“You mean it?” Lucas asked, voice small.
Jonathan nodded. “I mean it. And I’m sorry. Not the kind of sorry that tries to fix it with gifts. The kind of sorry that changes what I do.”
Lucas stared at him like he was trying to tell if it was true.
Elena didn’t speak. She simply stayed present, like a steady hand on a railing.
Lucas whispered, “I don’t want you to watch me cry.”
Jonathan’s eyes burned. “Okay,” he said. “Then I won’t.”
For a long moment, the room was quiet except for the soft hum of the heating system.
Then Lucas said, very quietly, “Can we eat the pastries?”
Jonathan laughed, a wet sound. “Yes. Please.”
It wasn’t a grand healing scene.
It was sugar and crumbs and the beginning of something like a truce.
Removing the cameras took three days.
Jonathan hired a different security company, one Elena vetted with calm suspicion. They moved through the house like careful thieves, dismantling tiny eyes hidden in ordinary objects.
Lucas insisted on being present for every removal.
Not because he wanted to punish Jonathan.
Because he wanted proof.
Each time a camera came out, Lucas exhaled like a room losing pressure.
When it was done, Jonathan stood in the living room with Lucas and Elena and looked around as if seeing his home for the first time.
It felt bigger without the hidden watching.
It also felt riskier.
Jonathan had to sit with that discomfort.
He learned that trust is a muscle, and his had been atrophied.
Lucas’s trust didn’t snap back into place like a rubber band. Some days he was warm. Some days he was sharp. Some days he watched Jonathan like he expected him to vanish behind work again.
Elena kept rhythm through all of it.
She brought a small speaker into the therapy room and played music during exercises. Not loud, not pop-star dramatic, just steady beats that gave Lucas something to latch onto when his muscles shook.
She taught Lucas a simple drumming pattern with his hands on the armrests of his chair.
She tapped back.
She turned the mansion into a place with sound.
Jonathan began to realize how silent the house had been before, not because it lacked people, but because it lacked ease.
One afternoon, Lucas rolled into Jonathan’s office and said, “I want to go outside.”
Jonathan blinked. “Outside?”
Lucas lifted his chin. “Not the patio. Like… outside-outside. The park.”
Jonathan’s first instinct was to calculate risk. Weather. Accessibility. Medical needs. People staring.
Elena, standing in the doorway with a laundry basket, raised an eyebrow as if she could read his thoughts like subtitles.
Jonathan exhaled. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go to the park.”
Lucas’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Jonathan stood. “Really.”
It took longer than Jonathan expected. Packing a bag. Loading the chair lift into the SUV. Making sure Lucas had gloves. Lucas rolling his eyes at Jonathan’s checklist like it was a personal insult.
But they did it.
They went to a park where kids ran like thrown stones, where dogs chased frisbees, where the air smelled like pine and cold dirt.
Lucas watched the runners for a long time, face unreadable.
Jonathan waited, not filling the silence with reassurance.
Finally Lucas said, softly, “It’s weird.”
Jonathan nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m jealous,” Lucas admitted.
Jonathan’s throat tightened. “Yeah.”
Lucas looked at him. “You’re not going to say I shouldn’t be?”
Jonathan swallowed. “No,” he said. “You can be jealous. You can be angry. You can be whatever you are.”
Lucas stared for a moment, then looked away, blinking fast.
A gust of wind rattled the bare trees.
Lucas said, quietly, “Elena says different doesn’t mean gone.”
Jonathan nodded. “She’s right.”
Lucas’s fingers tapped a rhythm on his armrest. Unconsciously.
Jonathan recognized it.
The spoon rhythm.
The breathing rhythm.
A language being built.
Jonathan said, “Do you want to try something?”
Lucas eyed him. “Like what?”
Jonathan pointed toward a paved loop path where a man pushed a racing wheelchair, arms pumping like pistons. The chair moved fast, sleek and built for speed.
Lucas leaned forward. “What is that?”
“A racing chair,” Jonathan said. “Adaptive sports. I… I looked it up.”
Lucas’s eyes widened. “You did?”
Jonathan nodded, sheepish. “I’m trying to be less… ghost.”
Lucas snorted. “Good.”
Jonathan smiled. “If you want, we can try it. We can find a program.”
Lucas’s hands stopped tapping.
He stared at the racer, then at the path, then down at his own chair like it was suddenly a different object.
“Maybe,” Lucas whispered.
Jonathan felt something bloom in his chest.
Not certainty.
Not control.
Hope, careful and real, like a small flame shielded from wind.
The climax didn’t arrive as a neat moment.
It arrived as a test.
Two weeks later, Jonathan hosted a charity gala at the mansion, the kind of event he used to throw with ease. Investors and donors and city officials, people who wore expensive clothes and spoke in polished sentences.
Jonathan hadn’t wanted to do it. The event had been scheduled months ago, before Elena, before camera removal, before Jonathan’s new fragile routine.
But canceling would have triggered questions, and Jonathan’s company was in the middle of a sensitive merger. He needed stability in public, even while learning how to be unstable in private.
So the gala happened.
The house filled with laughter that wasn’t Lucas’s. Music that wasn’t Elena’s. Conversations that sounded like transactions.
Lucas, dressed in a navy blazer, sat at the top of the staircase landing, watching people below like he was observing a species he didn’t trust.
Jonathan moved through the crowd, shaking hands, smiling on command, while his stomach twisted with worry.
Elena stayed close to Lucas, a quiet anchor.
At nine p.m., a man Jonathan recognized approached the staircase.
Mark Dresser.
Head of security for Jonathan’s company.
Tall, polished, the kind of guy who always looked like he was ready to step between danger and whatever mattered. Mark had been the one who originally recommended the discreet camera setup years ago.
Jonathan’s skin prickled.
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