“You want to fall in love?” Aaron asked incredulously. “You.”

Gray should have known his little brother wouldn’t believe his sincerity. He was always so distrustful and ready to think the worst of everyone. Yes, he wanted to fall in love, was that really so hard to believe?

He wanted someone to understand him and accept him as he was the way Keeley had accepted Aaron more than almost anything. It was frustrating that he wasn’t able to buy his way to happiness like usual.

If he wanted something real and genuine, he wouldn’t be able to go about this the way he normally found dates. Even so, he couldn’t think of any woman who would accept him as he truly was. She would run the second she saw a hint of his inner darkness.

Gray shrugged casually but the hard look in his eyes betrayed his true feelings. “They say there’s someone for everyone but somehow I doubt they included convicted murderers in that statement.”

An oddly sympathetic look crossed Aaron’s face. Did he actually feel sorry for him? How novel. Gray couldn’t remember the last time someone actually cared enough to feel sorry for him. Probably back in foster care.

After the first few foster families sent him back he stopped even trying to attach to them. That made them send him back even faster. No one—not the parents nor the siblings—in those houses seemed to care about him at all or even try to. At least not until his last foster home when he was seventeen.

There was a little girl there, probably five or six years old, who was also a foster child. These particular parents ran more of a group home than anything else for the particularly difficult cases. They had seven different kids living with them, all with different biological parents.

Gray had been through too many foster homes to remember the names of the people he had lived with but he did remember that little girl because she followed him around like an imprinted duckling. It had been quite annoying, actually.

One day he snapped at her for disturbing him when he was working on some AP Computer Science homework and asked why she kept following him. She blinked up at him with big blue eyes and said something he never expected.

“Mikey, you’re the nicest person here.”

Nobody had called him Mikey since Uncle Louie died. That, coupled with the laughable notion that anyone could consider him nice, made him reevaluate the girl.

After that he let her hang around when he did homework without further complaint. Sometimes he even let her have the rare candy he managed to come across or told her how computers worked.

“Computers are the future,” he used to say. “I want to be a part of them and make so much money that I can do anything I want.”

She would crawl into his lap and ask, “Will you take me with you?”

Gray would simply ruffle her hair and not say anything. There was no way he would ever let a little kid tag along with him forever. As long as he got into a good college, he would change his name and never look back.

The day he got his acceptance letter to MIT, including the full-ride scholarship, he whooped with joy and was so overwhelmed by his success that he actually lifted the little girl and spun her around. She giggled and asked him what made him so happy.

He waved the acceptance letter in her face and grinned. “This is my ticket out of here! Michael Gray is on his way up!”

The little girl frowned. “Mikey, you’ll come back to see me, won’t you?”

Gray looked at her like she was insane. “I’m never coming back here! You’ll be fine without me; you’re tough.”

She burst into tears and ran out of the room. He didn’t fully understand why at the time but after that she kept her distance. He never really thought of her again after he graduated and made his way to a new life in Boston. Until now.

Why did the random memory of a little girl who seemed to care about him come to mind now? That girl had to be in her forties by now. That or dead; a lot of foster kids ended up on the streets and didn’t survive.

He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed Aaron was scrutinizing him. He had probably broken character for a moment and made a weird face. Oops.

The façade went back up immediately and he smiled. “No matter. I’m happy to be out in the world. There really are so many fascinating things I missed. It’s been nice catching up on them. Do your sons play virtual reality games? I can’t quite get the hang of them myself.”

Aaron’s expression relaxed and he responded easily. “They do. Kaleb and Oliver like them the most but Nathan is still into them. Violet was never the biggest fan but she’ll play if her brothers ask her too. She prefers physical games, like cards.”

Cards, eh? That must come from spending so much time with the son of seven-time-winner of the World Series of Poker, Cameron Singleton. They did seem to be dating based on what he had seen the other day.

He was quite curious but wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. Aaron was awfully touchy when it came to his family. Was that simply a family man thing or was his brother unusually overprotective?

It was hard to tell, honestly. Gray kept the conversation firmly on video games so he wouldn’t rock the boat.

As a former tech developer, he knew the history of video games even though he hadn’t had much time to play them as a child. They had come a VERY long way since he was young. The differences in technology were astounding.

Gray commented on that and Aaron shrugged, saying he hadn’t ever played video games until he met Keeley and she took him to an arcade. After that he only played them when his children did.

Even as a foster child, he had the chance to play video games with other foster siblings or friends from school. Ever thinking Aaron lived a life of privilege worth being jealous over was a mistake. He hadn’t been allowed to be anything but Alistair Hale’s perfect puppet. Imagine a child not being allowed to play video games!

Aaron had gotten the chance to do childish things with his own children, which was better than nothing, but it was still a sad existence. At least Aaron had gotten his happy ending. Gray probably never would. He sighed, unaware of the pair of eyes following him from across the room.

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