Chapter 40

Although Rhys had gone inside first, he stood waiting for Dante.

They returned to the suite in absolute silence, both of them acting as if the fierce argument that had just unfolded had never happened. With indifferent eyes, Rhys pointed toward the bathroom, applying wordless pressure for Dante to wash up. Remembering, belatedly, that Rhys had mentioned a stench, Dante hesitated before finally entering the bedroom. He had no idea what kind of odor Rhys was talking about, but he, too, wanted to wash away every trace of Santino as quickly as possible.

Dante turned on the hot water and spent far longer than usual scrubbing his skin. He twice washed the places Santino had touched—especially his lower back, arms, and shoulders—and rubbed at the nape of his neck with a shower puff so harshly that he wondered if his skin might peel away.

Only after he had meticulously washed every part that had come into contact with Santino did he regain a little room to breathe. Slicking back his hair, which water had darkened until it looked blacker than usual, Dante closed his eyes and turned his face directly into the falling spray. As he stood there, one event after another from this chaotic day rose in his mind.

Everything had been completely unexpected: Rhys’s attitude, the incident at the fountain, all of it. Getting pickpocketed included. Yet, one thing had gone according to plan. Thanks to losing his phone, the two of them were, one way or another, staying in the very same hotel.

When Lazzaro had still been spouting nonsense about seducing Rhys with his body, Dante had been genuinely full of hope. Even when Rhys pushed him away with brutal force, he kept catching Dante at moments he least expected, making Dante certain that Rhys still harbored lingering feelings for him. But then Dante heard Rhys’s true thoughts—perspectives he had never been privy to before—and when Rhys flatly told him it was over, he had tried, somehow, to accept the breakup.

But he had absolutely no idea how to interpret what had just happened.

With Dante’s current state of mind, predicting Rhys’s behavior had become an impossible task. Swallowing a groan of frustration, he remembered Rhys asking whether he was drunk and began brushing his teeth. It was not as if they were going to kiss, so there was no need to go to such extremes, yet Dante still brushed his teeth three times until every lingering trace of alcohol was completely gone.

He even washed behind.

It was not because he had any particular intention. Really. It was only that whenever he was in the same space as Rhys, washing there, too, had become an instinctual habit. That was all. They had spent four consecutive years together, after all; his body was simply executing, unconsciously, what it remembered better than his head.

Even Dante knew sex was impossible in an atmosphere this murderous. Besides, Rhys had always been someone with barely any sex drive to begin with. Even back when Dante washed behind every single time just in case there might be a second round, Rhys had strictly adhered to their once-a-week limit. If nothing unexpected had ever occurred even when they peacefully shared the same bed, then in an atmosphere like today’s, the odds were practically in the negatives.

Haah.

Dante had already admitted to himself that they had truly broken up, and Rhys likely would not care whether he saw Dante naked or not. Still, the fact that Dante was the only one painfully conscious of their proximity made him feel utterly pathetic.

After taking an exceptionally long time to wash, Dante stepped out and studied his nude body in the mirror. His resilient skin, flushed with a healthy color, and the muscles forged through years of rigorous training were certainly pleasing to look at, but he felt no particular arousal from the sight. Perhaps because Dante himself felt absolutely no attraction toward men who were not Rhys, he noticed only what his body lacked.

For instance, Dante had always viewed his waist, which was quite narrow compared to his broad shoulders, as an insecurity. A man ought to have a thick, flat abdomen, but the farther down his body went from his shoulders, the closer his figure came to a sharp, inverted triangle.

Rhys, on the other hand, possessed exactly the right proportions, with a splendid abdomen and the perfect thickness to his waist. If one looked strictly at their physiques, Rhys seemed far more masculine than Dante. Since a waist was not a part that could be thickened no matter how hard one trained, Dante had worked tirelessly on his chest to compensate. The pectorals Lazzaro so highly acknowledged were the direct result of blood, sweat, and tears. Thank God his forearms and trapezius muscles held up their end of the bargain.

It was absurd to think about now, but Dante no longer knew why Rhys had liked him in the first place. Listening to the words that poured from Rhys’s mouth, Dante sounded like a terrible lover who flirted with women despite having a boyfriend. The fact that Rhys still looked after a man he must have grown sick to death of, even now that things had reached this point, probably meant Rhys was simply a kind person at his core.

Swallowing a sigh, Dante was about to put on a robe when his gaze drifted once more to the right side of his neck. Despite all his aggressive scratching, his skin was thick enough that no fingernail marks remained. Instead, the area near the right sternocleidomastoid had reddened entirely. Lifting his chin to stretch his neck, Dante touched the flushed skin with his fingertips. Here and there, tiny blood vessels had burst, leaving mottled red marks that closely resembled hickeys.

Fuck, hickeys from Santino? The fact that a sentence like that even crossed my mind means my brain has been thoroughly contaminated.

The disgusting memory he thought he had washed clean and sent down the drain rushed back, raising goosebumps across his skin. He had subdued Santino before anything worse could happen, so he could easily treat it as stepping in filth and forget it, but something about a man who was not Rhys touching him felt strangely intolerable.

His stomach began to roll violently, prompting Dante to hurriedly pull on the robe. The strange thoughts he had entertained while washing behind had long since faded. It had been an exhausting day; he should just sleep. A good amount of time had passed since he left the bar, so it had to be close to midnight. Sleeping on the sofa while leaving Rhys’s warm side behind was deeply disheartening, but they were broken up. He should be satisfied with merely occupying the same space as Rhys.

Quietly opening the bathroom door, Dante scanned the room. Rhys stood by the window beside the bed, engaged in a phone call. Perhaps he, too, had washed somewhere among the hotel facilities, because his hair was slightly damp. As Dante watched the back of his figure clad in a robe, he found himself helplessly wanting to see the beautiful body underneath.

Rhys must have sensed another presence, because he turned around. For a fleeting instant, his gaze slipped down to the gap in Dante’s open bathrobe before rising to meet his face. Rhys’s expression did not change in the slightest, yet Dante flustered all on his own. It was not as if they had seen each other naked only once or twice, but for some unknown reason, he felt oddly shy and needlessly tied the front of his robe with extra care.

“…I’m done washing,” Dante muttered, averting his eyes. “I’m going to sleep.”

Rhys said nothing. Instead, his gaze fixated openly on Dante’s nape. Under the room’s lighting, his blue eyes shone with a sharp intensity as they locked onto that single spot. Meeting those eyes, Dante gradually grew tense. His throat dried out, and he became pointlessly aware of the sound of his own breathing. He was just about to ask if there was a problem when Rhys abruptly turned his gaze back toward the window without offering an answer.

The line of sight that had felt as though it physically connected them snapped, and only then did Dante finally breathe again. Had Rhys been looking at his neck just now? His gaze had seemed to land exactly on the right side—where Santino had licked him.

Because of Rhys, who had stared so intently at his neck, Dante’s mind grew rapidly complicated. Even in his own opinion, the current state of his skin could easily invite a strange misunderstanding. At a quick glance, it probably looked as though someone had left a vivid hickey on him. Just his luck that he had scratched every single spot the bastard had touched.

Regret rose within him for scratching so hard, which then slowly morphed into sheer confusion.

Did Rhys actually care about this? He kept adamantly saying they were over, yet something like this on Dante’s neck bothered him? Since Rhys himself had explicitly told Dante to find another love, it probably wasn’t jealousy. And yet, remembering the profound way Rhys had stared at the spot near his neck, Dante could not be certain. The look in his eyes—whether it had been contempt or raw fury—kept deeply troubling him.

What exactly did Rhys want to do with him? He acted as if he had already entirely sorted out his feelings, yet back at the fountain, he had asked whether Dante was drunk and behaved as if he still possessed the right to keep him in check despite the fact that they were no longer dating. He had held Dante’s hand all the way back to the hotel. Now, he was openly glaring at a suspicious-looking mark. If Dante had not heard him state so clearly that it was over, he would think Rhys still had feelings for him.

Or was Rhys deliberately acting this way to smooth over the frantic scene Dante had caught at the fountain?

Still entirely tense throughout his body, Dante swallowed against his dry throat and touched the nape of his neck for no reason. Rhys’s heavy silence bothered him, but he had a strange feeling that if he stayed in this room, something unpredictable would happen. Following that uneasy intuition, he was about to exit the room when a muffled voice rang out from Rhys’s phone.

“—Was that Mr. Devil Hunter just now? Tell him good night for me!”

The instant Dante recognized Blake’s voice, he spun back around. Look at that. Rhys had clearly asserted there was nothing between them, yet they were on the phone at this ungodly hour? Who contacted someone they supposedly only met for work this late at night? Anyone could see it was highly suspicious.

And after this, Rhys wanted to accuse him? No, in the first place, a person had to behave in a trustworthy way if they wanted to be trusted. As Dante strode toward him, heat rushing violently to his head, Rhys frowned and promptly ended the call. He flipped the screen down, set the phone on the table, and took the first strike.

“We’ve broken up, and this isn’t any of your business,” Rhys said coldly, “so don’t try to interrogate me.”

“If he’s someone you were seeing while you were still dating me, then it is my business.”

“I clearly told you I never cheated.”

“Then please explain it in a way I can actually understand and move past!” Dante demanded, his voice rising. “Every two months, when you vanished, who were you with, and what were you doing? It didn’t happen once or twice, Rhys. How could you vanish at that exact same time, consistently, for four straight years? Unless you were keeping two separate households, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Since this was the core issue they had fought over until they finally broke up, Dante wanted the definitive answer now, no matter what. Ever since seeing Blake, the anxious hypothesis he had tried to dismiss as impossible kept feeling more and more real, and he could no longer pretend not to notice.

“I was actually working at times, and I needed time alone,” Rhys explained, his voice flat. “That was why I made that time for myself. I’ve explained that to you over and over. You were the one who couldn’t accept it and chose to break up.”

“How does someone who desperately needs private time suggest we live together?”