It didn’t seem right to have taken away the one thing Nate really seemed to care about.
Security.
If Kaz could provide that for him…
“I can take care of you,” he said. “You just have to stop trying to please everyone around you. Why are you in here right now? Because of what your sister and I were talking about?”
“I don’t like you lying to her.” Nate crossed his arms.
“Who says I was?”
“All that stuff about Quartet Air—”
“All of that was true.” Kaz frowned. “Why would I have lied about any of that?”
“To make yourself look good in her eyes?” Nate said it, but he didn’t sound as certain. “To get her on your side?”
“I don’t need her on my side,” he replied, stepping back in to bridge the gap between them. “It’d be nice if she liked me because, yeah, that would make things easier, since I know her opinion matters to you. But I don’tneedher to like me, Nate.”
“Of course you do,” he disagreed. “You’re a narcissist.”
“I’m also a lot of other things if you recall. Some of those cancel the others out. I don’t like being looked down on, fact, but I can live with not being everyone’s favorite person. Maybe that’s the psychopath in me, who knows. I typically talk about everything but myself during those sessions with Dr. Vera.”
“That’s not how that’s supposed to work.”
“Oh? Coming from the guy who hasn’t been back since his first session?” He’d even skipped out on his scheduled appointment and hadn’t returned the office’s call about it.
“You literally stole all of the doctor’s notes,” Nate reminded. “Why would I go back?”
“You’d tell me anything you told her anyway,” he said confidently.
“What makes you think that? I don’t trust you at all.”
Something sharp pierced through the center of his chest, and Kaz actually winced.
“What’s wrong?” In a blink, Nate was cupping his cheek with one hand and testing his temperature with his other placed against Kaz’s forehead. When he found that he wasn’t hot to the touch, his gaze dropped down the length of him, lips pursing in concentration as he did a thorough visual search for any signs of injury.
He should let him know that it’d been nothing and he was fine, but Kaz enjoyed the attention too much, so he merely stoodthere and allowed it for as long as he could before Nate finished on his own.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Nate finally asked. “Is it a Brumal injury?”
He laughed before he could help it. “What does that even mean?”
“Don’t laugh,” he scolded. “I know some of the stuff you get up to. Flix talks, you know?”
“Don’t I ever.” Flix had the biggest mouth of the lot of them. That was why he and Madden got on so well when they were in the same room together. Kazimir had often thought that the two of them would have been best friends if not for the fact they were loyal to separate princes.
Well. Baikal Void was no longer a prince now, he was a king, but Kelevra Diar, as only the third in line for the throne, would never reach those types of heights.
For the first time, Kaz wondered how Kelevra felt about that. Here he was, currently locked in yet another bathroom with Nate all because of a shitty inferiority complex and he was just Baikal’s cousin. How did Kelevra, the legitimate Imperial Prince of Vitality, not lose his ever-loving mind with rage whenever he thought about their stations and titles?
“If you were a prince and someone illegitimate became a king, how would you feel?” Kaz threw the question out there, just expecting Nate to follow along even though it was unlikely—
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nate dropped his hands from Kaz, apparently concluding he was fine after all, and rolled those gorgeous brown eyes of his. “Not everyone is as full of themselves as you are, Kazimir. Kelevra Diar and your cousin are on opposite sides. There’s no need for them to be jealous of each other. Kelevra runs the planet. Baikal runs the Brumal, who keeps the planet running. Symbiotic.”
“Symbiotic?” He scrunched up his nose. “Isn’t that a term used for plants and animals?”
“How have you made it to senior year?” Nate griped. “It means there’s a mutually beneficial relationship between two people or groups. Like, for instance, the Brumal and the Imperial family.
