It hurt as much, Carlos thought, as he expected it to. Hadyn told him he shouldn't give up on love - hell, even Ty made similar noises, now that he was in something like domestic bliss. But this was, really, how it always ended. For him, at least, and he looked away for a moment. There wasn't any need for Gael to see all the emotions on his face. The sadness was one thing, the bitterness and expectation of exactly this another.

They were a pair, he thought. Gael convinced he couldn't love anyone, Carlos convinced that no one could love him. And wasn't this right now proof of the latter? Gael's words were gentle and kind, he thought, but in the end it felt the same as Michel and the men who'd followed. It felt like when his mother had turned away from him when he'd been a teenager.

"I doubt we would have ever come together in another life, Gael," he finally said with a faint smile that was as painted on as any Gael had given him in recent weeks. "You wouldn't have wanted the same things." He reached out, laying his palm against Gael's shoulder for a moment before he let it drop. "I'm glad, I guess, that you think I'm a good man," he said. "But I've never needed you to be different than you are. I wish you saw that."