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“It should be easier by now, shouldn’t it?”
“What?” I asked gently.
He spoke the next word so softly that if I hadn’t been leaning across the table, I definitely wouldn’t have heard him.
“Choosing.”
With any other person, the single word would have been their way of conveying that there was too much on the menu to pick from. But that wasn’t what he was saying at all.
I managed to keep my expression soft despite the rage burning inside of me. What kind of mental torture had this young man endured to get to this point where the mere act of making a choice hurt so fucking much?
And he was in pain.
With his back hunched and his fingers biting into the ceramic mug, Aleks looked so damn broken.
But I knew he was anything but.
The fact that he was sitting there with me was proof of that.
I almost offered to choose something for him because I thought it would be easier for him, but I caught myself in time. “Tell me about breakfast at home,” I said instead.
“What?” Aleks asked in surprise.
“What are breakfasts like at home with your brother and his boyfriend?”
“Fiancé,” Aleks automatically corrected.
“Dante and Magnus are engaged?” I asked, relieved at the opportunity to momentarily take Aleks’s mind off the topic at hand.
“Magnus asked Dante about a month after…” Aleks’s voice dropped off.
“After you came home?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Aleks whispered. “Dante was so surprised when Magnus asked, he said no,” Aleks said, a rare smile forming on his lips. He pulled in a breath and I saw the sheen of tears start to fade. “He said yes about two minutes later but he yelled at Magnus first. Told him that he was crazy and it was too soon.”
“What did Magnus say to that?” I asked as I took a sip of my coffee.
“Nothing. He just asked him again. And again.”
“So when’s the wedding?”
Aleks sobered and shook his head. “Dante won’t commit to a date.”
I frowned. Things had happened pretty quickly the night I’d shot Marcus and gotten Aleks, Magnus, and Dante out of the mansion before blowing it up, but I’d seen enough to know that Magnus was crazy for Dante. Maybe his feelings weren’t being returned? “Your brother has cold feet?” I asked.
Aleks chewed on his lip for a moment, then seemed to catch himself and wiped at some invisible spot on his mouth. Like he was trying to make sure he hadn’t left any kind of mark behind.
Fucking Marcus and his continued hold on Aleks. I suspected the majority of little nervous behaviors Aleks exhibited were ones he didn’t even realize he had.
Aleks took a sip of the hot chocolate, which made me feel a bit better. I so badly wanted to get some calories into him. He wasn’t scary thin, but he could definitely use some meat on his bones.
“Dante doesn’t think he’s good enough for Magnus,” Aleks said with surprising bluntness. There was also a certain ferocity in his expression, like he was daring me to somehow agree with that statement.
“Why not?” I asked. “Anyone can see that Magnus loves your brother,” I added.
That last part seemed to ease some of the tension in Aleks’s expression. He nodded. “He does,” he said. “And Dante loves him… he tells him so every day. Shows him too.”
“So why does he think he isn’t good enough?”
Aleks hesitated and I realized why… he was potentially sharing something very personal with me about his brother. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” I quickly said. My goal had been to get him talking, not betray his brother’s confidence. But amazingly, he continued on his own.
“Mama and Papa weren’t kind to him,” Aleks said. “Even before I… before I…was gone…” he said awkwardly. “Papa said mean things to him and Mama didn’t put a stop to it.” Aleks leaned forward a bit and began tapping his finger on the edge of the mug. “He tried so hard, Vaughn… to please Papa. But nothing he ever did was good enough for him.”
“Did your father treat you that way too?” I asked, my anger on behalf of both Dante and Aleks growing by the second. Some assholes just didn’t deserve to have kids.
Aleks shook his head. “Only Dante,” he said. “I… I tried to make up for how mean Papa was—”
“How?”
“What?” Aleks asked, startled by my interruption.
“How did you try to make it up to Dante?”
“I told him what Mama and Papa should have,” he responded, as if the answer should have been obvious to me.
“And what was that?” I asked with a smile.
“That he was perfect… the best… meu melhor… my best,” Aleks whispered. “He turned it into this game where he’d guess what he was best at. He did it to make me smile. He always wanted me to be smiling.” Aleks’s smile turned wistful. I loved seeing him like this… so open, so free to say what he was actually thinking. He’d dropped his eyes at some point, like he was lost in the memory of his brother and himself playing the game. When he lifted them, I was sure he’d continue with the story, but something in his expression shuttered and his slightly parted lips snapped shut.
