inquisitive. “Who is this?”

“Brand Forsythe, Ms. Harrington.” Brand dipped briefly, bowing his head. “Personal valet to the younger Master Harrington.”

Amiko answered with a similar bow, almost mocking him with the laughter in her eyes. “It’s a pleasure. Though it’s Miss Arakawa now.”

“Apologies for the indiscretion.”

“Amiko,” Calvin Harrington repeated, raw and desperate, staring at Amiko Arakawa like a man in the desert shown an oasis of water.

Amiko regarded Calvin Harrington thoughtfully, before something softened in her eyes—something Brand couldn’t quite read, before she sighed and rested her hands on her hips. “Don’t you start. You’re the one who let me go,” she said with fond exasperation—then nudged Ash out of the way and took the handles of the wheelchair. “Now come, I can already see you’re tiring yourself out.”

The elder Harrington craned back so that he never took his eyes from the pert little woman fussing over him, even as she wheeled him up the walk—and deftly tipped the wheelchair up the short front steps and into the house.

Leaving Brand and Ash alone, standing on the walk and staring after them.

“I…am not certain I understand what just took place,” Brand said.

Ash shook himself, running a hand through his hair and spiking it up in a tired thatch of black everywhere. “My parents have a really complicated relationship,” he said, drifting closer to Brand. His warmth was a thing like soft prickles, reaching out to touch Brand as he stopped, brushing almost arm to arm. “Dad still loves Mom. She still loves him too, just…not the same way. So she comes, she stays for a little while…and then she runs again.” He shrugged. “I think he holds on to her too hard, and it makes her run away. But they’re still friends. She cares enough to come see him when he’s sick.” A weary smile flitted across his lips. “Sometimes love doesn’t work the way you want it to, but it doesn’t have to turn into hate.”

Brand lingered on that smile, on the ache in it that went deeper than just this night.

And how much of your mother’s son are you, then?

If someone tried to hold on to you too hard, would you run?

“That was a remarkably astute observation,” Brand murmured.

Ash snorted. “You don’t have to say ‘remarkably.’” At Brand’s flat look, he made an indignant sound. “You don’t! I’m not that much of an oblivious little shit!”

Brand bit his tongue and held back a smile. “Far be it from me to disagree with my young Master.”

Ash eyed him sidelong, the faint tug at his lips almost coy. He leaned over enough to bump Brand’s arm with his shoulder. “Why do I pay you?”

“You could stop.”

“Mm.” Ash straightened, settling once more, hands in his pockets as he tipped his head back to look up at the brightening sky. “Would you leave if I did?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Brand answered, and Ash grinned.

“Let me know when you do,” he said, and tossed his head toward the house. “Come on. Let’s go get Dad settled now that he’s back home.”

“GETTING CALVIN HARRINGTON SETTLED” MOSTLY involved Brand leaving the suitcase in the elder Harrington’s suite of rooms before both he and Ashton were bullied out by Amiko Arakawa, leaving them both standing bemused outside the door to Harrington’s rooms while it closed in their faces.

Brand glanced at Ashton. Ashton looked back at him, then shrugged ruefully. “That’s my mom,” he said, and that was the end of that.

At least, this morning, Brand didn’t have to fight Ashton to usher him into a shower and dress him afterward. If anything Ashton was almost too docile, withdrawn into himself, the haze of exhaustion a near palpable cloud around him. Brand had to avert his eyes as Ashton began stripping down without a second thought, just a moment’s impropriety letting Brand linger on the smooth curves of pale golden shoulders dotted with sun-freckles like spatters of cinnamon, begging to be bitten.

Before he fixed his gaze on the wall beyond Ashton’s shoulder—and didn’t look back until his young Master had once more stolen Brand’s bathroom and was safely in the shower, the glass fogged nearly opaque with steam.

The urge to look, to devour Ashton with a single glance and imprint the image of his lissome, willowy frame on Brand’s memory, pulled magnetic in his blood.

He excused himself to the kitchen, and busied himself making the young Master’s breakfast.

By the time he returned with a tray and the morning paper, Ashton had extricated himself from the shower, wrapped himself in a towel, and dressed in his underwear and socks. He smelled of soap and shower-warmed skin and something sweetly enticing, as Brand leaned close to slip him into his suit. There was a quiet pleasure in the way Ash lifted his delicate chin for him as Brand knotted his tie and settled it smoothly against his chest; a certain satisfaction in how Ash’s pulse jumped against Brand’s touch as his knuckles grazed his throat; a certain allure in how Ash cocked his head with his lips parted as if waiting in invitation for Brand to rediscover the soft melted candy taste of him, the sweetness and trembling of his mouth. It meant nothing, he knew.

Yet he took his small pleasures where he could.

That, too, was part of being a valet.

Ash settled quietly onto the edge of Brand’s bed to eat; apparently Brand’s room was Ashton’s as well, now, as long as Ashton meant to make use of his shower. Keeping his smile to himself, Brand retrieved the newspaper he’d fetched from the front stoop and laid it next to his plate, unobtrusively folded to the finance section.

“Share prices are up this morning,” he murmured.

“Because Dad’s out of hospice,” Ash said dryly, glancing disinterestedly at the numbers. “Not because of anything I did. Those reporters move fast.”

“They do.”

Ash fell still, toying a toast point between his fingers, silent, gaze unfocused. “It’s been a long night,” he murmured, shoulders sagging. “A long week. And it’s only Wednesday.”

“It’s Thursday, young Master,” Brand pointed out, and Ash flinched.

“Seriously?” He grimaced. “Fuck. And I still have to go to the office, don’t I?”

“Your father is still incapacitated. You are still the head of Harrington Steel.” But Brand relented, leaning over to pick up the napkin from Ashton’s tray and dabbing at a crumb at the corner of his mouth. “You can nap in the car.”

Ash glanced at him quickly, that startled wide-eyed look he had when Brand did something he didn’t expect, like a deer caught out in the woods by a hunter’s straying light. His eyes widened further still as Brand drew the napkin away—and gave in to temptation, for just a moment. He let his thumb glide over the soft, plump bow of Ashton’s lower lip, feeling how it gave to the touch, its warm, plush, velvety texture. To wipe away another crumb, of course…yet for a moment his gut went tight and hot as he caught the faintest hitch of Ashton’s breaths, before Brand forced himself to remember what was proper and pull away as if he had done nothing.

Ashton stared at him, brows knitted together, before he lowered his eyes, exhaling heavily. “…yeah.” He put the toast point down, uneaten, and took a long sip of his coffee before standing, smoothing his fingers over his suit coat. “I need to do something first.” Then he paused, giving Brand a strange look, before looking away. “…alone. Sorry.”

That stung, oddly. Brand parted his lips, then closed them again and bowed his head in acquiescence. “Of course, young Master. I shall wait for you at the car.”

“Are you even safe to drive?” Ash asked. “Aren’t you tired?”

“I have gone longer without sleep.”

When Ash said nothing, Brand lifted his head, meeting dark eyes turned soft with worry—and Brand’s heart gave a low and quiet beat, stumbling and irregular. Was his young Master actually concerned for him?

“Maybe we’ll call it early today,” Ash murmured.

“We will stop,” Brand said firmly, “when the work for the day is done.”

A laugh broke through Ash’s tired apathy. “You like bossing me around a little too much, Brand.”

“Do you really mind it?”

“No.” Ash’s laughter faded into a smile, small and thoughtful and withdrawn and almost, dare he say, flirtatious. “Not really.” Then he laughed again and bumped Brand with his elbow, before turning and striding from his room with a wave over his shoulder. “See you in a bit, Brand,” he called back.

Leaving Brand alone, looking after him…

And wondering things he had no business wondering.

No business wondering at all.

ASH STOOD OUTSIDE THE DOOR to his father’s suite and wondered why he was afraid to knock.

He could probably count the number of times he’d been in these rooms in the past twenty-three years on one hand, and wouldn’t even need every finger on both hands to count how many times he’d been in the adjoining offices.

“I can see your shadow under the door,” Calvin Harrington called through dryly, and Ash’s heart jumped. “Your mother’s in the kitchen, if you’re looking for her.”

Closing his eyes, Ash breathed in deep—and almost wished for Brand’s steadying presence here to give him courage, but fuck…he had to do this himself. No one could push his orbit into intersecting with his father’s but himself.

He just hoped he wasn’t about to push them into a collision, just because he was trying to…to…

He didn’t even know what he was trying to do.

Be present, maybe.

Not something he’d ever really been good at.

He opened his eyes, squared his shoulders, and pushed the door open. “I’m not looking for Mom,” he said. “I’m looking for you.”

Calvin Harrington’s rooms were simple, utilitarian, his furniture all chosen with a purpose unlike the other, more opulently furnished rooms in the house; his bed was a small and simple walnut four-poster—and he was currently propped in it, changed into clean pajamas and nearly buried in quilts, a move that had Amiko Arakawa’s handiwork all over it. He looked tired, but better; as if, in his own bed instead of that hospice bed, he was still a living man and not just a ghost that had forgotten it was dead.

He’d been staring toward the open windows, but now Calvin Harrington turned a thoughtful look on Ash, tilting his head back against the headboard. “Ah? I thought you’d avoid me for at least a week,” he said. His voice was no longer quite so weak and thready, picking up some of that ringing timbre that could command attention in a boardroom. “Direct. I’m impressed.”

Ash closed the door, then leaned against it, fidgeting his hands together behind his back. “Not so direct that I know what to say to you.”

“We never have known what to say to each other, have we.” His father smiled, lines seaming in his square, blunt-featured face, wrinkles that didn’t seem to have been there just weeks ago practically collapsing in on each other. “Don’t just hover there, son. Sit. Let’s talk.”

Biting his lip, Ash ventured closer, then stole the wicker chair next to the bed and sank down into it. “You’re looking better. Your color’s good.”

His father barked out a snorting laugh. “No, I’m just flushed with irritation. Your mother’s a tyrant.”

“Because she loves you.”

“I’m lucky she’s still willing to, aren’t I.” A touch of pain flickered across his father’s face, old and etched in deep. “Lucky you’re still willing to, as well.” His eyes cleared, focusing on Ash with a frank, clear regard. Even if his body was so clearly weak, his hands clutched and trembling against the quilts, those eyes were still sharp, intelligent, incisive. “We don’t know each other very well, do we, son?”

“No,” Ash admitted softly, and wondered why it hurt to say something they’d both known their entire damned lives. “Not really.”

“I shouldn’t have waited this long to change that.” Calvin Harrington’s gaze was haunted, before it shuttered as he lowered his eyes to the shaking claws his hands made, bone white through skin. “It’s odd how two strangers can love each other even when they don’t really know each other, isn’t it?”

“You’re still my father.” Ash smiled faintly. Only his father would find such a fucking backwards way to say he loved him, but God…had he ever, before this? “You haven’t been bad to me.”

“I haven’t been overly good to you, either. Being too permissive out of guilt isn’t the same as being good.” Stick-thin shoulders heaved in a deep sigh. “I was young, when Amiko left. I didn’t know what to do with a child on my own. And I thought…” Dark blue eyes pleaded for understanding. “I thought I might break you.”

“I wasn’t a toy you could break, Dad.”

“I know that now.” Calvin Harrington hesitated, his shriveled, dried lips working, before he murmured, “But I thought maybe it would be better if I sent you away where I couldn’t damage you while I figured out what I was doing.”

Ash shrugged stiffly. “Boarding school wasn’t so bad. Met Vic. Made good friends.”

“Lost a father.”

The words hit like a slap—the sharp sting of days of terror, fear of losing someone he’d never really had and never really would if his father’s last sands slipped through that broken hourglass. Ash swallowed, looking at his father tentatively. “Have I lost you?”

“I’d like to think not.” His father pried a hand free from the duvet and held it out—clearly with great effort, his entire arm shaking as if the weight of the hand at the end of it was too much. “Do you think we could be good friends?”

Ash couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand that shaking hand, and he pushed himself forward quickly, taking it, steadying it, curling it in his own. His father’s hand was so cool, his skin waxy and fragile, and Ash’s throat tried to close; he wouldn’t let it, making himself speak, making himself steady his voice.

“It could be a start,” he forced out.

“It’s a start I’d like.” His father’s hand tightened weakly on his. “If you’d like that, too.”

“I…I think I would.” If we even have that kind of time. The frailty of that hand in his own drove home how unlikely that was. Ash took a hitching breath, looking down at his father’s hand, tracing his thumb over knuckles turned into sharp, bony spikes. He smiled weakly. “I don’t resent you, Dad. I really don’t. It’s…not like we were ever that far apart. You’re just…more like that awkward uncle I see on holidays or something.” He laughed under his breath. “And Mom’s that awkward aunt.”

“Better than being that asshole who shipped you off to boarding school and forgot you.”

“I stopped calling you that before I spent four years fucking my way through college on your dime.”

His father laughed, sharp and startled—then broke into raw, rough coughs, doubling forward, his hand tightening convulsively on Ash’s until the finger-points of his bones dug into Ash’s knuckles painfully. Panic laced through Ash, binding him tight in its coils, and he leaned forward, reaching helplessly.

“Oh—oh fuck, are you okay?”

Calvin Harrington held up his free hand to forestall him. He hacked a few more times, then rasped, “I’m fine. I’m fine.” He pressed his hand to his chest, then took a few more deep breaths. “Just need to rest, that’s all.”

Ash sank back into his chair, then realized just how tight he was holding his father’s hand and eased his grip with an apologetic wince. “Are you sure? Can I get anything for you?”

“If I let you, your mother would be mortally offended.” His father smiled faintly. “It’s fine, son. And I think I’m keeping you from work.” He flicked his gaze over Ash. “You wear that suit well.”

“I feel like a little boy in Daddy’s clothes. I think I need a few more years to grow into it.”

“I think you wear it just fine your own way.”

Ash searched his father’s face, realization sinking in with a heavy and somber weight. “…you’re never coming back to Harrington Steel, are you.”

“No, son,” Calvin Harrington said regretfully. “I’m sorry to throw this at you without preparing you…but it’s yours, now. I…do you hate me for that?”

“No.” Ash dragged a smile up from somewhere and patted his father’s hand, cradling it in both of his own. “I’ve always known it would be mine one day. I’ve always accepted that, I…I even wanted it one day, when I was ready. I just wasn’t expecting to have to be ready so soon.”

“Life never goes according to plan.” His father’s tight grip loosened—then slipped away, fingers slipping from between Ash’s. “Go, son. That valet of yours is waiting for you, no doubt.”

The thought of Brand made a faint flush heat beneath Ash’s collar. He almost wanted to ask…but…fuck, they didn’t really have that kind of relationship, did they? Where he could say hey Dad my valet kissed me and let me sleep in his bed and held me while I cried, and I get kind of funny feelings when he does certain things.

Yeah. No.

Hard pass on that conversation.

So he only shrugged, pushing himself to his feet. “I’d better go before he has an aneurysm. He’s a fucking drill sergeant.”

“I’m sure he is.” Calvin Harrington chuckled, then trailed off, eyeing Ash thoughtfully. “You know you can tell me anything, don’t you, son?”

“Like you told me about having bone cancer?”

It fell off Ash’s tongue without thinking, and he flinched as if he’d cut himself with the barbed edges. Fuck. Fuck, he hadn’t meant—

His father’s face crumpled, then smoothed as he gathered himself with that classic Calvin Harrington dignity. “…fair. I deserved that.”

“No, you didn’t.” Ash dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. I just…”

“If there was anything you could have done, I’d have told you. When there was nothing…why burden you with it?” The sound of defeat in his father’s voice was crushing. “I’ve tried so many treatments. I tried. I fought. I didn’t just lie down and give up, son.” He made a bitter sound. “But sometimes you fight with everything in you, and you still lose.”

“What about a bone marrow transplant?” Ash pleaded.

“From who?” his father countered. “It has to be a sibling or an exact match. I’m an only child.”

“But I—”

“Likely wouldn’t be a match, son.” Calvin Harrington cut him off. “I wouldn’t put you through that kind of pain to even ask.”

“But Dad—”

“Ash.” His mother’s voice cut him off from behind, yanking him up short enough to choke the breath from him. “Let him rest.”

Ash stared helplessly between his parents. These strangers, standing there making decisions over his head, asking him to be an adult and yet refusing to treat him like one while they just…just…

Gave up, without even letting him try.

He couldn’t stay in here. He pressed his lips together, then turned away—not even looking at his father again, when he couldn’t. Couldn’t stand the entreaty in his eyes, or the pull on Ash’s heart when no man who was nearly a stranger had the right to make him hurt this much.

He brushed past his mother, out into the hall—but stopped when she followed him, her soft hand falling gently between his shoulder blades. Hers was a touch that was more the echo of a memory than anything he knew, but it was enough to stop him in his tracks.

“So I’m your awkward aunt, am I?” she teased sadly.

“Yeah,” he choked out, staring straight forward. “Kinda.”

“Ash.” She pressed against his back, soft and gentle, and slipped her arms around him. He wasn’t particularly tall, but she barely came up to his shoulders, her cheek laid against the nape of his neck. “You know I miss you, don’t you?”

“I know.”

“Honestly…I don’t understand how you don’t hate both me and your father.”

“I guess when I’m right in the middle of my own young fuckups, I can’t hate you for yours.”

“You were never a fuckup.” She tightened her hold, then gripped at him lightly, urging him with her touch around to face her, to look down into her smiling face and sad eyes. “How we handled what to do with you after our own mistakes? Hai. That was a mistake.” She curled her knuckles to his cheek. “And then there came a point when…” She shook her head. “It seemed like you didn’t even need us. And we didn’t know how to fix that.”

He looked down at her in silence. It was strange to see someone who looked so much like him, and yet her expressions were so different, her body language, like watching a stranger wear his face.

“Did you want me to need you?” he asked.

Her brows drew together. “I’m your mother, Ash.”

“…yeah.” He caught her hand, held it against his cheek…then drew it away, letting go, retreating out of her reach. “I love you,” he said. “I just…got used to not having you.”

To not having anyone, he thought, as he walked away from her. And right back to…

Right back to Brand.

It was only natural, he told himself. Brand was waiting for him at the car anyway, and he had to drag himself back to Harrington Steel and fit himself into his father’s place and try to make it fit around him somehow, someway, to make this last. Yet he couldn’t stop the feeling of relief that bloomed in his chest, as he stepped out the front door of the house and found Brand waiting, leaning against the car, idly toying with his cufflinks. He’d found the time to change into a fresh suit, but he wasn’t quite as crisp as normal, his hair a touch mussed, his buttons not quite perfect, his eyelids heavy with an exhaustion Ash understood when he felt it mirrored in his bones.

He liked Brand like this, he thought. It made him look more human.

Brand looked up as Ash approached, and straightened to reach for the passenger’s side door—but subsided when Ash shifted to lean against the car next to him.

Silence held between them for long moments. Ash stared at the house. It looked like a show home to him, something people looked at but didn’t live in. He wanted to change that, he thought. He wanted to…to not be his parents. These people who made a life and didn’t live in it. He might not ever have kids of his own, but he just…

He wanted more than this, he realized.

This cardboard cutout of a life with no real connections. No real warmth. No real bonds that held humans together, instead of just occasionally crashing into each other when their orbits intersected.

He wanted the kind of gravity that pulled people together so hard they couldn’t drift apart. Not the way his mother and father had.

And not with anyone caught as collateral damage in between.

He glanced at Brand; the man’s eyes were impossible to read behind the glint of his glasses, but Ash thought for a moment Brand had been watching him, too. He traced the gilding of sunlight over the man’s aquiline, elegant profile, then glanced away again.

“They let him come home, but it’s only a temporary reprieve, isn’t it,” he murmured. “He still has bone cancer. He’s still dying. And it won’t be long. All this means is he’ll die here instead of in hospice. With his eyes open, instead of slipping away without even knowing what’s happening.”

Brand bowed his head, looking down, his lips set pensively. “Young Master…do you wish for a comforting answer, or an honest one?”

“I don’t even know.” Ash laughed humorlessly. “Say whatever you feel like saying.”

“It is his choice,” Brand replied. “Everything up to this point has been his choice. There is little to do to change the consequences, now. There is only honoring his wishes, and making him comfortable.”

The breath knocked from Ash’s lungs. Whatever he’d thought Brand would say in that rolling, deeply inflected voice…it wasn’t that. He’d…he’d wanted Brand to fix it, he realized. Wanted him to have some sort of practical solution like he always did, some perfect right answer.

Not…not this.

“But—” Ash struggled for words around his choking, halting breaths. “If I could—”

“It’s not your decision, young Master Ashton,” Brand said softly, reaching for him. “Sometimes you have to accept tha—”

Ash jerked free from the warm hand that fell on his arm. “Let me go,” he bit off—then skittered back a few steps when Brand straightened, that hand still outstretched. Ash shook his head sharply, glaring at him. “No. Just…just…fuck, just go away. I need five minutes of my life without you breathing down the back of my neck.” He couldn’t stop the vicious, hateful torrent spilling past his lips—all his confusion and hurt and frustration condensed down into piercing bullets and spitting out of him at Brand. “I haven’t had a fucking minute alone since I hired you. Just…if you’re not going to help, just fucking leave me alone.”

Ash spun on his heel, turning away. He didn’t even know where he was going—just that he was running. Running away from Brand, from that confused, almost wounded look on the supposedly impenetrable man’s face. Running away from the specter of death that hadn’t just faded; it had only followed them home, and spread its wings over the Harrington house.

Running away from himself, when he was too useless to fix anything.

“Ashton!” Brand called, raw, almost desperate, but Ash wouldn’t stop.

He just closed his eyes, closed his ears, and ran.