Chapter 30

The heavy room door closed behind them with a solid thud. They stepped inside, passing through a short corridor into a reception-like space. Inside the room, divided by a partition on the left, sat a single, massive king-size bed.

Rhys walked straight to the bedroom and set his luggage on the floor, then stopped directly in front of Dante as he tried to follow him inside. Blocking the bedroom doorway, Rhys answered with an unreadable expression.

“You said men weren’t your type. Wasn’t the reason you still dated me that I adjusted myself to you without complaint?”

At the words flung out without warning, Dante’s eyes widened. What did that mean? He could not even guess from what context Rhys had been thinking this way. It was true that he had been entirely heterosexual until he met Rhys, but after he realized he liked Rhys, that premise itself had changed.

“…Of course it was like that at first,” Dante said, his voice dropping. “But from the moment I admitted I liked you, I realized men were possible, too. That’s why I dated you. I’m not someone who can date another person just because they treat me well.”

By this point, Dante was growing a little angry, too. The fact that they had reached this situation was entirely because of Dante’s wrong choices, so he could understand any grievance Rhys chose to air. But what Rhys had just said was no different from distorting the very fact that Dante liked him. He could bear many things, but it hurt deeply that Rhys was denying his feelings at will.

Rhys, however, shook his head as if he did not believe Dante’s words at all and immediately refuted them. Perhaps he had thought about this for a long time, because there was absolutely no hesitation.

“Because I look pretty, I suppose. Because I smiled for you and was obedient. Because I didn’t feel like a man, you could bear it. You said it yourself, so don’t try to deny it.”

What Rhys said was not entirely wrong. Among the reasons Dante had fallen for him, those elements were certainly present. But bear it? There was no way Dante had said something like that.

“When did I say that? I’ve never said it that way.”

“You really don’t remember? During our second time having sex, you answered my question like that.”

…Wait. No way.

A memory he had completely forgotten suddenly rushed back. Dante definitely remembered the day he first had sex with Rhys, but he was not clever enough to remember everything that happened afterward without a single omission. He had wondered what on earth Rhys was talking about, and now…

It was the question he asked while loosening my back hole…!

Dante’s face flushed a deep, burning crimson with embarrassment, and his mouth snapped shut.

Going back into the distant past, even after the first time he had sex with Rhys, Dante still had not been able to bring himself to learn how to prepare his backside. Omegas were apparently aroused and became physically ready on their own when they smelled an Alpha’s pheromones, but Dante was a Beta male, so naturally, his back had to be loosened manually.

The problem was Dante’s ingrained identity as a heterosexual. He could grit his teeth and clean himself back there, but putting his own fingers into the hole and stirring inside his own anatomy was far too much for a novice like him. When he put his hand inside, his stomach churned hard enough to make him feel as if he might vomit.

In the end, when he received Rhys’s help, Rhys had asked a question. Had it been when about three fingers were inside him…? The sensation of his back hole being spread tightly was so alien that Dante had lowered his head and clenched his teeth. Rhys’s gaze had touched the back of his neck, flushed red as he held his breath, and then he had asked, “Dante… if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to force yourself. This is your first time with a man, and I understand that you aren’t used to it.”

After already poking his hole so thoroughly the first time, he was saying something like that now. Dante had sacrificed his backside because his pretty one said he wanted to put it in, acting like a broad-hearted, older partner, so he had no idea why Rhys would say such a thing now. Did he not want to do it with Dante? Now that they had tried, had it not been good?

“…No. It’s bearable enough,” Dante had panted back then. “Why? Are you the one who doesn’t want to?”

At that, the fingers stirring inside him had stopped. The hand that had been opening him with a steady, gentle rhythm so as not to strain Dante’s body, after a moment, pushed in firmly to a depth Dante could never have reached alone.

“There’s no way,” Rhys had whispered. “I only… remembered what Dante said a long time ago. You said you hated men.”

Then the fingers that had entered deep pressed down on a sensitive inner place. At the strange sensation pulsing sharply from below, Dante swallowed a curse and bit his lip. What was that? What the hell did he just do? Dante looked back in confusion, and his eyes met Rhys’s. Feeling a brief wave of revulsion at the unfamiliar pleasure caused by his prostate being pressed, Dante had gradually calmed when he saw the beautiful face gazing down at him.

“Because you’re pretty, I don’t feel that way,” Dante had murmured. “It’s not a man. It’s you, Rhys… so it’s all right.”

He had probably said something like that. Thinking it over now, Dante realized that from Rhys’s perspective, it could have sounded terrible. In truth, Dante had not decided to have sex because men in general were suddenly all right. He had decided he would do this act because he liked Rhys specifically.

But was that distinction, like, incredibly important right now?

Rhys, if you’re the one doing it, I really like anything. And back then I wasn’t in my right mind. How is a person supposed to think rationally when his back hole is being fingered…!

“You remember,” Rhys said, snapping Dante out of his reverie. “Then don’t say anything else. I don’t want to hear you insist men are possible after saying something like that.”

Seeing Dante’s flustered expression, Rhys looked as if he had not expected anything better in the first place, then closed the door firmly. Dante hurried forward just before the latch clicked, but he was too late. As he raked a hand through his hair while staring at the wood that had slammed shut in his face, the doorbell suddenly rang.

Since Rhys did not seem likely to come out, Dante went to the main door. A hotel employee was politely waiting with their suitcases. Dante thanked him and brought both bags inside. After setting his own dull suitcase—now missing one wheel entirely—and Rhys’s sleek, gray aluminum suitcase in the hallway, he sighed and walked back to the bedroom door.

“Rhys, you need to take your suitcase.”

If Rhys wanted to wash up, he would have no choice but to take the suitcase, and Dante planned to use that exact moment to somehow explain his thoughts. As expected, Rhys opened the bedroom door halfway and showed his face. The moment he saw the suitcase in the hall and realized he had no choice but to step out, Dante moved beside him and spoke again.

“Rhys, you and I dated for four years. For the record, you know today is our anniversary, right? Anyway, by the point I’d dated you for four years, I was a person who had been dating a man for that long. What I said back then… I won’t deny it. But Rhys, I love you. You know that, too.”

Walking straight toward his suitcase, Rhys answered in a dry, flat voice. “No. I don’t. I never once thought you could truly love me.”

“Why are you deciding how I feel at will?”

“You always did.”

Mid-sentence, Rhys pressed his mouth shut, looking as if he were swallowing something bitter that had surged up his throat. He narrowed his eyes, then slowly turned his head and met Dante’s eyes directly.

In that instant, Dante felt a shift in the air. Unlike when Rhys had been pushing him away with sharp edges raised until now, he instinctively sensed that Rhys had reached some kind of final decision.

“We wouldn’t work anyway,” Rhys said softly. “I’m… not the person you thought I was, and you don’t believe in my heart, either. I was greedy from the start. I was wrong for trying to keep you beside me somehow when you said you only dated women.”

The longer Rhys spoke, the tighter Dante clenched his fist. Rhys was truly trying to give up on him right now. Listening to him explain things this way, Dante could feel that Rhys’s heart had not completely left him yet. Even so, Rhys was actively ending it.

“I’ll change from now on,” Dante pleaded, desperate to seize the chance he had been given. “Rhys, I’ll never say things like let’s break up again. You know there were always similar reasons when I said those words. The more things you didn’t tell me, the more anxious I got. Even now, I still don’t understand why you hide so much, but being happy with you is more important than arguing about those things.”

He was practically begging. Rhys was the first person in his entire life he had ever clung to this hard. People’s hearts did not change through mere effort, but at least Rhys still seemed to like him, so Dante believed that if he could just get close enough, he could change the outcome in front of him.

Rhys looked at Dante in silence. An unreadable emotion filled his gray-blue eyes, and then he asked, as if testing him, “Before… you said you hated being deceived.”

At the sudden shift in topic, Dante paused.

Rhys saw the hesitation and pressed, “What would you do if I deceived you?”

At those words, the anxiety Dante had been trying so hard to suppress rose to the surface. The thoughts he had hoped were impossible crystallized, and Lazzaro’s and Lucy’s warnings flashed through his mind one after another. Why on earth would a man like Rhys Elliott date Dante Bellini? Maybe he had kept Dante as a side piece, or had gotten sick of him long ago and cheated. The betrayals of past lovers overlapped in his mind, and Dante ended up asking before he could stop himself, “Were you… really cheating on me?”

“Ha.”

The instant those words left Dante’s mouth, Rhys twisted the corner of his mouth into a bitter laugh. Staring at Dante with a face that had turned completely frigid, he ended the conversation in a hard, final voice.

“We broke up. It’s over. There’s no way someone who couldn’t even believe me when I said I loved him could ever accept me. Our trust is a complete mess, and I can’t stand watching you sell smiles everywhere anymore, either. Once this trip ends, we’ll never see each other again.”

Realizing the massive mistake he had just made, Dante apologized immediately. In his heart, he knew Rhys was not someone who would do that, but his deeply ingrained trauma could not accept it. He could not think of any other reason Rhys would hide everything about his life and disappear periodically, except for infidelity.

“Rhys, damn it, I’m sorry.”

Gathering his suitcase, Rhys answered calmly, “There’s no need. We’re already over.”

“Is it really over?”

Because Dante felt he had just kicked away his absolute last chance, instead of going on at length, he asked the question in a voice completely threaded with despair.

Rhys confirmed it without a shred of hesitation. “Yes.”

“You’re really never going to see me again? You’re sure you can do that?”

“I lived without you before I met you,” Rhys said quietly. “So did you. Find a new love, the way you did in the past.”

Find a new love.

Because those words had come from Rhys, of all people, Dante’s mind tangled blacker and blacker. With a physical pain that felt as if his heart were being torn right out of his chest, Dante asked as though in total surrender, “You’re going to love someone… who isn’t me?”

Standing before the bedroom door, Rhys was silent for a long moment. Then, with his hand resting on the doorknob, he slowly looked back. He stared directly into Dante’s eyes—the eyes of the man who had followed him all this way—and pronounced every single syllable with chilling clarity.

“I’ll have to.”

Even though Dante was standing on solid hotel ground, it felt as if the floor had dropped out completely beneath his feet. Following the sickening sensation of falling, his eyes widened. He searched Rhys’s face in desperation, trying somehow to find proof that those words were a lie, but there was no sign of hesitation.

The moment he confirmed it, the door closed.

[END of VOLUME 1]