“That’s so much shit to get into at nineteen. Well.” Sidian smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I mean, not that what I got into was any better, I guess.”
Roman reached across the table, and Sidian gave him his hand, letting their fingers twine together. “You were worth it. I was trained to be the alpha I needed to be for you, and I’m grateful for it. I’ll always be grateful for it.”
Fable bustled over a moment later with their plates and drinks, and Sidian dug into his food with vigor once again. Roman made a mental note to plan more stops for hot food, though he had every intention of hitting a gas station on the way out to load up on as many snacks as possible. Anything healthy he could lay his hands on, as well as anything that would keep well. Sidian needed to continue eating as much as he wanted to reach a healthy weight, after all. Roman had to take care of him.
Sidian knocked their ankles together beneath the table just as Roman finished up his second pancake. “I appreciate it. I suck at showing it, I know, but I do fucking… Appreciate everything. You. You’re a damned miracle to me, Roe.”
Roman’s chest tightened. “That means a lot to me.”
Sidian nodded, stabbing his fork into his eggs. “I’ll try to do a better job at showing it because you do so much for me already. It’s the least I can do for you in return.”
It was second nature to insist it wasn’t necessary. “I’d like that, but don’t feel pressured.”
“I won’t.” A small, sweet smile made his heart beat even faster. “Not by you.”
Roman shoved a bite of pancake into his mouth to keep from tearing up in front of the handful of people in the diner, as well as his mate. When he’d first met Sidian, when the first burgeoning attraction to him began, Roman didn’t know how to express it. But seeing Sidian that night during the infiltration, scared and scrawny and ready to kill to protect himself, made it so easy to be sweet to him, to give him the easy affection every omega in the world deserved.
And Roman would keep doing it. He would never stop.
He left Fable a healthy tip for her services, his mind returning to planning as soon as they exited the diner.
A handful of stops and then back on the road until the fatigue hit him and they had to stop for the night. As late as possible, as far as possible. They could do this.
With Sidian at his side, there would be no stopping him.
Chapter Fifteen
Sidian didn’t know when he dozed off on the drive, but he woke to the sight of the sun sinking below the clouds, throwing long shadows across the road. Part of him wanted to apologize for falling asleep and leaving Roman on his own during the drive, but when he glanced over at his alpha, Roman looked peaceful. His eyes remained focused on the road, though he looked at Sidian after a moment, his eyebrows rising as he offered a small smile.
“Feel better?” he asked, chuckling when Sidian just grunted at him. “You needed that, I think. You were out maybe ten minutes after we left Angel Ridge.”
That fucking long? For fuck’s sake. “Maybe I have narcolepsy.”
“I think your body is calming down enough to heal,” Roman offered, which was not something that Sidian expected to just have thrown at him like that. Though, he supposed, Roman was right; he’d been in a hypervigilant state for so long that sleep came when he needed it, and the pregnancy did not make thateasier on him. “You went through a lot of traumatic shit. I think you can grant yourself some grace.”
Sidian wanted to laugh at the thought of that, but Roman had a point that he hadn’t thought about too much. The concept of healing was foreign to him; he hadn’t been getting any better at the psych ward back home, deteriorating further every single day he spent within those sterile white walls. And he would have been content to rot there for the rest of his life if not for his fucking father.
Sighing, he picked at the seam of his sleeve, trying to loosen a thread to tug at. “Do you think it’s possible for someone like me to get better?”
“Hmm.” Roman cocked his head like a puppy. It was so fucking cute. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t be possible, admittedly. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here?”
Maybe he was just too sweet for his own good. “I’m just saying, y’know, I was pretty fucked up when we first met. It wasn’t like I was some innocent little breeder back then. I stabbed three nurses before you met me the first time.”
“Three?” He whistled. “I knew it was at least one, but Dad didn’t want to give me any of the details.”
“Your dad was a pretty all right guy, all things considered. Just thought he could fix me, and that was off the table.” Not that he didn’t try. Dr. Kane would do just about anything to help Sidian, and to this day, he wasn’t sure what he did to deserve that level of sympathy, or if he ever deserved it at all.
There were other patients in the ward. Smart, hopeful patients who might have a future laid out before them if they just buckled down and got to the root of their problems or something like that. Sidian had seen kids come and go in the two years he stayed there, some of them just post-suicide visits and some of them long-term patients. Hell, some patients who were there when he arrived had the chance to leave before he did.
“Why was it off the table?” Roman asked.
The last thing Sidian wanted to talk about was those days. His life had been shit for years; there had been so little good in it, but revisiting the past just hurt. “Didn’t want to go home to my dad, y’know?”
When they reached a stop sign, Roman turned to look at him, his gaze quiet and intense. He’d been like that the first time Sidian saw him, too. Even before presentation, he knew he was looking at an alpha; there was just something about them that gave it away even before their scents developed and their pheromones kicked in. But whereas it was kind of threatening in other alphas, it was just… A part of Roman.
Hard to think of him the way Sidian thought of people like Pack Kincaid when Roman had been so willing to hand over the reins of control.
“Am I allowed to say I’m glad I killed him?” Roman asked, and Sidian scoffed and leaned over, shoving his face away. “What? I mean, it’s not like I wasplanningto do it. It just sort of happened, but I don’t regret it. Someone who’d sell their kid off like that doesn’t even deserve children.”
