Chris did have to carry Jamie home that night. Between them, Chris and Natalie managed to get him into a Secret Service car at around two in the morning, so drunk he could barely stand, and he passed out in the back. Chris had to put Jamie over his shoulder to carry him up the stairs once they got back to the Hamptons house and dumped him onto the bed. He started to undo the buttons on Jamie’s suit jacket when Natalie put her hand on his and shook her head.
“Don’t do that,” she said quietly.
“He’s wearing a suit that costs more than two months of my salary,” Chris protested.
Natalie just shook her head again. “And he can afford to get another one if he ruins it.”
Chris frowned but released his hold on the button he’d been about to unfasten. Boomer bounced past them both and onto the bed, curling up near Jamie’s waist on top of the covers. Jamie himself was out for the count, mouth open and slack, lips swollen and reddened from constant biting. Chris smoothed an errant lock of hair back from Jamie’s forehead, smiling at how beautiful he was, even when passed out and snoring.
Jamie had got drunk because it was what people had expected of him, not what he had really wanted to do. Chris had got the feeling that Jamie would have been quite happy drinking until he was on the edge of being too drunk, then going home. The president had been escorted home hours earlier by Secret Service, leaving Chris and Natalie in charge of seeing her son home safely. The party had got a little wilder after the hurried text conversation that revealed both Natalie’s knowledge of their relationship and Aunt Helen’s. The latter hadn’t surprised Chris as much as it might have, considering what had happened in the car after the Met incident—she’d already known then, possibly even known from the first time Chris had met her.
Natalie broke into his train of thought when she placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up from the unconscious Jamie.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“Sure,” Chris replied with a sigh. They needed Natalie on their side, needed her to keep their secret, if only for the next few days.
They left Jamie’s room, leaving the door slightly open, and went back down the stairs. Chris followed Natalie into the kitchen and slid onto one of the stools at the counter and removed his earpiece.
Natalie sat opposite and folded her arms on the counter. “Okay, tell me everything.”
Chris did. He started with the conversation with Jamie on the plane that sparked Chris’s change of opinion about him. He told Natalie about the pool, about the VA and when he started realizing just how wonderful Jamie actually was. Chris told her about Jamie’s nightmare, about the first time they spent the night together and how he started understanding just how much he had started to care about him by then.
Talking about it, Chris could pinpoint the exact moment that he knew he was in love with Jamie—it had been the morning that their relationship had propelled forward. It had been sunny, Chris had been driving Jamie back from their coffee run, and Jamie’s feet had been on the dash, his head pillowed on the car window and his eyes closed as he quietly sang along to whatever had been on the iPod. It had been the simplest thing—Jamie had slowly opened his eyes and smiled at him. That’s all it had taken.
Chris could have crashed the car, so distracted by the warmth that had flooded his chest and the breath that had caught in his lungs, forcing himself to tear his eyes away to watch the road again. That night, he had gone to grab a bag of potato chips and they had toppled onto the sofa, Chris landing on Jamie’s chest and their mouths almost touching, and Chris had known for sure that he was a goner.
Natalie listened to it all, her expression blank, giving nothing away until Chris had finished the story and looked at her with apprehension.
“Well, Chris,” she said, unpinning her hair, “this is a pickle you have yourself in.”
“I know,” he replied, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Like I say, I didn’t intend to fall for him. It just happened.”
Nat looked carefully at him for a moment. “But you’re going to tell the president about it by the end of the week?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to risk losing your job over a guy that you’ve known for a month?”
Chris sighed. “Nat…I have never felt this way about anybody in my whole life. I know it’s stupid and reckless and so damn fast, but I’m in love with him. I don’t want to sneak around behind anybody’s back; I don’t want to be a sordid little secret. It’s killing me that I can’t just wrap my arms around him in front of everybody, that we can’t go out for dinner together, that I can’t tell my friends that I’ve met the most amazing person in the world who makes me so happy I could burst. I don’t care if it’s been one month or one year, I don’t care if it costs me my job. I just want to be with him.”
Natalie smiled at him as she shook her hair free of the last pin. “It’s wonderful that you’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not lying.”
“I know. The truth is written so plainly on your face that I’m almost a little embarrassed at how whipped you are!”
A snort of mirth left Chris involuntarily. He grinned and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, well…” he said with a shrug.
Natalie squeezed his forearm. “You’re a good guy, Chris. I’m not going to give anything away—keeping secrets is one thing I’m really good at, but you need to be a hundred percent sure that you know what you’re getting into. I’m not just talking about Jamie’s plethora of problems and PTSD. I mean all the shit that comes with being famous—paparazzi that’ll hound you when you walk down the street and take pictures of you out for coffee. I’m talking about all the dicks that’ll call you exploitative and an opportunist, all the bigots that will call you all the disgusting names under the sun. Is Jamie worth that?”
Chris gave her one small smile and nodded. “Yes, he’s worth it.”
* * * *
The pounding in Jamie’s head woke him up. His tongue felt thick, his mouth dry like he’d been sucking on cotton wool and his head felt like somebody had replaced his brain with a cannonball. He was on his front, and he was still dressed in his suit from the night before. He tried to move and immediately regretted it, groaning into the pillow as his head threatened to burst wide open.
“Good morning, soldier,” said a familiar voice from the bottom of the bed.
“Shh…” he mumbled back. “You’re shouting, Natalie.”
“I’m barely even speaking above a whisper!” she replied loudly and Jamie felt her prod his leg with her foot. “Come on, Barratt, roll over and take your hangover cure like a good boy.”
“Well, that sounds vaguely kinky,” he said, unable to hold back a smile, despite the immense pain he was in.
“Only in your dreams,” Natalie responded cheerfully.
He rolled over and found her standing at the bottom of his bed and holding a glass of water, a pack of Advil, and some dry crackers, which he gratefully took from her. “Did I ever tell you that you’re an angel?”
Natalie snorted as she climbed onto the bed and lay next to him as he swallowed his pills and sank back into the pillows, tentatively nibbling at a cracker.
“There are many things you have called me, James Barratt, but angel was never one of them.” Natalie turned her head and smiled at him.
Jamie managed to smile back and took another bite of cracker. “Where’s Chris?”
“Walking Boomer with your mother,” Nat replied. “Which is good, because it gives me the opportunity to ask what the fuck you think you’re doing with that poor sweet boy.”
James groaned, covering his face with his free hand. It was all coming back now.
Natalie knew. Aunt Helen knew. This was the reason he had the hangover from hell.
“You’re not going to tell my mother, are you?”
“What are you, twelve?” Nat said with a raised eyebrow. “No, I’m not going to tell your mother, but it’s more for Chris’s sake than yours. You should know better!”
“I know!” Jamie groaned into his hand. “I tried, Nat. I really tried.”
“Obviously not hard enough. Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?”
Jamie took his hand away from his face and looked at Natalie with narrowed eyes. “It’s nothing like that Natalie,” he replied. “This is…very different.”
Nat was quiet and Jamie sighed, taking another nibble of his cracker and thoughtfully chewing it.
“You know when you go through life and you have good relationships and bad relationships, and great sex and terrible sex, and you do well and you mess up, and you think this is it, this is how life is? And then somebody comes into your life and turns your whole world upside down. Everything you thought you knew about your life, everything you thought you knew about loving somebody is just thrown out the window, because you’ve never felt this way before. And it’s terrifying, but at the same time, it’s the only time of your life where you’re not afraid anymore. You finally have something real, something worth fighting for, something worth protecting, worth doing right. Because this one person…you feel that this one person is the only one you were ever meant to be with.” He breathed deep, staring at the ceiling.
Natalie propped herself up on her elbow. “Damn it, Barratt. You seriously are in love with him, aren’t you?”
Jamie gave Nat a rueful smile. “One hundred percent.”
“Wow,” she mused. “This is something. James Thomas Barratt is finally ready to settle down with somebody. No more party orgies?”
“Oh come on, Nat! I was never that bad!” He laughed.
His head didn’t hurt quite as much anymore. In fact, nothing hurt quite as much anymore. James had been harboring these feelings for Chris and hadn’t had anyone to confess to before now. But he had history with Natalie—they had lain together like this before; they had talked and shared secrets. They were friends and it felt amazing to talk to her about this.
Natalie kissed his temple and left him to finish his crackers and the glass of water she’d brought.
He stripped off his suit and carefully draped it over the chair in the corner of the room before thoroughly soaking himself under a hot shower, allowing the water to run over his face and into his mouth before spitting it out, like a measured drowning.
It was only when he’d dried off, put on fresh underwear and slipped back into bed that he realized his entire conversation with Natalie had actually been held in Russian.