His Horizon - Con Riley Page 0,106

to hide his happiness when maybe he should have felt awkward. Even hearing Rob’s name this many miles from home lifted his spirits so much that he couldn’t keep from grinning. “Yeah. That sounds like Rob.” In fact, hiding how he felt to spare anyone’s feelings was impossible. He couldn’t do it now, and never would again, Jude knew. Rob had given everything that he owned to make Jude happy. He deserved more—everything—so Jude was going to give it. “I’m seriously invested in him, as well,” he said.

Tom considered that before nodding. “Didn’t have you pegged as the settling-down type.”

“Me either,” Jude confessed. “But don’t knock it until you try it.”

“Oh, I think that ship sailed long ago for me.” His eyes narrowed. “Does he know what you need before you do?”

“So often it’s annoying.”

“And he’s easy on the eye as well?” He sighed when Jude nodded. “Then you’d be a fool if you didn’t try your best to keep him.” He finished by saying, “Good for you,” and Jude believed that he meant it.

Tom asked their driver to take them to the far side of the hospital, something that Jude only understood when he noticed the gaggle of reporters at the hospital front door. “Your parents are quite a big news story.” He showed them the way to the right floor, leaving them with a doctor who explained a laundry list of minor injuries and infections that Jude couldn’t tune into. The doors of the room they headed towards seemed to recede no matter how fast he walked. He broke away, trotting first, then running, Louise hot on his heels as he barged into a room that held two strangers. “Oh. I’m so sorry—” he started before Louise asked, “Mum?” her voice tiny.

Jude discovered that time could speed up as well as slow after that first drawn-out moment. His heart tugged against the strings that bound it, skipping beats before lurching, just as Jude did across the room on legs that barely carried him to the chair where his dad tried to rise to meet him. His father’s embrace made every single too-long, too-lonely moment spent searching worthwhile, each endless hour a labour of love he’d have continued forever if it meant getting to hear his dad’s gruff whisper thanking God, over and over, as though the sight of Jude and Louise was something he too had prayed night and day for.

And while the next hours were jumbled, crowded with medics running through test results, and with consulate officials sent to steer their way through a sea of media attention, all Jude took in was how his dad hung onto his hand as if Jude was his anchor, which reminded him so much—so fucking much—of how Rob had turned out to be his.

He felt that truth despite the distance between them, Porthperrin a whole world away from this city’s foreign bustle. Rob was his anchor and more, each horizon between here and home sure to be empty without him as Jude’s focus. He saw similar in his parents, both tracking each other’s movements, conscious of each other in a way that needed no words—hadn’t his whole childhood—but Jude dug deep and found some. They slipped out, but he meant them. He needed his dad to know from the outset of this second chance they’d been gifted.

“I wish… I wish Rob was here.”

“Rob?” His mum asked when his dad was silent, light pouring through the window turning her sun-bleached hair into a halo.

“Me too,” Louise agreed. “I’m not sure we’d be here without him.” She met their dad’s gaze and held it. “Or without Trevor. We’d never have found you without him, but it was Rob who found Trevor for us.”

His dad’s reply was hoarse. “Really?”

Jude was certain. “Yes. Rob’s been amazing this whole time.” He took a breath that for once didn’t feel like it might be his last, one that fear of judgement couldn’t cling to, not when everything they’d made happen together was so good. How could he feel otherwise when Rob had rewritten the end of his family’s story? Jude focussed on his mum’s far too thin face, drawing strength after he saw Louise’s quick nod in the periphery of his vision. His extended exhale was a release, carrying words that he once would have left deeply buried.

He was honest, and it felt easy.

“My boyfriend is amazing.” It didn’t matter, Jude decided, whether his dad maintained the silence that Jude grew up hearing as loud as