Chapter Fourteen

FOR TWO days straight, Leo locked himself in his room and listened to “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” on repeat. He couldn’t face Mitch telling him “I told you so.” He couldn’t face going to his parents and admitting that he’d fucked things up with his werewolf mate. He really couldn’t even face looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, so he avoided that too.

He’d never, ever called in sick to work before when he wasn’t even sick, so Monday was a big deal. Like, a really big deal. It wasn’t as if he worked some crappy job that he hated, locked away in an office cubicle pushing paper or flipping burgers. He’d done both of those things before when he’d needed the money. Now it was different. Now he was letting down a bunch of sick kids because he couldn’t get his personal life together.

Mitch tried to tempt Leo out of his room a couple of times—first with the promise of good food, then margaritas, then the offer of a blowjob. Leo had shouted at him to go away and turned up Jennifer Hudson. Eventually Mitch got the message.

This felt different from other breakups. Leo had been in relationships before, good relationships with nice guys, and when they ended, he’d been sad. Because it was sad. He didn’t want to say goodbye to someone who’d been a positive influence on some part of his life.

He was Jackson’s soul mate, though, and Leo had wanted that to mean something. He’d moved on from those other relationships because he’d been content, deep down inside, that the ex-boyfriend wasn’t the right person for Leo.

He’d thought being Jackson’s soul mate would mean they would be able to work it out, however bad it got. Leo felt a grim sort of sadness about his naïveté about stupid werewolves and their stupid soul mates.

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.