Chapter 17

When phrased that way, it sounded somewhat plausible. In fact, when Dante had first run into Rhys at the café, the very first thing that crossed his mind was how badly he wanted to see him naked. But the problem wasn’t Dante; it was Rhys. Would Rhys actually miss having sex with him? Dante’s expression turned serious as he reflected on their past.

Their sex life had been far too ordinary to warrant any deep physical attachment. They hadn’t even done it that often. Usually, when people said sexual compatibility was good, they meant an unforgettable, mind-blowing experience, and sex with Rhys hadn’t exactly felt like that.

The time they spent entwined was roughly fifteen to twenty-five minutes. The positions were usually limited to missionary or doggy style, and things like fellatio occurred only occasionally, whenever the mood struck. Even then, Rhys always told him not to overdo it and made him stop midway, meaning Dante had never actually sucked him until he came.

This weekly event, strictly fixed at once per week, always concluded after a single round, and neither Dante nor Rhys had ever begged for more. It was certainly better than being a sexless couple, but by Dante’s standards, their relationship had been closer to platonic. Dante naturally possessed a fairly high sex drive, so a once-a-week, one-round routine never fully satisfied the desire piling up inside him.

The sex was good because seeing Rhys’s erotic expressions was thrilling in itself, but if someone were to ask whether Dante missed being fucked from behind, the answer was closer to no. For about the first year, penetration had come with genuine pain due to the sheer size of Rhys’s cock. Even after it became bearable, Dante had never truly gotten used to the act of being taken.

Maybe it was because he couldn’t reconcile the sight of himself accepting another man.

It might have been different if he had a delicate, pretty face. But what was so pleasant about watching a broad-featured, unmistakably masculine, handsome man make high, breathy noises? Rhys must have thought the same, because…

“Rhys, wait… ah, wait, behind, it feels, hah, ah…! Haa…! Ngh!”

Once, when his prostate had been struck hard and a high moan slipped out of him without permission, Rhys had flinched and completely stopped moving. The flow of their sex, calm but gradually heating, snapped off entirely. A heavy silence briefly settled over them. Dante, who had been twisting his upper body to escape the unfamiliar sensation, came back to his senses and anxiously studied Rhys’s expression.

At the time, Rhys had been biting his lip, his brows twisted. Then, he pulled out, looking down at Dante.

“Should we take a short break?”

His voice had been so dry it was hard to believe he was the same person who had been thrusting inside Dante only moments prior. Dante had struggled to interpret what that meant. After much agonizing thought, he concluded that his uncharacteristic moan had ruined the mood.

After that incident, Dante remained constantly tense during sex, terrified his prostate might be hit and that he might make some strange sound again. Maybe that was why it had been so difficult for him to derive pleasure from behind. It wasn’t as if he particularly wanted to, anyway. The thought of Dante Bellini getting turned on while being fucked only made him feel worse. Rhys probably hadn’t expected that from sex with him, either.

…But what had Rhys expected?

Dante tried imagining things from Rhys’s perspective, but he couldn’t guess. Was it because he wanted to be physically joined with someone he loved? In the past, when Dante had confirmed Rhys’s affection through the immature method of threatening to break up, he had assumed that was the reason. Now, even that was no longer certain. In Rhys’s merciless severing of all ties the moment they broke up, it was difficult to find any trace of lingering attachment. He acted like someone who had become sick of Dante down to his very marrow.

If he had been that sick of him, why suggest they live together? Why mention the moving date? Why clear out the room? Why keep having sex with him right up until the day they broke up if he was going to leave without a shred of regret?

Dante knew nothing. He had dated Rhys for four years, yet it was still difficult to guess what lay in the man’s heart. When they were together, Dante had believed more than anything that Rhys loved and cherished him. But after facing him today, he felt as if he had never really known Rhys as a person at all.

In any case, seducing Rhys with sex was out of the question. That had only been possible because they liked each other. If Rhys no longer held feelings for him, Dante was… well, he was the sort of person who appealed to women, not men. At least by his own standards.

—Forget it. Thanks for the advice anyway. See you when I’m back.

—Listen to me, Lazzaro typed back. —Make sure you share the hotel, and if you have to, come out half-naked like it’s an accident. You’ve got a great body. Especially your chest. What’s the point of leaving something that nice unused? Use it. Oh, right. I’ve been meaning to ask and just remembered. What’s your chest workout routine? Please share.

Dante wanted to answer Lazzaro’s message, but unfortunately, he ran out of time. The boarding announcement echoed through the terminal. The moment he heard the call for priority passengers, he checked the seats where Rhys had been sitting, but Rhys was already mixed into the crowd.

Damn. He already left.

Dante quickly shook off the disappointment before it could fester and hurried to join the line. Do not get upset over something like this, he told himself. If Rhys had left the ticket he booked in the past exactly as it was, then they were seated right beside each other. Rhys’s seat was 5B. They would be stuck together for eight and a half hours on the way to Rome, so Dante could play his cards then.

Thinking as positively as possible, he kept his eyes locked on Rhys’s back in the rapidly shrinking line. Watching Rhys finish his boarding-pass check and head toward the escalator, Dante wished his own turn would come faster.

When Dante finally reached the gate, he encountered the attendant, who looked up at him and smiled in greeting. By coincidence, it was Sierra—the woman who had written her phone number on his ticket earlier.

“Hello. We meet again,” Sierra greeted him warmly.

Dante remembered Rhys’s sarcasm when he had held out the ticket with the number written on it, and a sharp instinct whispered that he probably shouldn’t smile back. But contrary to his heart’s warning, Dante smiled naturally, a habit ingrained in him over long years of being polite.

“We meet again, Sierra.”

At the greeting that escaped reflexively regardless of his true will, Sierra looked pleased. She glanced down at the ticket with her number on it, then asked, “You weren’t offended, were you?”

“Of course not. I was honored.”

He had honestly been flustered, but he couldn’t offend a woman by being brutally truthful. Dante smoothed it over with a gentlemanly smile.

“I’m glad.”

As they exchanged pleasantries, the ticket was returned to Dante’s hand. After checking his passport as a formality, Sierra sent him through the gate with a look that clearly indicated he should contact her.

She was someone he would never meet again after passing through the gate, yet somehow Dante felt as if he had committed a wrongdoing. In truth, it wasn’t the first time he had received or given a number this way, but he felt a wave of guilt, almost as if he had cheated.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about it earlier.”

Dante let out a sharp breath. “Rhys?”

Rhys, whom Dante assumed had already gone down, was standing right beside the entrance to the escalator. His arms were crossed, and the look he fixed on Dante was icy. Dante desperately wished the emotion in those blue eyes were jealousy and anger, but even while they were dating, Rhys had never shown him a face like that.

“For someone who followed me all the way to the airport and begged to get back together, you looked rather happy.”

But that kind of sounds like jealousy, doesn’t it?

Dante froze in the typical posture of a boyfriend caught under interrogation, carefully reading Rhys’s mood. Rhys stared at Dante, who clearly had no idea what to do, let out a hollow laugh, and turned away. Dante hurried to his side, the wheels of his empty suitcase clattering loudly behind them.

“Rhys, it really wasn’t anything. You know our family motto is to always be good to women, right? I swear we only exchanged greetings. There was no other meaning at all.”

“I know. I saw it enough times to get sick of it while we were dating,” Rhys replied, his expressionless voice sounding as if he truly didn’t care, yet simultaneously conveying how sick and tired he was of the behavior.

Hoping it was the latter, Dante asked, “Did you hate when I did that? Then you should’ve told me. I didn’t know you cared about things like that.”

Rhys said nothing. By then, the escalator had reached the bottom.

“People don’t change anyway. There’s no point in saying it,” Rhys answered, his voice growing even drier.

Following him closely into the connecting passage, Dante pleaded desperately. “Of course people don’t change easily. But listen, Rhys. I think people who love each other can adjust. If you tell me what hurt you, I’m confident I can try my hardest. And from now on, I’ll never, ever say we should break up again. Right. I even deleted the photo I took earlier right away.”

He was about to pull out his phone to show proof when Rhys abruptly stopped. Because Dante halted so suddenly behind him, his carry-on suitcase wobbled and fell over with a soft thud.

Rhys quietly looked down at Dante, his long lashes lowered. Hoping desperately that his feelings would finally reach him, Dante looked up at Rhys with sincere longing—more than he had ever felt in his life. For a moment, he felt as if their gazes truly connected them.

He wanted so badly for that to be true.

The longer the silence stretched, the darker Rhys’s eyes became. Dante had the brief illusion that the purple rings near the center of those gray-blue irises had deepened slightly, and then Rhys’s distinctive floral scent abruptly rushed over him. It hadn’t seemed this strong until a moment ago. Was there wind blowing from somewhere? In the brief instant Dante looked puzzled, Rhys spoke quietly.

“Delete my photos.”

“Yeah, I deleted the one from earlier.”

“I mean delete all of them. That will make it easier to forget.”

After dropping that heavy sentence, Rhys began walking again. At the unexpected words, Dante stood blankly as if someone had just slapped him across the face, before furrowing his brows and rushing to catch up.

“How can you say that? Don’t tell me… did you delete all the photos of me?”

There were thousands backed up to iCloud alone. They had never gone abroad together before, but there were hundreds of pictures taken on the road trips they had enjoyed for past anniversaries. Surely Rhys couldn’t have deleted all the memories they had built over four years. Surely he wouldn’t have done that in just two months. Dante asked while desperately believing as much, but…

“You’re asking the obvious,” came the concise reply.

“…That’s hard to believe.” For a moment, his mind went entirely white, but Dante forced himself to mumble beside Rhys as if nothing were wrong. “Honestly, I don’t believe it. It couldn’t have been easy to delete every picture of my handsome face. You used to touch my face whenever you had the chance and say you liked it. That it was pretty, that you wanted to preserve it forever in some form other than photographs, too.”

The more he spoke, the less he wanted to believe the reality. Whenever Rhys looked at Dante, he had said out of habit that if the world had one most beautiful face, it would be Dante’s. At first, those embarrassing words had made Dante recoil, but because he could feel how much Rhys loved him through them, at some point they had become pleasant to hear.

“I deleted the picture I took secretly earlier, but I’m not deleting the others. I don’t want to end things with you. I don’t want to forget you, beautiful. If anything, I want to keep making things to remember with you. I don’t want to erase them.”

Rhys, however, simply kept his back turned and continued walking without a word.

At that complete lack of response, Dante raked a hand through his hair and shouted softly, “You’re not Rhys, are you? Where did you hide my beautiful flower?”