“Here.” Ty took the Tylenol, wrapped his hands around the cap, and—POP! The lid came off so loudly that they both startled. A few pills flew out as well, but Ty ignored them in favor of pouring a whole handful onto the table in front of Morgan.
“Just two,” Morgan said.
“Ah.” Ty put the rest back, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll get you water.” He had a pitcher full of it, in fact, tucked away in a corner of the counter where Morgan hadn’t seen it. He poured a cupful, then set it down on the table between them.
“Thank you.” Morgan swallowed the pills and chased them with water, then decided to put himself out of his misery. “Can you help me back to the bed? I only got up to use the bathroom, and …”
“Mmm, of course.” Ty came over to his side, wrapped a careful arm around his waist, and—whoa! How did a guy at least three inches shorter than Morgan feel so freakingstrong? His arm was like a vice around his waist—a comfortable, mostly soothing vice—and Morgan felt like his feet were barely touching the floor as they made their way back into the bedroom.
Ty carefully lowered him in bed, supporting beneath his head as well as his torso, and Morgan groaned as he closed his eyesagain. He was vaguely aware of his stomach rumbling, but food could wait. He was dead on his feet right now. Well, off his feet, but whatever. “Thanks,” he mumbled around a yawn. “Sorry f’r taking y’r bed.”
“It’s fine. I’ll be close by if you need anything.”
“That’s … nice.” Either the painkillers were already hitting, or sleep was a drug because a second later, Morgan began to drift off. The last thing he felt was an extra layer of blanket coming over the top of him, a blanket that smelled like home.
He was unconscious less than a minute later.
Chapter four
Morgan ended up staying with Ty for a whole week.
It was a little embarrassing to admit how nice it was to be with someone again. Not just someone, but a guy who genuinely seemed to have no clue and no care as to why Morgan was on Parrish Island and what he’d been doing before. Ty never asked anything personal, other than finding out how Morgan felt every morning and what he could do to help. After a few days of waiting for the ball to drop, Morgan realized that Ty was nevergoingto ask.
He didn’t have a phone. Didn’t have a computer or internet access. He didn’t get the paper or listen to a radio. Ty was the closest thing to completely isolated that Morgan had ever heard of, and he had absolutely no curiosity when it came to the outside world. It could have made for a pretty dismal time together, honestly, especially once Morgan felt well enough to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, but instead …
He enjoyed it. Morgan enjoyed Ty’s company and discovered pretty quickly that the other man was far from boring or dull; he just turned his attention in different directions. He was an avid fisherman, going out in his boat before dawn every morning to get the morning catch and take it into town. He maintained lines of communication with several different scientific researchers when he went into town as well; apparently, he facilitated several on-island studies every year.
A little digging turned up the fact that Ty actually had a degree in wildlife biology, shyly admitted over a cup of tea in the evening. The house might not be electrified, but Ty had brought over every one of Morgan’s devices, along with batteries and solar chargers, and more fuel for the propane stove, and the little lamp he’d pulled out of the chest in his bedroom.
“I got it years ago,” he said the third day Morgan was there, once it was a little easier for him to move around and stay awake. “All correspondence courses. It was, mmm, a challenge to get through it. But the degree makes it easier for me to stay here, so it was worth it.” He showed Morgan some of his textbooks, ancient things from the 1970s that he’d put in a lockbox in one of the kitchen cabinets, of all places. “You can read them if you’re getting bored,” he added with a little twinkle in his dark, sloe eyes.
Morgan laughed. “I think I’ll stick with novels for now.”
Ty nodded thoughtfully. “Phil liked novels too.”
It was the first time since Morgan’s bumpy arrival that Ty had mentioned his great-uncle. It wasn’t as though the subject was forbidden, exactly, just that talking about him seemed to make Ty sad.
“Mmm. He would read them out loud to me sometimes. I never understood the stories, though. He liked …” He wrinkled his nose. “Thrillers.”
Morgan nodded. “I remember reading a bunch of his books when I came to visit. All Chandler and Le Carre and Harris. I had a nightmare after readingSilence of the Lambsat the lighthouse; I woke Uncle Phil up with my yelling. He was a little more careful about what I had access to after that.” He glanced at the textbooks. “Um. If you—how did you do the reading for your degree? If you don’t mind me asking.”Wow. You insensitive fuck. Way to be invasive, you—
“Phil read them to me,” Ty said without a hint of self-consciousness. “He helped me write my papers as well although I had to do all the dictating. He said I couldn’t use him to cheat.” He smiled a bit sadly. “He was a good person.”
“Yeah, he was.” Morgan swallowed around the lump in his throat that had welled up at the thought of just what a good person his uncle had been. “He seems like he was a good friend too.”
“He was. I miss him.”
Morgan looked down at the table. “Me too.”
“Mmm.” They sat in silence for a moment. “He’d be happy you came back.”
“I wish I’d done it earlier.” Maybe then he could have talked to Phil in person about Ty, learned about the secrets the man was keeping directly instead of feeling his way around them now. Because it was clear, very clear, that Ty was a man with some big secrets.
How long had he lived here, really? Was he the last Ty Smith’s son? Grandson? An interested party who’d taken on the identity, like a hermit crab slipping into a new shell? Why was no one curious about who Tyreallywas? Was he a part of witness protection or something? Why couldn’t he read? How could someone so clearly intelligent be illiterate?
Morgan was so, so curious, and if he had still been the him of six months ago, he would have gone after answerswith unswerving focus and force, setting aside things like hurt feelings for the sake of discovery. But now …
Fuck it. He’d run here to hide from his past. How could he fault Ty for doing the same? Whatever his secrets were, Morgan preferred to learn them when Ty wanted to share them. It was the least he could do.
