Page 28 of The Lost Art of Woodworking and Taking Risks
“I’m going to work in a fashion shop!” Dorana declared. “We’re already talking about the apprenticeship! I want to own a shop one day!”
Chamis and Bennan both congratulated her.
“You can make my clothes,” Halna offered. “Then I’ll be the prettiest Warrior, and everyone will want to buy clothes from your shop.”
They nodded firmly at one another, like everything had been decided. Chamis wondered if it would stick, or if they’d realize they wanted to do something else. Well, there was still time.
After dinner, as he helped his mother with the dishes, she admitted, “He’s not what Iexpected.”
Chamis’s eyes strayed involuntarily back to Bennan, who was playing some sort of board game with his sisters because his mother had insisted he was a guest and shouldn’t help clean up.
She laid a hand on his arm. “I would never have guessed that you’d fit with a man like that, but I can see how you do. And how happy you are.”
Chamis felt like he practically glowed with it, so that wasn’t a surprise.
“I really am, Mum.”
She nodded. “He looks at you like you hung the moon.”
Chamis felt his heart swell.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, Chamis, absolutely. I’m so glad you found him.”
“Me, too, Mum.”
Sometimes, he couldn’t understand how he could be so lucky.
Squished into a bed in the attic because his sisters had got his room when he moved away, Bennan ran his fingers over Chamis’s ribs, but Chamis wasn’t ticklish.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this,” Bennan said.
“Is it all right?” Chamis asked, suddenly anxious.
He’d wanted it to be agoodsurprise.
Bennan stopped trying to tickle him, looking up at him, startled.
“Oh, sweetheart, it was thebestsurprise. I’m so delighted you wanted me to meet your family; I just would have brought different clothes to wear.”
Chamis laughed and pressed kisses all over his face: his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips.
“They loved you,” Chamis assured him.
“Really?”
Chamis nodded, hesitated for a moment, then swallowed the lump in his throat and told his butterflies that this was going to be all right. In a voice that trembled a little more than he was hoping, he said, “Almost as much as I love you.”
Bennan let out a surprised huff of breath, and then his face lit up in the brightest grin Chamis had ever seen.
“I love you too. I love you so much!”
Chamis had been… pretty sure. But actually saying the words made a difference. He knew they could be empty, that people sometimes said them and didn’t mean them, but with the two of them, with everything they’d built between them… Well, Chamis meant it with all his heart, and he believed Bennan did, too.
Chamis had actually told Bennan he loved him out loud, and those words had been returned enthusiastically. In fact, the declaration was followed by a very enthusiastic physical demonstration of how much they loved one another. It was glorious, even if they were trying to be extra quiet because he was now sleeping under his mother’s roof, and there would be nothing more embarrassing than waking his mother or his sisters because he and Bennan were making love too loudly. But it was worth it.
Sleepy and sated, they lay in one another’s arms afterwards and stared up at the ceiling.
