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Alek looked at him, his pale green eyes sphinxlike. “I’ll give you a tour,” he finally said. “Perhaps we can find somewhere more private.”
Ian scanned the room. Aside from an orderly posted by the doors and a few other pairings of patients and visitors, the room was otherwise empty, but a tour was a good idea. Maybe it would be easier to be in Alek’s presence with a distraction to keep their conversation steered from heavier subjects.
“So that was the lounge,” Alek said as he sauntered down the hallway with Ian at his side. He pointed at the wall of windows to their right. “That’s the ocean. It’s always there, glaring sunlight obnoxiously. And this is the cafeteria.” Alek came to a stop.
The cafeteria was an open, airy room with a dozen or so small tables and one long communal one. Everything was clean, modern, and mostly white, save for the occasional wood accent. The western wall followed the theme with ceiling-to-floorwindows, broken by a twenty-foot stretch of panoramic sliding glass doors folded back to bring the outside in.
Alek led Ian across the cafeteria, through the sliding doors, and down a path that weaved around manicured landscaping.
“Next on our tour is the rose garden,” Alek said as they took a right at a fork in the path.
The rose garden was really a large lawn bordered by thornless peony bushes. A giant redwood tree stood on the bluff of the cliff, and behind it was a bench that offered a nice view of the Pacific, though the illusion of Alder House as anything other than a cage was broken by the towering chain link fence that lined the perimeter.
The bench was probably as secluded a spot as they’d find, if it had not been occupied by a very pretty young woman with blue eyes and black hair.
“We can find another spot,” Ian said to Alek, but the girl had already jumped from the bench.
She shook her head slowly as she looked between the two of them, then said, “I promised I wouldn’t imagine you having sex, but your description didn’t do him justice. Alek, are you sure you wouldn’t like to consider making your couple a throuple?”
Alek scowled. “I don’t share, and you said you would behave.”
Alek sat in the place she’d vacated while Ian looked on, unsure what to do. It would be rude to steal the woman’s spot… Also, who was she anyway?
“Ian, this is my friend, Briar,” Alek said. “I sent her here to reserve our seat.”
Friend? Falling back on manners when uncomfortable, Ian thrust out his hand and shook hers.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” he said.
His eyes caught on the row of scars on her arms, most old and faded, but some fresh and raised and highlighted pink.
After a relatively strong handshake, the girl named Briar let go and turned back to Alek. “Just look at the wingspan on his hand.” She clucked her tongue, then muttering something indiscernible, left them alone.
“If you’re jealous,” Alek said when she’d gone. “Don’t be.”
“I’m not. She’s not your type.”
“And what exactly is my type, Ian?” Alek’s jade eyes were glossy, pupils dilated wide, challenging him.
Ian took the question as rhetorical.
“All the same,” Alek said. “I haven’t touched her and I have no desire to.” Alek patted the space on the bench beside him. “Now come sit down.”
Leaving a foot between them, Ian took a seat and looked out at the sea. When he turned, Alek was still watching him.
“I’m ready to tell you my story,” Alek said.
Ian opened his mouth to argue, but Alek lifted his hand.
“You said you only wanted to know when I’d forgiven myself, and I’m afraid that might always be a work in progress. My first instinct is still to blame myself, but now I can fight it. I know that when it comes to my family, I did nothing wrong and I’ll keep telling myself that until it sticks.”
Ian’s mouth went dry, his heart cantered in his chest. “You don’t have to tell me… not unless you want to.”
“If I didn’t want to tell you, I wouldn’t.”
Taking Alek’s hand in his, Ian said, “I’m listening.”
Alek kept his eyes on the ocean and started with his name—Aleksandar Velishikov—and where he’d come from and who his father and his mother and his uncle were.
