Chapter 51

As they bickered without pause, the two of them arrived at their destination before they even realized it. Time was slipping away far faster than expected. Literally in the blink of an eye, twenty minutes had vanished. Dante hadn’t even gotten through a quarter of half the things he wanted to say; at this rate, the entire four hours would disappear just over lunch.

Anxiety gripping him, Dante tightened his hold on Rhys’s hand, and Rhys subtly adjusted his grip to match. Dante looked down at their interlaced fingers, startled by the fact that Rhys had actually squeezed back just as firmly.

Before he could ponder what the gesture meant, the sound of fluent Italian flowing into his ears drew his attention. Dante slowly lifted his head, thoroughly puzzled. The voice was intimately familiar, yet the words entering his ears weren’t English. Rhys was conversing effortlessly with the restaurant waiter in the local tongue.

“Would you like to sit inside or outside?” the waiter asked.

“The weather is beautiful, so we were thinking of sitting on the patio. Would that be all right?” Rhys replied.

“Please, sit wherever you like. I’ll bring the menus shortly.”

“Thank you.”

It was a simple, standard exchange, but Rhys’s Italian was flawless, completely devoid of any foreign accent. Dante shook Rhys’s hand with an incredulous expression. “Since when can you speak Italian? You never told me you could.”

“Didn’t you just never ask?” Rhys lightly scolded, treating Dante as though he were the strange one for bringing it up, before leading him toward an outdoor table.

Six tables were nestled neatly beneath the canvas awning, and given the perfect weather, nearly all of them were occupied. Fortunately, because it was already two in the afternoon and the peak lunch rush had just passed, they were able to be seated immediately without a wait, despite the restaurant’s reputation.

“What am I supposed to do if you even speak Italian perfectly?” Dante lamented, pulling out Rhys’s chair for him. “I’ll confess now—I actually can’t speak a word of it. I didn’t listen when my parents told me to learn. Good grief, compared to you, I’m nothing but shortcomings.”

He voiced the thought—one that had been plaguing him with increasing frequency lately—as if it were a light, throwaway complaint. Watching him, Rhys slowly released his hand and offered a low denial. “That kind of comparison is entirely meaningless.”

Dante knew this was a high-stakes situation where he desperately needed to look good, yet he had gone and confessed his flaws anyway. Surprisingly, Rhys didn’t seem even remotely disappointed or shocked by the revelation.

Dante lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me… you already knew?”

As Rhys settled into the chair Dante had pulled out, he crossed his legs leisurely, leaned back, and looked up with that familiar, mocking sneer. “I just happen to recall witnessing Tay running search pages through a translator on several occasions.”

“Damn it…”

Dante groaned softly, a flush creeping all the way to the nape of his neck. Rhys’s brows curved, and a low, genuine laugh escaped him. Dante looked down at him in surprise; it was a sound far removed from a mocking chuckle, but by the time he caught it, the melody had already faded. Rhys glanced toward the empty chair opposite him, gesturing for Dante to sit.

“You didn’t exactly seem to be trying to hide it,” Rhys noted. “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“I just… wanted to look good for you,” Dante muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as he finally sat down.

The moment his palm brushed the right side of his neck, Dante flinched. Beneath his skin, he felt the distinct, dented bite marks and small scabs left behind. Before showering, he had looked in the mirror and thought Rhys had left truly spectacular marks, but the subsequent chaos had driven the thought right out of his head, leaving him entirely unprotected. In truth, there was no real way to hide them anyway—and he didn’t particularly want to.

Rhys watched him silently, his gaze locking onto the way Dante had frozen with his hand pressed to his neck. Perhaps because they were now seated beneath the deep shade of the awning, Rhys’s clear blue eyes appeared darker, more intense. Even out here in the open air, Dante could smell his distinct, elegant floral scent. In the past, he felt as though he only caught brief, phantom whiffs of it as they brushed past each other, but lately, it was a constant presence. It had become entirely too familiar. Even when his mood plummeted, a single breath of this scent was enough to soothe him, bringing a sudden wave of heat—

Hm? Why am I suddenly feeling like this?

At the sudden, sharp heat spreading through his torso, Dante frowned. Unlike the first day he had experienced these symptoms, there was no accompanying headache or nausea. Instead, this heat felt closer to a low-grade fever, like the heavy incubation period of a cold. It didn’t exactly hurt, but the sensation of it spreading through his limbs before pooling warmly in his lower stomach felt deeply unfamiliar and deeply unpleasant.

This has been happening a lot since landing in Rome. Is it the water? Jet lag? If it keeps up after we get back to New York, I should probably check into a hospital.

“Dante, are you sick?”

“Hm? Ah, no, I’m fine. You know I’m sturdy.”

Perhaps his brief, tight-eyed grimace against the wave of heat had given him away. Rhys had leaned in closer at some point, his voice laced with genuine worry. The moment Dante heard that low, gentle cadence, a wave of relief washed over him.

As Dante offered a faint smile and shook his head, Rhys reached across the table and laid the back of his cool hand against Dante’s cheek. Dante blinked, utterly still beneath the soft touch. He had asked Rhys to act like he used to, but he truly hadn’t anticipated this level of tenderness.

“You seem to have a fever… You’re much warmer than your usual temperature,” Rhys murmured softly. He shifted, pressing the back of his other hand to Dante’s opposite cheek before beginning to push his own chair back. “There’s a pharmacy right around the corner. I’ll go buy a fever reducer and some cold medicine, so at least take that.”

“Pretty one, I’m really fine.”

Because the heat had consistently faded back to normal on its own, Dante didn’t see the need for medicine—and more importantly, he flatly refused to be separated from Rhys for even a single minute of their remaining time.

Rhys stared down at him, listening to the stubborn insistence, and swallowed a heavy sigh. “You’re always like this. You don’t care even when you’re actively hurting. Does something only count as pain to you if there’s a visible fracture or bleeding? Healthy people can still get sick, Dante. Especially someone like you, who pays absolutely no attention to his own body.”

Listening to the sharp edge cutting through Rhys’s voice, a memory sparked in Dante’s mind, overlaying perfectly with a bitter comment Rhys had made on the plane:

…Liar. You don’t even notice the injuries you bring back from the field.

He was entirely right. It was rarely just once or twice that Rhys had been the one to discover cuts and bruises Dante hadn’t even realized he possessed, quietly applying medicine to them. Neglecting his own well-being was an old, deeply ingrained byproduct of his lifestyle; Dante had simply never felt the need to look after himself. It was only after they began dating, when he witnessed the sheer panic and worry in Rhys’s eyes, that he realized just how dull his own self-preservation instincts were. He hadn’t deliberately ignored his health, but after growing so used to the gentle, worried hands that constantly checked and treated him, he had simply stopped remembering to do it himself.

“Maybe I got too used to you taking care of me,” Dante offered, a playful, self-deprecating smile tugging at his lips. “You gave me a bad habit.”

Even at the teasing remark, Rhys’s expression didn’t soften. Ah. That part is definitely different from the past. Before, Rhys would have pretended to lose the argument and let it slide with a sigh.

Dante awkwardly rubbed his chin. He pulled the sunglasses down from his forehead, tucked them securely back into his shirt pocket, and rested his forearms on the table. Lacing his fingers together, he looked at Rhys dead-on, his expression turning entirely serious.

“Thank you for worrying about me, Rhys. Truly. But there’s really no need to go to the pharmacy.”

Though the displeasure clearly remained in his eyes, Rhys stopped trying to stand and slowly sank back into his seat. “You’re a grown adult,” he added shortly. “Take care of your own body from now on.”

“You’re the one who trained me to be this dependent.”

“…Tay.”

Rhys looked as though he were on the precipice of a heavy declaration, but he abruptly closed his mouth. Dante thought he could guess exactly what words Rhys had swallowed, so he leaned back against his chair, deliberately playing innocent.

Perhaps the sudden spell really had been nothing serious, because the uncomfortable heat that had been pooling in his stomach had already completely vanished. “I guess the sun was just so intense I got a little overheated for a second,” Dante whistled, looking around to break the tension. “Now that I’m in the shade, I’m totally fine, see? Rome is much hotter than New York. Their summers must be no joke.”

Rhys stared at him for a long moment before finally letting the tension leave his shoulders. “All right, then. It’s your body. Do as you like.”

Dante had only downplayed it because he didn’t want Rhys wasting precious minutes worrying over nothing, but the beautiful man across from him was clearly still sour. Fortunately, the waiter returned at that exact moment, placing a chilled bottle of water and two menus on the linen tablecloth.

“Would the two handsome gentlemen like to order drinks first?”

“Yes, an Aperol Spritz, please,” Dante ordered confidently. Then he turned his gaze across the table. “Rhys, what about you?”

When Dante ordered the alcohol without hesitation, Rhys lifted a single, questioning eyebrow. Seeing that silent, sharp look asking if he was actually serious about drinking with a fever, Dante felt a sudden wave of profound pleasure. Even if this is just an act… if Rhys were truly, completely sick of me, would he still be worrying about me this much?

Rhys stared at Dante’s grinning face for a beat, then turned his head toward the waiter to order. “A Bellini, please.”

…Now that was cheating.

A Bellini was the specific cocktail Rhys had ordered constantly since the very beginning of their relationship. The brunch drink—which shared the exact spelling of Dante’s own surname—had originated right here in Italy. It was a sweet, vibrant aperitif made by mixing Prosecco and fresh peach purée, and over the years, Rhys had developed a habit of ordering it whenever he wanted to silently protest something Dante had done.

And for some unexplainable, intoxicating reason, on the days Rhys drank it, they always ended up kissing.

Looking at Rhys after he ordered the cocktail—a drink that served as both a private signal and a monumental archive of their shared memory—Dante felt a thick lump form in his throat. Through Rhys, Dante had learned for the very first time what it actually meant for two completely different individuals to merge into lovers. It meant the creation of their own small, yet infinitely vast world. A radiant universe constructed entirely out of languages, inside jokes, and silent signals that no one else on earth could ever hope to decode. Inside that world, there had certainly been days of bitter fights and awkward silences, but there had been far more beautiful, happy times that completely eclipsed the bad.

And yet, that entire world they had painstakingly built meant absolutely nothing the moment they broke up.

The drink called a Bellini, which carried the weight of a silent covenant between them, was nothing more than a standard menu item to anyone else sitting on this patio. In this exact moment, that brutal reality struck Dante harder than it ever had before.

“Rhys, I…”

Looking at the elegant profile turned away from him, arms crossed tightly over his chest, Dante nearly begged. The words ‘I don’t want to break up’ surged to the tip of his tongue, but he forced them back down. Those words no longer carried any currency with Rhys. What Dante needed to do right now wasn’t to beg, but to make Rhys look back on the reality of what they had and fundamentally reconsider his choice.