Jayden swallowed as he leaned into Lucas' chest. How did he even begin to talk when he didn't know what to say? But Lucas was just waiting for him, fingers gently stroking down Jayden's arm.

"I don't know," he croaked. "I just started crying last night and it won't stop." He gulped down air and screwed his eyes shut. "I didn't want you to see me like this."

The truth hurt. It was like a punch to the gut, and he shrank down, withdrawing his arms from around Lucas' neck so that he could wrap them around himself instead.

"Why not?" Lucas murmured.

And like that, the floodgates opened. Jayden couldn't stop himself. Words poured out of him, and they left him weary and empty once they left.

"Because you're so strong," he whispered. "You're perfect. And you make me feel so... So fucking weak and useless and vulnerable and I can't... I can't do it, Lucas. I can't be this perfect guy you deserve, I can't let you..." He tailed off.

Lucas' chest shifted with a deep breath. "You can't let me in?" he offered quietly.

"I want to?" Jayden wasn't sure whether that was true. "I've had to stand on my own two feet my entire adult life. Make my own way, fight everyone every step of the way, stand up for what I believe in, what I know in my heart is right. And... I don't..." He sniffled and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

Lucas' fingers continued to stroke his arm in light, uninterrupted circles. "I'm sorry I was grouchy yesterday," he murmured.

Jayden blinked his eyes open and laughed weakly. "You're sorry? I'm the one who went all dipshit."

"We both had our reasons," Lucas said.

Jayden rubbed at his eyes and leaned back to look up at Lucas, but there was no scorn there, no hate.

Only warmth.

Love.

"You wanna know what I think?" Lucas added.

Jayden gave a slow nod. "Sure. Hit me with it."

"I think you've started letting yourself grieve for the loss of your father," Lucas rumbled. "I think you grieved for the loss of who you pictured him to be back when he died, but now you're also grieving the loss of him as a flawed, imperfect human being. It's always hard to realize that our parents aren't who we thought they were, that they're just people like the rest of us, who can make mistakes and screw things up. I think you're accepting that about him at last, and what you're feeling now is that loss."

Every word struck a chord in Jayden's chest. The more Lucas spoke, the more it rang true, and the more it hurt.

He gasped a little, too worn out to cry any more, but too upset not to try, and in the end he just leaned back against Lucas and lay a hand flat against his shirt. "How did you get to be so smart?" he breathed.

"By paying attention," Lucas said quietly. "Yesterday I thought it was me you were upset with, but it wasn't, was it? You were just feeling overwhelmed. Powerless."

"Powerless," Jayden echoed. That single word seemed to encompass every single one of his feelings. He couldn't stop his dad outing him to the board, he couldn't stop his dad dying, he couldn't stop the board from firing him, he couldn't stop them hiking the prices.

Now he couldn't stop them trying to kill him. No matter how much money he threw at the problem, it wasn't going away, and that was what money was supposed to be fore. Otherwise what use was it?

He blinked as he connected the dots.

That was why he'd thrown money at Lottie, wasn't it? He could solve a problem. Finally, there was something his money was good for, and he desperately needed to feel like he could contribute, make a difference.

Have some power.

He groaned. "I've been a total ass," he realized. "Is Lottie okay?"

Lucas cleared his throat. "She was slightly bemused by the amount you sent her," he said. Then after a pause he added, "And you did seem to be going a little crazy trying to solve everything with money."

Jayden sighed as he let his eyes close briefly. "Yeah," he croaked. "I went full asshole, didn't I? I just wanted to be able to do something."

"I understand."

Jayden pulled back to look up again. He scanned Lucas' face for any sign of sarcasm, but there wasn't any to be found. "You do?"

Lucas' lips twitched into his faint ghost of a smile. "I've had people crawl out of the woodwork and hit me up for money just because of our date on Sunday. People who haven't spoken to me in years. They weren't interested in me, they just wanted cash, and they didn't even try to be subtle about it."

Jayden groaned. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. It must be hard for every day of your life to be like this, not knowing whether people around you are genuine or just trying to get close to your money. You have to assess every single person in your life, don't you? To figure out what they want from you?"

He nodded faintly. Any harder and his head would ache. "Yeah."

"Even me."

Jayden looked away, but he wasn't going to lie. Not now, not to Lucas. "Yeah."

"That's probably combined with all this grief and your fear of letting people in past your walls, you know." Lucas reached for and cupped his jaw, then leaned in to kiss his cheek.

He snorted and turned so that he could kiss Lucas on the lips. The touch was fleeting, light, but exactly what he needed right now. "Shut up being so right all the time," he groused.

"It's People 101," Lucas chuckled against his lips. "I'm not immune to it. I thought you were pushing me away because of me, not because of all this other shit going on in your life. Maybe it's for the best that you did. It gave me some perspective. Made me realize I was being an idiot."

"If anyone's been an idiot here, it was me," Jayden insisted.

Lucas laughed then. "How about we just accept we were both idiots, huh?"

"We could do that," he admitted. He sighed a while and then added, "I wanna go visit Dad."

"Sure. Do you want to rest first, or do you wanna go straight away?"

"Maybe a shower," he admitted.

Lucas nodded. "Okay. You shower, I'll go tell Marcus we're going out."

Jayden swallowed at that. The idea of visiting his father's grave with an entourage of bodyguards wasn't a comforting one. "Can't it just be you?"

Lucas shook his head faintly. "I'm off duty for the week. I can go with you as your partner, as your emotional support, as your boyfriend, but I can't go with you as your bodyguard. That's on Marcus now."

Jayden sniffed at him for that. “What were you thinking, taking time off right now?”

“It’s not like I had any choice,” Lucas said.

Jayden jutted his lip out. He wanted to argue, to protest this situation, but Lucas had already warned him he could lose his job for fraternizing with a client. A week off work was a light penalty compared to unemployment.

"Fine," he muttered.

The drive down to the cemetery Dad was buried in was around forty minutes. They went via the Hugh L. Carey tunnel despite it being a toll road because otherwise crossing into and driving down through Brooklyn would take twice as long.

Jayden didn't remember anything about why this place got chosen. He didn't know whether Dad had pre-selected the plot years before his death, or if Mom had to shoulder this decision by herself. At the time he'd been so distraught that nothing anyone had said to him stuck for very long.

He couldn't blame Dad for picking the place, if he had, though. It was beautiful, for a cemetery. Dotted with stunning ponds, gorgeous views over Brooklyn, and elaborate tombs resting beneath the shade of trees whose branches wafted softly in the breeze, it could've been an ideal spot for a picnic, if it weren't for all the dead people.

Marcus drove them through the Gothic architecture of the cemetery gates and parked the car, then Jayden had to wait for Marcus and Kinkaid to step outside and check their surroundings. It felt weird to have Lucas by his side, not doing any of those things.

Marcus opened the back door for Jayden with a nod.

"Can we get a little space?" Jayden asked of him.

"Of course, Mr. Deus. We'll be right behind you."

Jayden nodded gratefully and, once Lucas was at his side, he took Lucas' arm and began to walk along one of the winding paths which led up the hillside.

He knew the way.

There was nothing ostentatious about Dad's grave. Just a stone on the ground, name etched into it. No statuary, no fancy mausoleum. Everything he'd ever been was beneath Jayden's feet, and it was surreal to think that this once-great man was nothing more than a body in a casket now.

Jayden crouched at first, but then his thighs hurt, so he sat cross-legged on the grass, in the shade cast by Lucas at his side. Even now Lucas was protecting him, if only from the sun.

"I forgive you," he whispered as he lay a hand against the grass. He didn't look at the headstone. That wasn't where Dad was. "You made a mistake, and I'm sorry I didn't realize that's all it was. All this time I thought maybe you were being malicious, that you did what you did to hurt me, but I didn't stop to think that you didn't know what you were doing any more than I did."

It felt strange to speak these words as though his father could hear them, but stranger still was the sense of peace that settled around him when he did. It was freeing, like a burden he'd clung to for over a year was finally being let go, released into the wind and scattered like so much ash.

"I think maybe you didn't understand what a huge thing it was to out me the way you did," he continued. "And you couldn't have understood how all these people you'd known for years weren't going to like what you said. I'm your son, and I don't think you meant to hurt me. I think you just..." He shook his head. "I think you might have just wanted to be proud of me for once, and you screwed it up, but that's... That's human. It's human, and I forgive you."

The shadow moved, and Lucas crouched down beside him, placing an arm around his shoulders. His presence, his touch, they were so solid and reassuring, and Jayden tethered himself to them as though Lucas were his anchor.

He ran his fingers across the soft, lush grass and hung his head. "And I wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't here, I'm sorry I didn't pick up when Mom called. I'm sorry I hated you for so long. I wish we could have been better, but... I'm human too. I'm not perfect. So I hope one day you can forgive me, too."

Tears began to return to his eyes, and he blinked a few times so that he could see more clearly. They trickled over his cheeks, and he pressed his lips tight together while he swallowed.

He'd thought he was all cried out. And perhaps in a way he was, because while he had tears, they felt more like relief than more pain. Like the last of his anguish was being squeezed out of him, they lightened the load even more, until the last fell from his skin to the grass and he was light-headed but free.

Shit, had he lived under this cloud so long that he'd forgotten what a clear sky even felt like?

They stayed there a while, in companionable silence. Jayden had no idea how long for. He just knew that he had a sudden, profound appreciation for the beauty of this place, the clean fresh air, the softly singing leaves, and the warmth of Lucas around him. Eventually, though, he was gonna need to move, and it was probably better to do that before the evening.

"We should go," he whispered.

"If you're ready?" Lucas stood and offered Jayden his hand.

Jayden reached for it, wondering how the hell Lucas had managed to crouch for so long and then stand up again like it was no big deal, but then Lucas hauled him to his feet, and instead Jayden's thoughts turned to the muscles beneath Lucas' suit and what it felt like to be in their grasp.

He felt the heat rise in his cheeks and he slipped his arm around Lucas'. "How about we go home," he murmured, "and spend some more time apologizing to each other for yesterday?"

Lucas steered him away from the grave and toward the path which led back to the car. His soft, faint smile returned briefly. "I think that sounds like a good idea," he answered.

"Yeah," Jayden said. "Me too."

It felt like the first day of the rest of his life, and he wanted to kick it off with a bang.