The Bodyguard's Duty ✅

Chapter 52 - Following The Heart

One late night and Thomas suddenly woke up in his bed alone. After not seeing Ethan within his vicinity, Thomas slowly got out of the bed to find him.

After calling his name, Thomas walked towards the other voice and found Ethan hiding in the kitchen. "What are you doing?"

Ethan turned back to face Thomas with a tub of ice cream in one hand, and a used spoon in the other. "Stress eating."

Thomas placed a kiss on the top of Ethan's head as he then moved past him to sit down together. "Doesn't ice cream give you nightmares when you eat if before sleeping?"

Ethan shrugged his shoulders as he then placed a large spoonful of cookie dough ice cream into his mouth. Ethan continued to stare at the delicious treat in front of him as he continued to indulge in the ice cream.

Thomas was tempted by the frozen treat as he wanted some too. "Give me a spoon."

Ethan nodded his head as he then gave Thomas a spoonful himself. Ethan was in the middle of feeding himself when he heard Thomas suddenly laughing.

"I meant from the drawer..." Thomas said as he gestured towards it.

Ethan hid the blush on his face by moving about to get Thomas his own spoon from the drawers. He avoid looking into Thomas' amused eyes as he then pushed the tub of ice cream between them.

"So what are you stressed about?" Thomas asked after eating a spoonful of ice cream.

Ethan was honest when he told Thomas, "I'm stressed about what's going to happen next."

Thomas then realised that he had never asked Ethan how long he was staying. "You haven't been home in 4 days."

Ethan nodded his head as he then shared, "Harrison told me that Lewis has been stepping up to what I should be doing. It's like my job was originally meant to be his to begin with."

"How do you feel about that?" Thomas asked.

Ethan didn't know how to feel as he felt like he's been made practically redundant. Although his job was a very important aspect in his life, Ethan didn't have any strong bonds to it as he had barely thought about work in the last couple of days.

Ethan was having a small crisis about his life, as he thought about how his world was failing at balancing itself between work, his home life, and Thomas. Those important things in Ethan's life were on different routes, and Ethan was back at the starting point that broke him and Thomas up. 

"Work has been doing fine without me since I told them that I was staying here longer. I didn't want to leave you when you had everything with your dad going on, and then I didn't want to leave you after it settled down either."

Thomas couldn't thank Ethan enough for everything he did to support him over the last couple of days. Thomas knew he had broken down after seeing his dad in hospital, and Thomas knew that he could only compose himself because of Ethan and everything he did to help him.

Thomas took a deep and calming breath as he then shared something nobody else knew about. "I never told anyone this, but before you came here, I was offered a job in New Zealand."

"Oh?" Ethan looked back into Thomas' eyes as he waited for the bodyguard to continue.

"Back then I thought it would have been best to move and hide my feelings away from you, so that you couldn't suddenly fly to my home or something like that." Thomas chuckled.

"Sorry." Ethan laughed along with Thomas.

Thomas continued where he was going with this conversation as he added, "I ended up rejecting the job offer once my dad ended up in hospital. And then after he woke up, I decided that I wasn't ever going to leave his side."