The Missing Page (Page & Sommers #2)

by Cat Sebastian

The more Leo thought about it, the less he liked it. Leo had read this detective story and he had seen the film and knew that when you made the heirs gather together, they immediately started putting exotic poisons into one another’s tea. They simply couldn’t help themselves.

Over half an hour passed, and still Leo hadn’t returned. James’s first thought, naturally, was that the car had exploded.

In December they had—stumblingly, mortifyingly—agreed that they enjoyed being together in and out of bed and agreed to keep doing that. But surely it couldn’t be that simple. Surely James didn’t get to have someone like Leo in his life and keep him there just because he wanted it.

It was wildly frustrating, one of the chief inadequacies of the English language as far as James was concerned, that there were no words to express exactly what James felt about Leo, and what Leo meant to him.

“Now go to sleep,” James said, kissing Leo’s temple. “You like to take care of me,” Leo said. “If you’re only figuring that out now, you must be a terrible spy.”

They had spent enough nights together, enough mornings together, that it was no longer practical to count them (it was thirty-two).

But now he knew those worries were baseless; where another person might lie awake worrying about burglars or housefires, James worried about his mind. The worry would always be there, but he knew it to be far-fetched.

Before James disappeared up the stairs, he paused for a moment, looking at Leo. He often did this before taking his leave, in that fleeting space of time when a man might kiss a girlfriend or his wife. Leo had grown to look forward to those tiny moments, when somehow James managed to convey in a single glance the easy affection that a kiss on the cheek might do.

All day he had been wearing a pair of trousers and a jumper that belonged to James, and James wondered if Leo knew that James always got a bit of a thrill seeing him in clothing he had borrowed—or outright stolen—from James.

The realization that his list of priorities began and ended with national secrets and James Sommers, and probably not even in that order, didn’t come as a surprise.

“No, listen. I’m not inviting you into my life,” James said. “I’m trying to live my life with you.” That wasn’t quite right either. “I want us to live our lives together. Or a life.” “Still think you’re mad.” “Could be. But if you were—if I were—Christ almighty, if it were possible, I’d have had you at the registrar’s office weeks ago.”

“The trouble is that I love you,” he said. “And it’s ruined me for gainful employment.”

“If you want,” James said, so casually, as if he didn’t know Leo was standing a few inches away from him slowly losing his mind.

Every we, every our sounded like percussive notes, like a bell ringing out the unlikely truth of the words, and Leo wanted to keep saying them again and again.