My shirt looked huge on him. It wasn’t that I was even that big of a guy, Aleks was just so…

Beautiful.

I sighed silently at my brain’s attempt to be logical. The reasonable side of me was fully aware that the now twenty-year-old Aleks had lost some weight over the years, making him look pretty lean. Although Marcus had used food as a means to control Aleks, he’d also prized Aleks’s beauty and had made sure he was physically healthy, so he hadn’t starved him long-term. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t withheld food to punish Aleks. And while I’d never seen Marcus strike Aleks firsthand, there was no denying that the man had physically abused him at one point because I’d seen the scars on Aleks’s back.

His back.

Where admirers were less likely to see the marks when Marcus paraded his pet in front of them.

I felt my anger stirring at even the image my mind was conjuring up of all the things Marcus had done to Aleks, and it took all of my power to focus on the road in front of me. But of course, I couldn’t stop sending glances Aleks’s way, mostly because he was fingering the hem of my shirt. The move was distracting the hell out of me, but I knew Aleks wasn’t even aware of it. He was clearly nervous and I couldn’t really blame him. It was probably only now registering with him what he’d done by choosing to stay with me rather than go home. I half expected him to beg me to take him home.

Which I would.

As badly as I wanted to keep him safe, I hadn’t considered what my actions would do to him. I also knew he’d only chosen me over his brother to keep Dante and the rest of his family safe.

I said I believed you but that doesn’t mean I trust you. I don’t… not anymore. Not ever again, Vaughn.

Fuck, that had hurt.

Still did.

We’d gotten back on the road nearly an hour earlier and Aleks had yet to speak to me. He hadn’t even asked me what was going to happen next. I thought maybe it was because he didn’t trust me to tell him the truth, but I was starting to wonder if there wasn’t another reason for his silence.

Just like he’d reverted to believing Marcus was alive when I’d tried to untie him earlier, maybe he was relying on the behavior that had kept him alive in the past.

Don’t speak unless spoken to.

Don’t ask questions.

Don’t talk back.

It was likely an endless list of hard-learned lessons and I hated that he was associating any of them with me.

Another hour passed in silence. The sun was just starting to come up over the horizon when we reached the interstate.

“Do you want to stop for something to eat before we get on the interstate?” I asked. “I need to get gas anyway.”

Aleks’s right hand moved to his mouth so he could chew on his fingernail. He shook his head. “No, thank you… sir.”

I actually jerked the wheel a bit when he called me that. If he’d called me “sir” in a snide tone to prove he was pissed at me, I would have been relieved because it meant he felt something. But he’d added it so naturally… like when he’d addressed any one of Marcus’s colleagues that he’d either encountered at the mansion or at one of the few outside events Marcus had taken him to.

I found myself pulling the car over to the side of the road because I was so disturbed I found it hard to breathe. I wrapped both hands around the steering wheel and held on like it was my lifeline.

Because if I didn’t, I’d take my anger out on the damn thing and Aleks didn’t need to see that.

I had no clue how long we sat there for because I lost track of things. My mind was reliving every moment where I could have gotten Aleks out of that fucking mansion sooner. I could have done it the very night I’d spoken to him for the first time.

But no, I hadn’t been able to risk it back then.

What if I had? Would we even be here now? Would things have been better for Aleks if I’d just given in to the temptation?

“Vaughn.”

I startled as I realized Aleks was calling me, his voice sounding strangled. I turned to look at him. I expected to see him cowering against the car door, but he wasn’t. His hands were in his lap and he was watching me, a look of concern on his face.

Concern?

For me?

At least he’d called me by my name.

The rage and regret were still too strong to make it possible for me to respond to him.

“I’m sorry, Vaughn. I shouldn’t have called you that. You… you don’t deserve that. It’s a habit—”

“Aleks,” I practically croaked.

He stopped talking and dropped his eyes. I couldn’t help but reach for his face, though I only touched his chin briefly so that he’d look at me, because I didn’t trust myself to have any kind of extended contact with him. Not to mention I didn’t want to cause any kind of discomfort by coming into contact with the bruises the men who’d abducted him had left on him. “You don’t owe me any kind of explanation… or apology,” I said firmly.

He held my gaze a moment and it looked like he wanted to say something, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he closed it again. My eyes fell to his fingers.

“What happened here?” I asked as I motioned to the small cuts on his fingers. I already knew what they were, but I needed something, anything, that would get him talking. And there was one thing I knew Aleks would talk about without fail.

“They’re, um, from working with the flowers,” he said as he studied the nicks on his fingers. I could see a little bit of dirt on the pads. It was the perpetual plight of someone who worked in any kind of gardening job, but for Aleks, those little flecks of dirt were new. Although Marcus had rewarded Aleks by letting him work with flowers and plants in the greenhouse on the property’s mansion, he hadn’t tolerated dirty hands. I’d seen Aleks scrubbing his fingers until they were raw on more than one occasion to get the grime completely off before he met with Marcus. His hands had been so clean, he might as well have been wearing gloves when he’d worked with his beloved plants. I’d once asked him why he didn’t wear gloves, but all he’d said was then it wouldn’t feel the same. I hadn’t been sure if it’d been a literal reference to not being able to work with the plants and flowers as well, or if it’d been something else… like touching that dirt had somehow made him feel free and safe and… normal.

“Father would be so angry,” Aleks whispered when he fingered some of the dirt.

God, I wanted to kill the fucker all over again.

“Not possible,” I said as I put the car in gear. “He’s too busy burning in hell.”

I got us moving and found a gas station. I didn’t even bother to remove the keys while I filled the tank. Even if Aleks hadn’t been with me willingly, I was starting to realize he wouldn’t have tried to escape.

He was too afraid of angering me.

My phone dinged just as I was rounding the trunk of the car. I pulled it out and saw who the text was from. Relief went through me when I saw both a time and address listed in the text.

Thank fuck I wouldn’t need to do this on my own.

I sent a quick text back, then got into the car. Aleks was sitting quietly with his hands in his lap. He was still staring at his fingers. I almost covered his hands with mine but decided against it. He’d probably let me touch him, but not necessarily because he wanted me to.

I went to start the car but didn’t turn the key. “Aleks,” I said softly.

He didn’t look at me.

If I wanted him to, I’d have to ask him.

No direct eye contact unless otherwise instructed.

Another fucking rule that I wanted to send Marcus and the others to hell all over again for.

“We’re going to be driving for most of the day. Are you sure you don’t want to eat something?”

“No, thank you,” he said.

Thank fuck he left the “sir” off this time.

It was all I could do not to order him to eat something. But when I went to start the car, he whispered my name so softly that I almost didn’t hear him. I pulled my hand back from the ignition and waited. If it took him all day to speak again, I’d happily sit there and tell anyone who needed to get gas to fuck off.

“How… how long since… since they took me. Was it… was it last night?”

More guilt went through me as I realized the trauma had left him without any sense of time. I had to wonder exactly what he did remember about the night before. His memory appeared completely clear up until the point where he’d asked me to take him home and I’d told him no. But he didn’t seem to remember thinking Marcus was still alive.

“It’s been about ten hours since they took you from the alley behind your shop,” I said. “After I…” I paused because I most certainly didn’t want to verbalize the next part.

After I took you and refused to take you home…

“After I got you out of the van, we drove for a little over an hour. You were… tired,” I said lamely.

He’d been a lot worse off than “tired.”

“I found the abandoned house and carried you inside because you’d fallen asleep. I took your shoes off and put you in the bed.”

“Did you sleep with me?” he asked.

I had no idea if he was asking me if I’d had sex with him or if I’d slept in the same bed with him, and the fact that I couldn’t make that distinction made me feel like the lowest form of life on the planet. It was a question he never would have asked me in the final weeks in the Parks mansion where I might as well have been his jailer.

Because he’d trusted me then…

“I sat in the bed next to you, but I didn’t touch you. I worked on my computer while you slept and when you had a bad dream, I just called your name to wake you up… until that last one. I had to touch you that time because you weren’t responding to just my voice.”

Aleks pulled in a deep breath and nodded.

“You slept for about eight hours.”

He nodded again. “I forget to eat,” he said softly. “I have to set a reminder on my phone because I’m not used to…” He shook his head and then said, “I would like to eat something, please.”

If he’d asked me to hand him the sun, I gladly would have found a way to do it. And while stopping at a restaurant to eat wasn’t exactly the most conducive behavior to trying to fly under the radar, no way in hell was I going to make him eat shitty food from a fast food place.

“Okay,” I said quickly, then got the car started. It took just a few minutes to find a little hole-in-the-wall, no-name place that claimed to have the best omelets in town and looked busy enough to mean the food probably wasn’t completely terrible, but not so full of people that I’d have to watch our backs the entire time.

Though I’d probably end up doing that anyway.

The waitress seated us quickly but when she asked Aleks if he wanted coffee, he clammed up.

“Could we have two coffees, some tea if you have it, a hot chocolate, and a couple of glasses of orange juice? And some water?” I asked.

The woman sent me a friendly smile. “You got it, hun.” She left the menus on the table in front of each of us, then left to get our drinks.

She was back within a couple of minutes, but Aleks didn’t even look up from his menu. As small as the restaurant was, the thing was pretty lengthy and had several variations of every breakfast food imaginable.

“You all need a minute?” the lady asked when she saw how intently Aleks was staring at his menu.

“Please,” I said with a nod. She left again. I prepared my coffee and then pretended to skim my menu as I watched Aleks. He’d managed to make it to the second page, but his distress was only building. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.

“Aleks,” I began, but he shook his head and then discreetly wiped at his eyes. I snapped my mouth shut, but I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. So I used my foot to brush against his beneath the table. He let out a little whimper and I was sure he would pull his foot away, but then he was moving his foot so it was completely lined up with mine.

And he left it that way.

“Talk to me, Aleks,” I urged. I put some sugar in the tea as well as the coffee and pushed both of them plus the hot chocolate toward him. I was relieved when he put his hands around the mug of hot chocolate.

He didn’t answer me. He just stared at the mug.

“Is there nothing on the menu you like?” I asked.

He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if he was telling me there was nothing that appealed to him or the other way around, so I was about to ask him the question a different way when he looked up at me, his eyes shimmering with tears.

“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.

He doesn’t trust you…

The reminder along with the obvious proof of that fact gutted me, but I managed not to react. I still had a goal I needed to accomplish. Everything I did with Aleks going forward would be about baby steps.

To what end? What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

I ignored my inner voice and said, “Tell me about breakfast at home.”

Aleks’s eyes lowered to the menu and he seemed to remember where we were and why we were there. The distress came back quickly but didn’t seem as intense this time around.

“Magnus cooks when he isn’t working. If he is, Dante and I eat cereal. Neither of us can cook very good.”

“What does Magnus make?”

“Everything,” Aleks responded. “He’s good at cooking.”

“Is there one thing in particular that you look forward to when he’s cooking?”

Aleks nodded. “On Sundays… he makes grits. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. I always eat too much. It’s very hot, I don’t mean warm… he puts something green in it. A pepper, maybe?”

I smiled. “Jalapeño peppers?” I asked. “Small and green?”

Aleks nodded and smiled. “Yes, that’s it. He makes eggs and bacon too, but I eat so many grits I can’t eat anything else. When Dante and I are done eating, we do the dishes and then we just lay on the couch until we can move again.”

I chuckled at that, then reached for my menu. I scanned it and said, “Look here.” I handed him the menu and pointed to one of the items. “They don’t have jalapeños in them, but I bet they’re still good. And if not, we’ll get you something else.”

“Oh no, I will eat them no matter what,” Aleks said with a frown. Like wasting a little bit of food was the worst thing in the world.

To him, it probably was, since food had been such a commodity for him.

I didn’t respond and instead waved the waitress over. I was pleased when Aleks ordered for himself. When it was my turn, I grabbed the menu and began rattling one item off after another. Aleks’s eyes went comically wide as I ordered enough dishes to feed a dozen people. When the waitress left with a broad smile on her face, Aleks eyed me.

“What? I’m hungry,” I said.

He shook his head at me. Our feet were still touching beneath the table so I shifted my body until our knees were in contact. Aleks actually let out a little gasp before he caught himself.

In all seriousness, I murmured, “Some choices you have to live with. But others,” – I motioned to the table – “you’re allowed to change your mind on as many times as you want.” I waited until I was sure he’d heard me before I added, “And Aleks, as long as we’re together, take five minutes or five hours to choose – you’ve more than earned that right.” I brushed our knees together again, then pulled my leg back so I wouldn’t overwhelm him.

He was quiet for a long time… long enough that I thought I’d royally fucked up – that I’d somehow undermined him. But when the waitress passed us, he softly called out to her. If that move alone hadn’t been enough to shock me into silence, his next words did the trick.

“Excuse me, I saw that you have chocolate milk on your menu. May I please have a glass of that?” Aleks’s gaze shifted to me as he quietly added, “It’s my favorite.”

The waitress nodded and left, and I quickly turned my attention to scan the other patrons of the diner so I wouldn’t make the young man across from me uncomfortable. When the chocolate milk came, I couldn’t manage to keep my eyes averted as he drank down the contents of the small glass in a few large gulps. And when he hesitantly asked the waitress for another, I barely suppressed a smile.

It was a tiny step forward, but what a great fucking step.

Now how the hell did I make sure he had a million more just like them in the time we were together? And how the fuck was I going to keep him safe long enough to make sure all those steps turned into something more?