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“Papa, I’m done,” I heard Matty yell and then I was looking at what I presumed was the ceiling in Hawke and Tate’s house. A few moments later, Hawke appeared in the frame.
“Hey, how are things going?” Hawke asked as he straightened the tablet.
“Good,” I said. “Nice tan. I take it that means you and Tate made it out of your hotel room after all.”
Hawke chuckled. “Little bit,” he said. “You guys heading home soon?”
Guilt went through me at the lie I was about to tell, but Dante had insisted we not tell anyone we were in Chicago until we knew if it really was Aleks that Remy had seen.
“Hopefully just a few more days,” I hedged.
Hawke nodded. “Yeah, lots of details to deal with when you want to put a house on the market.”
I murmured non-committedly, hoping it wasn’t as bad of a lie.
“How’s Dante?” Hawke asked. “You guys work out some stuff?” he added with a grin.
Bastard was having a little too much fun at my expense since he’d been the one I’d turned to a couple weeks earlier when I’d been confused by my attraction to Dante. “No comment,” I said, but I couldn’t contain the smile that spread across my lips.
“Yeah, I know that look,” Hawke responded.
“Okay, I’m going.”
“Hang on,” Hawke said, his voice light. “I feel like as, your quasi son-slash-brother, I should be giving you some words of wisdom or advice or some shit like that.”
I chuckled at the reminder of my conversation with him at the wedding when I’d asked him if I could walk with him down the aisle. I hadn’t known what to call him. He wasn’t that much younger than me so I’d pointed out that it wouldn’t be like a father walking his kid down the aisle, but he’d clearly decided to have some fun with the pseudo father/son labels. “Um, that’s really not necessary.”
But Hawke ignored me and said, “Okay, I’ve got this. Make sure he buys you dinner before you put out, use lots of lube and-”
I hung up the call and laughed. Damn, it was good to have family…
I got off the bed and went to the bathroom. I could still hear the shower running so I didn’t bother knocking on the door since I doubted Dante would hear me. The sight that greeted me tore at my insides.
Dante was sitting on the floor of the bathtub as water from the shower cascaded over him. His legs were drawn up and he had his arms covering his head. His forehead was resting against his knees.
I reached into the shower to turn the water off and then grabbed several towels.
“Dante, talk to me,” I murmured as I reached in to wrap the first towel around him. When he didn’t respond, I leaned forward and curled my arms around him and pulled him to his feet. He automatically wrapped his arms around my neck and I ignored the water that seeped into my clothes. At least he hadn’t run out of hot water because his body felt warm against mine.
I used the towel to dry off the parts of him I could reach before gently pushing him back and finishing the job. He stood mutely, his eyes on the wall behind me. I towel dried his hair as best I could and then led him back to the main room, leaving his sweats behind in the bathroom. Once I had him under the covers, I got undressed and crawled in behind him. The second I put my arms around him, he closed his fingers over the hand I had resting on his belly.
I skimmed my lips over his shoulder a few times until our bodies began to warm up beneath the blanket.
“What happened, baby?” I asked softly.
“Bringing him home isn’t going to undo what’s happened,” he whispered.
“No, it won’t. But he’ll have a chance at a future. He’ll be back with you and your family.”
Dante shook his head. “He’s never going to forgive me. And once my parents take him home, they won’t ever let me see him again.”
“That won’t be up to them. That will be Aleks’s decision. And he’s going to need you…all of you to get through this.”
A harsh sob tore free from Dante’s throat. “I don’t even remember the guy’s name.”
“What guy?” I asked as I drew him tighter against me.
“The guy from the arcade.” Dante wiped at his eyes and said, “You’d think I’d remember something like that.”
I sighed because there just wasn’t a good answer. Dante would carry the guilt of what had happened for the rest of his life, even if we did manage to find Aleks. His only goal in all of this was to save his brother. He had no intention of seeking forgiveness…or accepting it.
I rolled Dante onto his back and leaned over him. “If it had been your mother who’d been with Aleks that day and she’d told him to stay put while she did something, would you have been able to forgive her? Would you have hoped that Aleks would have forgiven her?”
