“Pair of what?”
“Balls.” Gage laughed. Were this any other alpha friend, Gage would’ve reached down and grabbed those balls to weigh them, right then and there. With Ulric... things were a bit different. Maybe Gage would do it later.
“They aren’t that big.” Ulric glanced down. Then he grinned. “Anyway, I didn’t get that autograph for myself. It’s for you.”
“Me?” Gage stared. “He’s Phil-fucking-O’Riley. You sure you don’t want to keep that?”
Ulric shrugged. “I didn’t even know who he was until you said it. And I saw the way you looked at him, Gage. It’s worth a lot more to you.”
A huge wave of fondness swelled through Gage’s chest. He pulled Ulric closer and kissed his shoulder, and Ulric’s smile grew.
When they’d both stepped into the house, Ulric shrugged out of his shirt. “There.”
Then he scrunched it into a ball, crammed it against Gage’s face, and slipped away. Gage breathed in a lungful of honey oak. “Hey! Ulric.”
By the time he pulled the shirt off his face, Ulric was already halfway up the stairs. “I’m getting another shirt,” Ulric said. “Be right back.”
“What other shirt? You don’t need one, stud muffin.”
Ulric snorted. “Yeah, right. You’re the stud, and I’m the muffin.”
Well, maybe. But he was an adorable muffin. Gage hurried up the stairs, following Ulric into his bedroom. Then he launched himself at Ulric and took him down, pinning him roughly against the mattress. “You’re so fucking adorable,” Gage growled, kissing Ulric’s shoulder. His hands wandered up Ulric’s sides. “The way you were scared earlier, I didn’t think you’d ask King for his autograph.”
Ulric stiffened beneath him. “I wasn’t scared. And I need a shirt. Get off.”
Gage hummed, sliding his palms up Ulric’s chest, cupping his pecs. They were nice, actually. There was muscle beneath his curves—you just couldn’t see it straightaway. “Nah. No need for a shirt.” He found Ulric’s nipples, pinching them.
Ulric sucked in a sharp breath. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to see if you’re different from me. Not really.”
Ulric snorted. “Maybe you need to open your eyes, Gage.”
“Maybe you need to close yours.”
Gage wrapped his arms around Ulric, holding him close. This felt nice. Comfortable. And Gage couldn’t help looking at the tiny spots of ink on Ulric’s shoulder, left over from King’s black marker. When they’d first left to go to Phinny’s place, Gage had wondered if Ulric would freak out. He’d come up with all these excuses to get Ulric home.
“What happened with your previous neighbors?” Gage murmured.
“Nothing.”
“Ulric.” Gage kissed his nape. “Tell me.”
Ulric was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed. “My mom always told me I should dress up real nice whenever I walk down the street, because no one wants to see me like this.” He gestured at his belly. “She said she couldn’t face her neighbors because I’m so overweight.”
“What the fuck?” Anger rippled through Gage. “Your mother said that to you?”
Ulric shrugged, his ears turning pink. “Anyway.”
“No. That isn’t all of it, is it?” The way Ulric was self-conscious, the way he kept comparing himself to Gage... That wasn’t normal for an alpha. “What else did she say?”
Ulric pushed his face against the mattress. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
His silence said so much.
“I want to know,” Gage murmured. “I promise I will never laugh at you.”
Ulric sighed, bringing his arms up around his head, as though he was trying to protect himself. “You’ve never had your friends laugh at you for being out of shape, have you? Every grade, every new school... it’s the same. Sometimes they threw trash at me. Sometimes I had awful notes shoved into my locker. Sometimes they stole my lunches as a joke. I didn’t get an allowance, so those days, I was hungry all the way until I got home.”
Gage’s heart ached for him. “Did you tell anyone?”
Ulric shrugged. “My mom said I deserved it.”
“What the fuck?”
“She tried everything to get me to lose weight. Like diets and after-school exercise programs. She tried piling my dinner plate with boiled vegetables only, but she and my dad had actual food on their plates. The veggies were so bad, I—I cried. I was pretty young at that point. Then she started telling me that no one would ever love me because I’m—”
He stopped talking, but Gage heard the words Ulric didn’t say, he heard Ulric’s heartbreak, and the broken, unloved bits of his past.
Then, so quietly that Gage almost didn’t hear him, Ulric added, “I mean, it’s true.”
Gage stopped breathing, his heart squeezing tight. He didn’t know which was worse: that Ulric had grown up in such a terrible environment, or that Ulric believed no one could love him because of how he looked. That Ulric hadn’t been loved until now.
Gage touched Ulric’s throat, his heart pounding so hard he couldn’t hear himself think. It wasn’t fair that Ulric thought all that crap about himself. Ulric was gentle and sweet, he was cuddly and so easily flustered.
“Who the fuck wouldn’t love you?” Gage growled, angry with everything. He’d grown up poor, but at least he had an awesome family, at least he had parents who had been supportive of the things he did.
And here Ulric was—Gage didn’t know if Ulric had any family nearby. Ulric sure didn’t sound like he had friends.
“Tell you what,” Gage said, his chest burning. “I’m gonna be your best friend forever. I swear.”
Ulric turned, looking warily at Gage over his shoulder. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” Gage leaned heavily into him, wrapping his arms around Ulric. “I don’t care where we go from here, and I don’t care if I have to move away or things like that. You can tell me anything, and I’ll listen.”
Ulric stared, still disbelieving. “Why?”
“Because.” Gage hugged him tighter, so tight that their bodies were pressed flush together, his jaw against Ulric’s naked back. “Everyone needs a friend.”
“You don’t need me.”
“You need me,” Gage whispered. And he dragged the scent gland on his wrist down Ulric’s arm, leaving a trail of pine. People usually reserved that scent
