“Yes,” James said without even the slightest bit of hesitation.
Cassian clenched his teeth and winced. James spoke again.
“But he . . . passed.”
Cassian let out a breath of relief, and his stomach soured not one second later, guilt settling there. It took him a moment to find some comforting words and then even longer to muster the will to say them.
“May he rest in God’s peace,” he finally said.
James’s lips curled into the smallest hint of a smile. “Thank you.”
But sorrow lingered in the man’s beautiful blue eyes.
“Are you still... hurting?” Cassian asked, squeezing James’s hands a little tighter.
“Only sometimes.”
Cassian let a wave of relief crash into him. He hated to imagine James caught in the throes of grief. Even only imagining it for a mere couple of seconds...
Cassian’s chest tightened, and he shut his eyes.
“Not often, I hope,” he said.
“No, not often,” James confirmed. Cassian opened his eyes, and James’s blues flickered up to meet them. “I’m all right, Cassian.”
James’s reassurance echoed in Cassian’s ears, but Cassian still found himself confronted with the profound need to further comfort his exceptional friend. Heart hammering, Cassian pressed a featherlight kiss to James’s head, into his hair.
Immediately thereafter, Cassian began to tremble, his subsequent thoughts and emotions too violent, too strong, too perplexing to make sense of. Soon, even Cassian’s teeth began to chatter, and he had the fleeting idea that they ought to exit the water, but, oh, he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving.
“Should we go?” James asked. “You’re shaking.”
“Not yet,” Cassian said, a pleading edge to his voice that was so strangely foreign to his ears. “One more minute.”
James smiled up at him and then closed his eyes.
“One more.”
Cassian shut his eyes too.
One more.
Chapter Ten
James
After reaching the reception area on B-Deck, James and Cassian both paused ahead of the corridor that led to the staterooms. James’s stomach sank as he turned to face Cassian, but he forced what felt like a weary smile and hoped that it was still convincing. Even though he would have liked to walk Cassian to his room, the cabin steward who had been tasked with handling the keys would have probably thought it strange. Therefore, James and Cassian would soon be forced to part. And James knew that neither of them was ready for it.
Cassian seemed to have been in a state of mild shock ever since their time together in the swimming bath. His eyes had a faraway look about them, his movements stiff and stilted. James hadn’t meant for their time together to have become so physically intimate in the pool, but it seemed as though neither of them had been able to resist the closeness. And while James knew what his own feelings were—he was irrevocably in love with Cassian now; he was certain—he wasn’t so sure that Cassian knew his own. Yes, Cassian still planned to marry Ethel—that much was clear—but it seemed as though the poor man was struggling to know how to handle whatever thissomethingwas between them. It was obviousto James that Cassian felt some sort of something for him, though he wasn’t certain what that something was. Attraction, at the very least. And friendship. Friendship that was... imbued with such fervent tenderness, James was finding it hard to believe that it was entirely platonic.
Or perhaps that was simply wishful thinking on his part.
Selfishly, JameswantedCassian to have feelings for him. Romantic ones. But he knew, too, that by wanting Cassian to somehow fall in love with him, he was essentially hoping for Cassian to suffer heartbreak as well, for their time together was, unfortunately and conclusively, limited.
Cassian had a life waiting for him in New York. One without James in it. It was one thing for James to break his own heart by falling for an unobtainable man, but it felt like quite another to be hoping for the man he now loved to suffer the same fate.
Looking into Cassian’s brown eyes—still somewhat unfocused but filled with unmistakable melancholy—James’s chest began to ache. Oh, God, howdesperatelyhe wanted Cassian to be happy. He wanted it more than anything.
“Here we are, I suppose,” James said, fighting to keep the lightness in his voice. “I had a lot of fun tonight.”
