Falling back and letting go was part of it, Carlos thought, but not all of it. Not even remotely. "It's certainly not like any of those movies, no," he said after a moment, glancing over to where Gael still had his head close to his shoulder. He suspected that anyone who looked at them would think they were a couple very much in love.

It just went to show how different reality was from appearances, though Carlos was very much in love.

"You have good reasons to be jaded about it," he said. If Hadyn had to tell him to stop letting what happened seven years before color his assumptions about what people could feel about him, he could only imagine what dealing with someone like Patrick would do. He was under no illusions that Felipe was a kind man, and he recognized that the final and irrevocable rejection by his parents, followed almost immediately by the breakup with his first love, had killed hope in him at some level. But his pain wasn't the same as Gael's.

And he wasn't sure he could really believe that Gael would ever love him, or that the lack there was in Gael. He gave Gael a searching look for a moment. "I can try," he said. "I'd like to try to be patient enough, love."