Page 15 of Soren

Gabe blinked at him.

Soren grinned wider. “Have some,” he ordered, cutting off a portion of his pancakes and placing them on Gabe’s plate.

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t need the sugar.”

Soren huffed. “It’s not about need; it’s aboutwant.”

“People want lots of things that are bad for them.”

And didn’t Soren know it. “That’s half the fun, Highness.”

Gabe gave him a skeptical look. Soren didn’t know why he was pushing this—annoying Gabe to death was probably at odds with Soren’s grand seduction plan—but he couldn’t seem to stop. “Come on, take a bite. Don’t you ever just do what you want?”

It took Gabe, staring at the pancake piece on his plate, a moment to answer. When he did, he sounded…blank. Void.

Soren didn’t like it at all.

“No, not really,” Gabe muttered. “Not for a long time, anyway.”

Soren shook his head. This man. “You and Danny have the same kind of sickness. You just exhibit different symptoms. He never did what he wanted either, until Roman came around.”

Gabe gave a bitter laugh, ignoring Soren’s pancake offering for a bite of his bacon. “Well, he’s certainly doing what he wants now. How long do you think before he runs off into the sunset and leaves this god-awful town for good?”

“Why would you think he’s going to do that?” Soren raised his chin, his voice indignant. He ignored the fact that he agreed with Gabe on the god-awful town part.

Gabe kept his gaze on his plate. “That’s what I would do, if I was suddenly immortal, with another immortal, rich lover to foot the bill. Why stay here?”

Soren spoke before thinking it through. “Because your brother is a sweet boy, mindful of his responsibilities. You’re projecting your own selfishness onto him.”

Gabe winced, a look of real hurt crossing over his face, and Soren tried to ignore how that expression felt like a knife twisting in his own gut.

A thought came to him. “Is that why you hate Roman so much? You think he’s going to take Danny away from you? Your little brother, who you’ve always counted on being exactly where you left him?”

“I don’thateRoman.” Gabe didn’t deny the rest.

Soren leaned across the table, smacking Gabe—lightly, mindful of his superior strength—on the side of his head. “Idiot.”

Gabe hissed and held a hand to the spot Soren had smacked.What a baby. “Why am I an idiot?” he asked, glaring at Soren.

“Your brother isn’t going anywhere. At least, not anytime soon. You should focus on appreciating what you have, not on some hypothetical future of pain.”

Gabe ran a hand through his hair, his glare dropping. “Well, maybe heshould. It’s my turn to shoulder some of his burden. I didn’t realize, before, how thin he’d been stretching himself. I should have, but I didn’t. I can do more.”

When Roman and Soren had first met Danny, he’d been working too much, struggling to pay care home bills he hadn’t told Gabe he was even paying, visiting their mom on his own when Gabe was refusing to be there. Soren had been judgmental over Gabe’s lack of agency at the time, but he was realizing now there was maybe more to it than just willful denial.

“And how are you going to do that when you couldn’t even get out of the car today?”

Gabe’s face paled at Soren’s question. Christ, Soren really was the worst. Why was he taunting a man who’d just had a full-blown panic attack in front of him?

But Gabe seemed hell-bent on ignoring his own limits, and if Soren needed to remind him of them, he would. It seemed both men in the Kingman family were determined to do it all on their own, no matter what the pressure did to them.

Well, if Gabe needed someone to push him, to force him to acknowledge his own emotions instead of leaving them inside to fester, Soren could definitely do that.

Soren was excellent at getting under people’s skin.

Hyde Park really was the worst town.

Soren sipped his too-sweet cocktail, eyeing the bar he’d found himself in skeptically. It was the closest thing he could find to a decent gay bar without driving an hour away, but the “closest thing” wasn’t nearly close enough.

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