Vincent locked up and put his bag in the trunk with the rest as Jasper shoved his charger into a suitcase, and then they were on the road.
The sun was breaking over the horizon when they reached the airport, and half an hour later they were at their gate with less than an hour before boarding. Jasper sat next to him, shifting in his seat every other second, his leg bouncing as if caffeine had replaced his blood supply.
Since nothing Vincent could say would ease Jasper’s nerves about flying for the first time, he wrapped his hand around Jasper’s fingers instead and squeezed.
Jasper heaved a deep sigh and slumped against Vincent’s side despite the uncomfortable arm rest between them. A long moment of silence passed before Jasper bumped his elbow against Vincent. “Sooo do you have any wicked plans for me tonight?”
“Settling in and making dinner,” Vincent replied, scrolling through the list on his phone one last time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. When Jasper bit his shoulder, he set his phone aside and flicked the brat’s nose. “And punishing you if you keep that up,” he added dryly.
Jasper pulled back with a grin. “Promise?”
Vincent laughed. “Absolutely not,” he said, not about to encourage Jasper to be even more of a brat, even if his enthusiasm was welcomed. Considering how out of his depth Jasper had been a few months ago, it was nice to see him finding things he knew he liked.
“I thought vacations were supposed to beenjoyable,” Jasper huffed.
“It will be. You’ll have to be patient.” Vincent would have to be patient too, since the thought of having full access to Jasper for more than a few days at a time was enough to give him all kinds of ideas. More intense scenes, testing Jasper’s limits, exploring things they hadn’t tried yet. Two weeks was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it felt like the beginning of a small eternity.
Getting settled on the plane was easy enough as he’d booked first class. Jasper lasted a whole two minutes before he piped up, “I almost expected you to have a private plane.”
Vincent hesitated a moment before admitting, “I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t freak out,” and braced himself as Jasper whipped his head around from staring out the window to staring at him in shock.
“You have one?”
“Technically it belongs to Arthur, my grandfather, but I can request access easily enough.”
“Unbelievable,” Jasper murmured. “Is your entire family rich?”
Vincent sighed, unable to control his wince. “Not exactly,” he replied slowly. A plane wasn’t exactly the best place to have such a personal conversation, but they had a few hours with nothing better to do than get to know each other when sex wasn’t a viable option. So he explained how his mother became estranged from her parents when she got pregnant out of wedlock and ran away to the US with his father, who had died before Vincent was born. It was only after his mother’s death that his grandparents were notified of her passing and became involved in Vincent’s life.
His grandmother Valencia wasn’t keen on him leeching off the family name, but Arthur refused to sever ties with his only grandchild. Vincent’s second cousin on his grandmother’s side had been set to inherit the full Thornwell fortune, but with Vincent’s latest business successes, there’d been mention of changing his grandfather’s part of the inheritance to Vincent.
As far as he understood, Valencia was part of an old Davenport lineage, with her older brother’s children to inherit their family legacy, while Vincent’s great-grandfather and grandfather had made their own fortune.
“Isn’t that going to make you a target for the rest of the family?”
“Possibly,” he replied dryly. While he appreciated that Arthur was likely trying to make up for abandoning them, part of Vincent still wanted to refuse his help as a matter of principle. Thanks to his numerous years of therapy, he knew that stemmed from some lingering desire to remain in solidarity with his mother. She’d never spoken about her parents other than to say she’d been disowned for going against their wishes, and as far as he knew, she never reached out to them.
Vincent hadn’t had much choice but to accept Arthur’s help when he’d been in the hospital and facing charges. Then finishing college in Europe had been a given as he’d been in hisgrandfather’s debt from both medical and legal bills. Now he was on stable ground again, with plenty of money of his own. He kept in contact because he genuinely liked Arthur, though Valencia acted as if she hated his guts.
He glanced at his hand as Jasper threaded their fingers together and squeezed. “All that to say most of my family might be ridiculously wealthy, but I wasn’t raised with the access to it that I have now.”
“That explains a lot,” Jasper said but didn’t elaborate, merely offered a cheeky smile when Vincent eyed him. “What about your father’s family?”
“Never met any of them.” He’d never tried finding them either, especially while in Europe, in case it pushed his grandmother over the edge. He didn’t even know what the man looked like. His mother had no pictures of him. All Vincent had was the simple wedding band that had never been worn as his father died before they could have an actual wedding.
“I don’t really remember my mom,” Jasper offered after a long moment of silence, his voice soft.
Vincent tightened his fingers around Jasper’s. “What do you remember?”
“Her laugh…. She would cackle and start snorting and couldn’t stop,” he said with a faint smile, but he didn’t continue.
“What happened?”
Jasper sighed and let his head thunk against Vincent’s shoulder. “She died. I was five or six. She got dizzy at work and fell. Died on the way to the hospital.”
Vincent blew out a breath. “That’s why you chose to become an EMT?”
Jasper shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. By the time I was old enough to understand what really happened to her, there was no one around I could ask about it.”
