Thankfully, she was interrupted.

"Lauren!" Gideon's mother called in the most false-welcoming voice Cole had ever heard. She slipped through the front door and hurried toward them. "You're late."

"Well, if you would have told me Gideon was actually coming, I'd have shown up on time."

"Well, he's just leaving," his mother said with a smile, "Aren't you dear?"

Cole found the strength somewhere within himself to pop his head out behind Gideon and agree with an emphatic, "Yes." Then he spotted the limo SUV pulling up behind Lauren's sports car. "And there is the car! Goodbye."

He tugged on Gideon's jacket, but the man remained unmoved. With a sigh of exasperation, he just abandoned ship, giving Lauren a wide berth as he ran down the steps toward the welcome sight of Barry stepping out of the limo. He clasped his hands together to stop himself from yanking the door open and letting himself in.

Then there was a shout of alarm and the unmistakable thud of knuckles meeting flesh. On instinct, Cole turned back to see a scene straight out of a Baroque painting. Gideon was pulling his fist while Lauren's head snapped back. Unable to balance in her spiky heels, she toppled over backwards in a dramatic arch. Gideon's mother held out her hands, but they were still occupied with the persistent martini and cigarette. Behind them, several other family members spilled out the front door onto the porch.

"Oh, for the love of…" Cole steeled himself and ran back up the steps.

Gideon's mother saw him coming and pointed, this time with her fingers pinching the cigarette, "Get him out of here."

Cole was going to anyway. When he tugged on Gideon's jacket, his husband finally followed. Barry was waiting by the open door to the back of the limo. He wore a completely neutral, almost bored expression, as if this was how every family gathering ended.

As soon as the car pulled away, Gideon growled, "That'll discourage her from inviting me for a little while."

Cole gaped at him in astonishment. Then he crossed his arms, crossed his legs, and scowled out the window. His heart thundered so hard in his chest he could feel it in his crossed arms.

"I can't fucking believe…" Gideon ran a hand over his head, messing up what little order was left in his hair after the long day. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Cole said.

It came out a little more snappish than he'd meant it to, but he couldn't bring himself to regret the tone when it made Gideon pause. He could feel Gideon's eyes on him, even though he stubbornly stared out the tinted window.

After a couple of beats, Gideon broke the head off one of the roses and reached toward Cole with it. With a huff of exasperation, Cole avoided him and shuffled as far away as he could on the seat. He ended up squished into the corner where the seats wrapped around the back.

The rose hung limply from Gideon's fingers when he dropped his hand to his lap.

"Cole…"

"Did you even hear yourself?" Cole asked, exasperated. "If I'm not just some trophy wife, or some object to you, then why didn't you listen when I said I just wanted to leave?"

"I needed to know why she frightened you so much," Gideon explained himself. "She…my parents weren't…” He huffed frustrated. “She was a friend and a mentor to me when I needed some direction in my life. And to hear that she hurt you…I just needed to know."

"Well, you could have set up a coffee date and talked about it when I wasn't there."

Gideon ran a hand over his face. He set the rose aside and rooted around the bar, fixing himself a glass of whiskey with one of those chilled stone ice cube things in it. They sat in complete silence as he knocked that back, and then made himself another.

"Will you tell me what she did to make you so scared of her?" he asked.

"No."

"Alright, baby."

"Don't call me that," Cole snapped.

Gideon let out a slow, controlled breath.

The tires rumbled smoothly over the road beneath them. Very faintly, Cole could hear the music Barry was listening to in the front switch over to talking, as if it were an ad break.

"I get that you're still mad I didn't tell you about the arrest…"

Cole interrupted him again, "It's not that. It's just…" He'd been so startled to see Lauren and now everything felt awful and threatening and scary. He abruptly felt the hot press of tears against the back of his eyes and frowned. No way was he going to wallow in his misery. He'd promised himself not to wallow in his past, especially since his life was so good now.

It's only that sometimes when he doesn't get his way when he really, really wants something, he throws up all his old defenses against being controlled. Like when he told Gideon he wanted to get away from Lauren and was ignored. But that confrontation had been startling for Gideon too. The man knew his family wasn't the most moral bunch, but it had to be hard to hear that one of the ones he seemed to actually get along with was one of his husband's boogeymen.

He sighed heavily.

"I'm just upset about running into her and now I'm taking it out on you," Cole admitted. "I'm sorry." Then he glared, "Although, I really would like it if you would listen to me when I say I want to go, rather than staying and punching people in the face."

For whatever reason, this was what finally made Gideon look cowed.

Perhaps that was all Cole really wanted—to see the evidence of him feeling guilty for causing Cole distress, rather than quantifying his upset, calculating how many roses it would take to balance it out, and that sort of thing. Because seeing Gideon lower his eyes and chew on his lip actually soothed his prickly feelings. His words hadn't gotten through to him before, but maybe he was listening now.

"I'm not a baby," Cole grumbled.

"You're my baby," Gideon said, teasing a little, but also serious.

Cole huffed. When Gideon put it like that…

"But I don't want to be treated like a baby," he reiterated, clinging to the edge of that very slippery slope. If he let go and let Gideon charm him, this opportunity to hammer his point home would pass him by.

Gideon looked at him for a handful of seconds, really considering his words. The gears turned behind his eyes. Cole hoped they were turning the right way.

"So you are still mad about me not wanting to take you to Logan's arrest," he finally said. When Cole blew a raspberry and started to turn away, frustrated, Gideon grabbed his hands to gently draw him back. "I'm serious. I didn't want to involve you then because I wanted to take care of everything for you without making sure that was what you wanted. And just now, I ignored you when you were literally telling me what you wanted. I…can see now why you are upset."

Well, that wasn't exactly an apology or promise to do better in the future, but it was a step in the right direction at least. Those gears were turning the right way.

"But I also am having a hard time figuring out how to fit someone into my life," Gideon admitted. "I don't want to expose you to the things that I do. I don't want you to have to interact anybody like Logan…or Lauren. But…you wanted to face one and run away from the other. It's confusing."

He'd graduated from cowed to hangdog. Cole had to suppress the urge to pull his hands away so he could pat him on the head. Instead, he squeezed Gideon's hands. It really wasn't confusing, or at least he didn't think so.

"Well, you're a little confusing too," Cole told him. "You don't want me to be exposed to whatever scary stuff you do, like ruining Logan's life and menacing him about it, but then you turn around and make a big scene punching someone in front of me?"

If he was trying to make up for the fact that he'd killed James in front of Cole, then punching people in front of him while Cole was trying to pull him away was not the way to do it.

Gideon pulled away to make himself yet another drink.

Cole frowned.

"I did warn you that I'm not the kind of person who gets to have an easy relationship," Gideon told him.

Oh, what Cole would give to see exactly the things those gears inside his head were churning out. He crossed his arms. "That sounds like a hell of an excuse. You did warn me. Does that mean I just have to accept it that you'll always treat me like a baby?” He huffed. “You are so good about consent and listening to me in the bedroom."

Although, in the beginning he'd tried to think for Cole in the bedroom a bunch too, wanting to pay him, then wanting to get him someone else, and then wanting to throw the power dynamics in the trash. But it had clicked for him eventually that he just needed to talk to Cole about stuff and follow the safeword and everything would be fine.

"Why not listen to me about my feelings on other stuff too? I told you how important taking Logan down was to me and I was literally just begging you to leave instead of talk to Lauren. All you had to do was listen."

Gideon nodded. Then he was silent for a while, looking out the window, sipping his whiskey. The trees gave way to concrete sound barriers as they left the idyllic multimillion dollar suburbs to merge onto the highway. Then he nodded again and turned to Cole.

"I get it," he declared, which brought an incredulous smile to Cole's lips despite himself. "Now, tell me how I can make it up to you."

Cole's felt his smile warm, as his arms finally got tired of clinging to the edge and he let himself slide down that slippery slope. Gideon could have made all the promises in the world and he would have only half believed him. But asking what would make Cole feel better instead of trying to figure out how to make it up to him on his own was definitely the right move.

Nothing actually came to mind though. Cole didn't need apology roses to forgive him. Really, there was nothing to forgive, nothing that he needed to make up for. He just needed to do better in the future. But that wasn't really how Gideon operated. He came from a family of contracts and transactions and debts owed to one another for favors or fuck-ups. He needed something actionable right now or he was going to be a sad sap for a while.

Cole shrugged. "Well, you could start by following through on all this foreplay."

Gideon's eyes widened in surprise.

"You already got me all those roses and the massage and this lovely lingerie, so I'd say you preemptively made up for it as long as you actually follow up with the grand finale that I know you have planned for when we get home."

The surprise quickly morphed into a wolfish grin.