Page 43 of Shades of Henry
Taller than Lance or Henry, with dark blond hair and glass-green eyes, thin in a way that said he was coming back from an injury or an illness, there was still a swagger to Jackson Rivers that suggested he’d spent a long time trying to be self-sufficient.
The fact that he’d stood by a crime scene, bleeding, while he’d talked to the investigating officer and had needed to be cajoled into the bathroom of the apartment to get treated told Lance a lot about this man, other than that he hated hospitals.
Jackson Rivers’s absolutely last priority was Jackson Rivers.
Lance wasn’t excited about what that could mean for Henry. Under Lance’s hands, Jackson twitched and held up his hand, then grabbed his phone and motioned for Lance to continue.
Lance concentrated on the stitching while listening to Jackson lie, bald-faced, to Ellery Cramer—who sounded like a boyfriend and not someone he was “boning”—about what he was doing. Jackson finished the call, and Lance went back to working on him. Lance played doctor like the pro he was—finished stitching the hurt, tried to give Jackson advice about maybe telling his boyfriend about the wound, but in the end, Jackson was distracted by the case.
And his color didn’t look good. It was hot outside, and Rivers had bled a lot, and he looked pretty shocky, in fact. It pissed Lance off that Rivers wouldn’t sit still long enough after being treated for Lance to get a bead on him.
Jackson ran to ask Curtis some questions, and Lance turned to Henry, frowning. “This guy? You’re trusting yourself to this guy? Did you just hear him lie to his boyfriend—”
“Because Cramer would lock him in a cage to keep him safe,” Henry said staunchly. “Look, I know it seems dysfunctional—”
“Not seems, Henry. That wasn’t normal. I’m stitching the guy up and he’s like, ‘No, it’s fine, everything is fine, see you tonight!’”
Henry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “But did you also see him freak out about the super? Take care of Curtis? And those were guys he didn’t know. I mean, me, he sort of, I dunno, feels responsible for. He fought a guy with a knife who had the drop on him, Lance, and after he got stabbed, he still ran the guy down. I mean, I know you’ve got high standards, but even that has got to be tough enough!”
“You’re pissed at him too!” Lance snapped, because Henry had been glaring disapprovingly as well when Jackson had done his tap dance with the truth.
“Well, yeah. But he thinks I’m an asshole, so I can yell at him. I want him tolikeyou.”
Lance raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Because….” Henry bit his lip and smiled gamely and then scowled. “Whatever. Can we just not piss off the guy? We’re going to go check out Sampson’s father’s practice. Rivers has some ideas about why his old man might have been the one to bump Martin off.”
Lance recoiled. “That’shorrible!”
Henry nodded. “Totally. But if it keeps me out of jail, it’s worth knowing.”
And then Lance had a terrible, terrible realization. “Youlikethis!” he said in horror.
“Well….” Henry shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “It’s exciting.”
“I just put ten stitches into that man’s back!” Lance protested, a feeling of panic taking him over. “What if that was you?”
Henry’s crooked smile almost blinded him, and he pointed to the butterfly bandage over his eyebrow and his battered knuckles. “It was me. I’m okay. You helped.”
Lance’s eyes grew huge, but at that moment, Jackson Rivers called them both into Curtis’s room and made them promise to say Curtis had been in his room the whole time, to keep him out of the investigation.
Lance got it right away. Curtis’s skin color had the potential of making the cops go rougher on him than they might have for, say, Cotton. Lance hadn’t had to deal with too much crap because of his Filipino coloring or the shape of his eyes, but he knew what Rivers was saying.
After watching Henry with Rivers, Lance had a sudden realization.
Henry had arrived on his doorstep thinking his life, his career, everything about him was over, because his biggest mistake had become the sum of his existence.
But something about the last two days—the last two months, really—had been teaching him that he could make mistakes and learn from them. That his life wasn’t over, that he was, in fact, a work in progress.
Oh. That was a little bit promising. Works in progress were… were growing, were learning new things.
Could fall in love.
Lance watched as Henry grabbed the scrubs he’d been wearing the night before—now freshly cleaned—and followed Rivers out the door.
“Text me!” Lance said weakly as the door was closing, and Henry turned to him seriously and nodded.
“Swear.” He smiled then, and Lance could see the joy, the purpose. Yeah. This whole situation was fucked-up, but it apparently was teaching Henry something awesome about life, and maybe Lance needed him to see that before they moved forward any further.
