Three million . . .
Every determined shade that had flickered over O’Hara’s face made sense now. The stakes . . .
And he’d . . . hitched his wagon to Jonathan.
“We all wondered why he paired with you,” Nash said lightly. “Of course, now . . . it makes sense.”
Curled in O’Hara’s sheets, propped up on his pillows, Jonathan scrolled through all O’Hara’s posts. Right from the first. Right from the month after O’Hara had quietly grieved for Jonathan’s loss. Oizys. Penthos. Achilles and the death of Patroclus. . . .
When morning light poured into the room, Jonathan tore himself from the screen.
He charged his phone. Ate. Checked in on Savvy.
Climbed back into O’Hara’s bed and kept going.
He’d seen all these posts before, of course he had. But they felt different now. Each one, a personal message . . .
At some point, exhaustion carried him into chaotic dreams, and when he woke again, it was dinnertime.
He didn’t know what to say to O’Hara when he called, laughing down the line. But he absorbed the delight and filed it in its rightful place, deep in his chest.
On Saturday, O’Hara called again. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Hm.”
“I don’t have to fly back today after all.” Relief.
“You don’t want to meet me here.”
“Was that . . . a question?”
Jonathan shook his head to O’Hara’s wall of photos. “No.”
He understood. Watching Jonathan discover all his tender secrets . . . It was exposing. Intimate in a way they hadn’t been before.
He said into the silence, “I’ll be home tomorrow.”
Relieved laughter trickled down the line. “I’ll be on the hunt for pasteis de natas!”
Jonathan rubbed at his chest. “Let’s focus on today’s challenge.”
O’Hara hesitated, then, with quiet urgency that Jonathan only now sensed under laughter, “I have a plan I think could work—”
“Anything.”
Split screen. On the left, Jonathan lying on O’Hara’s bed. On the right, O’Hara lying on Jonathan’s bed. They seem to face one another, as if sharing one space.
Jonathan, “Tell me a story.”
O’Hara, “This is one of oldest happily ever afters in written history.”
Whispered, “Go on.”
“A king. A soldier. A genius. More importantly, a husband, a father. This is the story of Odysseus and Penelope’s undying love despite twenty years apart. A story of loyalty, and trust, and true love. . . .”
Chapter Thirteen
Social Challenge 8: (I would do) Anything for Love
The following morning, Jonathan returned O’Hara’s key and hesitated at Nash’s slowly closing door.
“Wait.” The door stopped groaning and Nash rearranged his weight on his cane. “How did you know about . . .”
A dark brow lifted. “When I first moved in, I told him I knew someone in New Zealand. My . . . cousin.” Nash’s eyelashes shuttered briefly and he straightened. “When I mentioned he lived near Nelson, he froze and I knew he’d left someone important there. But when I asked if he ever wanted to go back, he just said he was where he needed to be.”
Of course.
The moment he’d taken young Nash in, he couldn’t come back home.
“You know, sometimes it feels like . . .”
“What?” It came out a rasp.
Nash cocked his head. He opened his mouth and closed it again, pensive. He said carefully, “Like he wants to prove his worth.”
Jonathan picked up his car from long-term parking and headed for home under a silver-clouded sky. His phone rang as he passed the square and he answered on speaker. Savvy. Panicking.
“Slow down. Again.”
“We were walking from the bakery, then O’Hara spots Mr Cranky. In a rowboat somehow—he’s halfway to the island, and it looks like something’s wrong!”
That damned old rowboat.
“O’Hara’s going to row out to him in your dinghy.”
He stiffened in his seat. O’Hara, rowing . . .
“Stall him.”
“Are you . . . close?”
“Thirty seconds.”
Less. He pressed his foot on the accelerator. One turn, and the second. He braked with a squeal, double parked, and charged down the docks. Cool air smacked his face and his shoes pounded over the wet wood. Their cove was protected from harsh winds and waves, but the surface still chopped wildly.
In the distance, not quite at the island, Mr Cranky was bailing water out of his boat. Jonathan tightened his fists and ran faster. What was the man’s obsession with this island? He’d struggle to swim without the use of his legs. He could die.
Savvy knelt at the end of the jetty, an abandoned wheelchair behind them, the dinghy’s mooring rope in their hand. O’Hara was already picking up the oars.
“Let go, Savvy. I have to help him.”
“Not without me.” Jonathan tossed Savvy his car keys; they let go of the rope to catch them against their chest. “In case anyone needs to move my car.”
The dinghy rocked violently when he landed. O’Hara stared at him like he was some kind of apparition, green eyes widened with surprise, a slight flush on his cheeks. The oars froze under his grasp.