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I’ll see him when you get here

3:04 PM – Rowan

He’s out of the house?

Did he eat cookies?

Shit

Ew

I’ll meet you there

3:04 PM – Grayson

En route

Gideon’s response is notably absent, and he rubs his finger across his mother’s name. He hadn’t known the bench was here, but the plaque looks like someone cleans it regularly—and maybe once this is over, he’ll find the older man again and ask why.

But for now, he’s going to be the man his mother wanted him to be andhe’s going to the hospital to see what’s happening with his pregnant mate.

3:07 PM – Gideon

OMW

3:08 PM – Luca

Bout fucking time

…And try to make it up to his very pissed-off soulmate.

***

It takes twenty minutes for Gideon to get across the park and finally jog into the hospital’s lot, which is fifteen minutes too long, in his opinion. Judging by the frequent updates in the group chat, they’re at the hospital ahead of him, which is less than ideal. He wants to see Luca beforehand, and he’d rather not do that with an audience, but he’ll take what he can get. Luckily, the ER entrance is the one closest to the park, and as he approaches the door, he yanks off his beanie and makes sure his scent patch is still in place. No sense in giving anything away before he can talk himself out of all the shit he’s already in.

“Gideon.”

Shit. Gideon’s soulmate, the love of his life, is standing to the left of the doors—almost hidden by the large shrubs and the planter overflowing with leftover Christmas greenery, already withering, dry, and brown.

Seems an apt metaphor for his love life.

“Were you hiding?” he asks, careful to keep his tone even, but Gideon can’t keep the small smile off his face.

“No. Yes. What if I were? Would you have avoided me if you’d seen me standing here, waiting for you?”

The breeze blows his mate’s burnt coffee scent his way, and Gideon resists the urge to flinch, just barely.

Luca is so livid that he is pink-cheeked and narrow-eyed and—if he’s not mistaken—100% at the end of his tether.

Gideon is genuinely shocked at his words, if not his absolute right to bePissed Off. “What? No! Of course not.”

“‘Of course not?’”

Luca climbs over the low bush that edges the flower bed and stomps towhere Gideon has moved out of the way of the door so as not to block the entrance should an unlikely medical emergency occur.

He’s met with a very hard, very pointy finger to the center of his chest, right over the ache that has been throbbing almost nonstop for months.

He’s ignored it, but now that he’s with Luca, when he’s awake, it burns like fire.