“How did you do it? After what she did to you?” No matter how gentle and loving she’d been when she was well, there was no escaping the way she’d betrayed him in the end.
“With great bloody difficulty,” Harrison admitted. His hand paused over the paper, but he didn’t lift his gaze. “She was far from being the perfect mother, even when she was well, but I knew she loved me. Every time she got sick I would take care of her, do everything for her, until she was better. But in the end it didn’t help. She gave up on me anyway—on loving me, protecting me. When she handed me those pills, she gave up on everything I had the potential to become.”
Reaching for Harrison’s free hand, Jeremy threaded their fingers together. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “For everything you went through.”
Harrison’s fingers tightened around his. “When I was diagnosed with depression, the same type she had, I was terrified I would turn out like her. The sickness that killed her was inside me, too. Being like her, making the choices she made, seemed inevitable.” He shook his head in denial of his own words. “But recently I’ve realised, I’m not anything like her and I never will be. I’ve chosen to be different. That means I don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
It all sounded great to Jeremy, but he still had no idea what Harrison was getting at. “What does that mean for you?”
“It means now is the time for me to make a new choice.” The smile Harrison gave him was blinding in its brightness. “First, I chose life. Then I chose you. Now, I’m choosing freedom.” Pulling his hand from Jeremy’s, he repositioned his sketchpad and went back to work. “And that’s why I went to see Laurel today.”
“Your psychiatrist?” Jeremy asked, baffled by the topic change. “Why?”
“I wanted to run an idea past her.” He drew faster now, as if in a rush to finish. “You remember how you said I should break the rules more often?”
Jeremy narrowed his eyes. “I remember.”
“Well, I started to wonder,” this time when Harrison glanced up there was something of a manic look in his eyes, “what if I took it a step further?” He slapped the pen down on the table and paused to run his gaze over the page before peeling the completed artwork off the sketchpad and holding it up for Jeremy to see. “This is a list of all my rules.”
“Okay.” Jeremy read the list. Some of them sounded like commandments:Integrity in the moment of choice. Discipline above all else.The rest were more specific, and Jeremy had already guessed most of them:Limited sugar consumption. Exercise at least four times a week. No alcohol. No swearing.The words ‘No fun’ weren’t actually on there, but they may as well have been. None of the rules on Harrison’s list were bad as such. But to have to follow all of them, all the time, would try the willpower of a freaking saint. It was no wonder Harrison buckled under the pressure from time to time.
The sound of tearing paper rent the air as Harrison ripped the newly created list in two. Then, he put the two halves together, turned them length-ways and tore them in half again. Jeremy’s mouth dropped open as he watched Harrison continue to rip the list of rules apart until there wasn’t a single whole word left anywhere. “I’ve been living by these rules for so long, I have no idea what my life looks like without them,” he said, his breathing hard and fast. “But I want to find out.” The expression on his face was a mixture of trepidation and hope. “Join me?”
Jeremy gasped, his hands coming up to cover his mouth. “Fuck, yeah!” With a bold sweep of his arm, he knocked the sketchpad, pen and bits of ripped up paper off the coffee table before clambering over it and onto Harrison’s lap. “Are you sure though?” he asked as cupped Harrison’s face in his hands. “I mean, you had the rules for a reason.”
Nodding, Harrison grabbed hold of Jeremy’s t-shirt and yanked it out of his pants. “I’m not saying I’m going to stop exercising and eating right, or anything. But I don’t want to think of my life in terms of rules anymore,” he said as he pulled the t-shirt backward over Jeremy’s head. “I want to swear without feeling like it’s a sign I’m losing my mind.” Harrison pulled the t-shirt down as far as Jeremy’s elbows before scrunching it up in one hand so Jeremy’s arms were trapped behind him. “And when you bring home chocolate cupcakes, I want to smear the icing all over your chest and then lick it off.” He leaned down to swipe his tongue across Jeremy’s left nipple before taking the hardened nub gently between his teeth. “I want to be free and happy, with you.”
“I want that, too.” Jeremy avoided Harrison’s mouth when he tried to kiss him, instead looking him in the eyes. “But I also want to know you’re safe.”
With a groan of frustration, Harrison dropped his head back onto the seat of the couch for a moment. “All right,” he said with a sigh when he lifted it again. “I promise I’m being sensible about this. I’m going to be seeing Laurel twice a month and she’ll help me figure out how to make the transition.” He cringed as he admitted, “It’s possible I’ll be a bit unstable for a while, but Laurel agrees in the end it could significantly improve my quality of life.”
“Your quality of life, huh.” Jeremy grinned. “Is that what the research says?”
“Those were her words, not mine, and I don’t have a clue what the research says,” Harrison told him, trying to hold back his laughter. “Now can I go back to ravishing you? All this talk about psychiatrist visits and being sensible has made my cock go limp.”
Jeremy gasped in faux shock. “How terrible. But I’m sure I can fix that.” Pulling his arms free, he grabbed onto Harrison’s shirt and ripped it open, enjoying the sound of the buttons popping off. “You know, we may have to introduce a new rule every now and then. So we have the pleasure of breaking it.”
Harrison laughed as Jeremy leaned in to capture his mouth in a kiss. “I think that can be arranged.”
