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.He glanced around the supermarket, wondering where the hell Alex had snuck off to with the cart.He definitely needed to remember to pick up some coffee.“Do you guys ever share dreams?” Lars asked.Ben in the Shadows75Jasper turned back to him, feeling the color drain from his face.“What are you talking about?” he asked.“That night, when you found Danny…there was something I didn’t tell you.I remembered his dream, too.The nightmare he had when he was sleepwalking? I was there, dreaming the same thing, right along with him.I don’t know if it’s just a natural part of mating or what, but we’ve had other dreams together since then, which makes me think you and Ben might…”Jasper could hardly listen to what he was saying anymore.In the weeks that he’d been with Ben, they had talked a lot, but Jasper had always been careful to keep things from getting too heavy.He hadn’t wanted to upset Ben so soon after things ended with Pierson, but more than that, he hadn’t wanted to scare him away.Half the skeletons Jasper had in his closet should have been enough to send any sane man running from him, so he’d carefully avoided the subject of his own wayward youth, stuffing it far down into his subconscious where he wouldn’t have to worry about it.Only he had worried about it, night after night, in his dreams.And Ben had apparently been witness to all of them.“So we share dreams?” Jasper repeated.“How is that even possible?”“I don’t know.I think it’s a mates thing.” Lars raked his eyes over Jasper.“Why, do you think you’ve done it?”Jasper nodded tensely.He couldn’t be one-hundred percent certain, but it made sense.There had been more than a few nights when, after a particularly bad nightmare, Jasper would go upstairs to check on Ben and see him turning and moaning restlessly in his sleep.Other times, Jasper would have a dream involving himself and a past lover and see Ben glaring at him over the kitchen table at breakfast.If those moments were all just coincidences, there were an awful lot of them.Jasper ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling every muscle tense as he watched Ben from across the aisle.He was still talking to 76Ellen GinsbergDanny.“Does, ah…okay, shit,” Jasper stammered.“Danny knows about this, obviously, but…I mean, you don’t think he’d tell Ben, would he?”“I don’t know,” Lars said.He looked at Jasper suspiciously.“Please tell me you’re not going to try to hide this from him.”“You don’t know what my dreams are like,” Jasper shot back at him.Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to him, and he winced.Try as he may, he couldn’t shake the image of Ben humbly smiling in his dream while Pierson explained to the adoring crowd before them what a noble sacrifice he’d made, letting himself be cut up and experimented on.“Or what Ben’s dreams are like.Jesus, he’s really fucked up about all that stuff Pierson did to him.I mean, you have no idea.”“I have an idea,” Lars said, putting a hand on his shoulder.The gesture comforted and annoyed Jasper in equal measure.“I’ve been counseling him for two weeks now.I know.Just like I know he really cares about you.” Jasper shrugged Lars’s hand away from him, but he continued.“The same way you care about him.”“How would you know if I cared about him?”Lars gave him a look.“I walked past your room the other night and you were sitting at your desk listening to Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ on your laptop.”“That doesn’t prove anythi—”“On repeat.”With no excuse for that other than the embarrassing truth, Jasper glanced over his shoulder to try and plan an escape.“Where the hell did Alex run off to with the cart, anyway? I need to go pick up some coffee.”He started down the aisle, but Lars caught him by the elbow.“Hold on.Look, the point is, I don’t know why you think you guys aren’t any good for each other, but that’s obviously bullshit.Fate paired you for a reason.”Ben in the Shadows77“Oh, fuck off, Lars!” Jasper shouted.A nearby mother and the kid she was dragging away from the candy aisle glanced over at Jasper and gave him a dirty look.He lowered his voice.“Whatever’s going on between us? Let’s just leave fate out of it, shall we?”Lars snorted.“Why? You’re mates.” His forehead wrinkled.“Is this about Mom and Dad?”“I said leave it.”Lars shook his head.“You’re not a kid anymore, you know? You can’t just go on a bender and forget it exists.”“Well, luckily, I don’t do benders anymore.”“Yeah, now you just repress everything.You can’t push it away forever, though.You’re going to have to deal with it sometime.”“Deal with what?”Jasper turned to see Alex standing behind them with a now-full cart of groceries, apparently having finished with the shopping.“Nothing,” Jasper said quickly, leveling a glance at Lars.“Mate stuff.Don’t worry about it.”Alex tensed at Jasper’s choice of words, and Jasper immediately regretted them.When Ben and Danny had first arrived, Alex had seemed excited for his brothers, but as the weeks passed and the foursome—Ben, Jasper, Lars, and Danny—had spent more and more time together, he’d grown increasingly moody.It wasn’t like him.Alex had always been a bit of a loner, a role he’d always seemed comfortable with in the past.Unlike Jasper and Lars, Alex never lost his faith in Morgana.Rather than going to college, finding friends and lovers, and committing to a career on the Earth plane, Alex had spent every waking minute of his adult life honing his shifting abilities and waiting for destiny to send him a mate.If anyone deserved one, it was Alex, but the weeks passed and he was still alone.Jasper smiled at him warmly, clapping him on the shoulder in what he hoped would be seen as an affable gesture.“Thanks for taking care of the shopping.”Alex shrugged, his anger seeming to dissipate as he pushed the cart away, gesturing to Ben and Danny as they made their way back 78Ellen Ginsbergover to where the brothers were standing.“Didn’t want to get in anyone’s way,” he grumbled.Hearing this, Jasper glanced sideways at Lars, but his attention waned when Ben rejoined his side and slid his arm up Jasper’s back.“Miss me?” he asked.Jasper nodded absently.He did, but his worried mind was elsewhere.Lars’s words, you have to deal with it eventually, were still ringing in his ears, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask about the dreams.Not yet, anyway.He glanced over at Danny then eyed Ben.“What did you guys talk about?” he asked suspiciously.Ben shrugged noncommittally.“Oh, you know.Celebrity gossip.Hair products.Guy stuff.” Jasper breathed a sigh of relief that dream sharing hadn’t made the list.Ben continued to run his hand over Jasper’s back and neck, amused.“You know it’s really precious how tense you get anytime I talk to another guy.”Jasper rolled his eyes.“I’m not tense,” he lied.“And don’t call me precious.”Ben smirked.“Precious,” he teased, leaning in to Jasper and lowering his voice, “I am going to give you such a back rub when we get home [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]