Eventually, once James’s sorrow seemed to wane a little, Cassian pressed a light kiss to his lips, and they rested their foreheads together.
“You’ll feel better soon,” Cassian said, though he wasn’t sure if saying such a thing would be perceived as encouraging or dismissive. “Do you think the physician was thorough enough when he looked you over?”
James sniffled. “I believe so. He said that the shaking was... an emotional response of some sort, not physical. Notonlyphysical, I should say. Actually, he even said that I’m in better shape than some of the others who were in either our boat or the other collapsible.”
“I’m so relieved to hear that,” Cassian said.
“It makes me feel pathetic, though.” James sighed. “I monopolized that poor man’s time for nothing.”
“Don’t think like that. You can’t put a price on having peace of mind with regard to your health. Or at least, I can’t. I’ll even thank the man later with some money, if that’ll make you feel better.” Cassian frowned. “Not that I have money on my person now. Good Lord, my checks are at the bottom of the Atlantic and all the cash I had is with John Quinn. Assuming that he even managed to keep it considering the chaos.”
“I’m sorry, Cassian.”
“For what? Me losing some paper checks and providing my former valet and my ex-fiancée with money to start their life together?” Cassian let out a playful scoff. “Checks are replaceable, as are my belongings. And I’m happy to help Ethel and John. Now that I know what being in love is like, I couldn’tnotwant to help them, especially since Ethel will still be somewhat scorned by our society for having had the courage to be with the man she loves rather than marry me. I can only imagine how much more bothered I would have been about losing the rest of the things that I’d carted with me to Europe had I not met you. But now I know there are certain things that are replaceable in life—incidentally, most material things, perhaps—and then there are things that areirreplaceable. Like you.” Cassian searched James’s beautiful blue eyes. “You are irreplaceable to me, James. You are my most important possession, my most important person. You are my most importanteverythingthat ismine.”
James’s cheeks reddened a bit, and he cracked a small smile, one that was oh so sweet. But then his smile faltered. “Are you sure you still want me, Cassian? I feel so broken now. I’m worried that I’ll hear these screams for the rest of my life. Like I’ll forever be flopping around in that water, cold and frightened and panicked and barely keeping afloat. I’m... oh, it’s pathetic, but I’m honestly not sure how I’ll survive it.”
“You won’t hear them forever. I promise,” Cassian said. “It’s only been a few hours since everything happened. Hasn’t it been said thattimeis what heals all wounds?”
“Has it really only been a few hours?” James asked. “Every minute feels like an hour, then. Or more. Time itself is moving strangely, if it reallyhasonly been that long. You could have said that a week had passed since the sinking and I’d have believed you. I feel like it was a whole lifetime ago when I was working my last shift in the Smoking Room. And yet, at the same time, I can still hear people struggling in the water—people meeting such a horrible end while we were balancing on the collapsible. It’s like I’m still there.”
Cassian breathed in those heart-wrenching words, and the wretched pain that followed then rattled in his chest, making his exhale come out in a shudder. He himself still felt for brief flashes here and there as though he was back in the water, and if he let himself really consider how harrowing it was, if he let himself imagine the pain and fear that others had been feeling in their final moments, it was as though he was back there with them, feeling it too. He could only imagine how it was for James, then. Someoneso sensitive and sweet and unequivocallygood. But Cassian still believed that they’d move past this one day.
Out on the ocean, they’d had the lifeboat to save them. Here and now and forever more, they’d have each other. And he knew, in his heart, that they’d make it through.
“I know how you’re feeling,” Cassian said softly. “Or, at least I knowa little bithow you’re feeling. You and I were clearly not fashioned by God in the same manner when it comes to emotions and sympathy and things, so I can’t pretend that I am experiencing the whole of everything we witnessed and endured inpreciselythe same way as you. But Iamfeelingsomethingabout it all. Everyone who survived the night must be. We’reallstill reeling from it. You aren’t alone in that.” He took a brief pause to consider how to convey what he wanted to convey, his brow creasing as he searched for the right words. “But every single one of us will escape the water eventually. You will. I will. Ethel will. John will. Even Ingrid will, somehow.” He cupped James’s cheek. “You willnotbe flopping around in the Atlantic forever, James Thomas Morrow. Because I won’t let that happen. In fact, I forbid it.”
James’s mouth curled into a little, uncertain smile, and Cassian smiled back.
“You’re ordering me to survive it, then?” James asked, a playful lilt in his voice.
Cassian was so Goddamned happy to hear it.
“I am. AndIwill be your lifeboat. Whenever you need me to hold you or console you or even only sit with you, I’ll be there. I promise you, youwillmake it through this. We willbothmake it through this. Together.”
James’s bottom lip quivered, and Cassian leaned forward to kiss it. Once. Twice. Three times. He kissed James’s lips and cheeks and nose, and then he kissed every inch of James’s face, hoping to impress upon him just how precious he was. After some time,James began to match Cassian’s energy, reciprocating. He, too, kissed Cassian’s mouth and cheeks and nose and everywhere else. And then, James took Cassian’s face in his hands and tipped their foreheads together.
“You can be my lifeboat if I can be yours, too,” he said.
“Always.”
“You and I—we’ll make it through this,” James said, his voice filled with conviction and care, as though maybe he was hoping to reassure them both.
“Yes, James, we will,” Cassian echoed, a small, hopeful smile pulling at the corners of his lips.
“Together.”
“Together.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
James
April 15, 1912
2:22 p.m.
For the last several hours, James and Cassian had been cuddling and kissing and intermittently falling into light, fitful slumbers in their borrowed stateroom. Even Cassian, as emotionally hard as he was in comparison to James, seemed not to be able to rest fully, so fresh was the trauma of the sinking for them both. James, though, only ever managed to flutter his eyes closed for a minute or two here and there before becoming seized with panic and startling awake each time.
