Chapter 33

After washing, sleep crashed over him with frightening force. When he had been in New York, even on his days off, his pager had always been on, so he had never been able to relax completely. But perhaps because he was now in another country—somewhere he could not go even if he received an emergency call—drowsiness swept in so heavily that keeping his eyes open became impossible. He had no choice but to lie down.

How can I be this sleepy when I slept so much on the flight?

Thinking that, Dante curled up on the sofa with Rhys’s hoodie tightly in his arms and drifted off. When he had been sitting, the sofa had seemed fairly spacious, but once he lay down, it was hardly large enough for a man of his stature to sleep comfortably.

When he woke after nearly passing out, the sun was already setting. Hunger, sharpened by almost a full day without food, dragged him awake. He looked out the window and started in surprise. Wondering if Rhys had come back while he was asleep, he hurried off the sofa, but Rhys was not there. A rush of profound disappointment followed. He missed him terribly.

Before falling asleep, he had resolved to accept the breakup, but the moment he woke, that determination wavered. If he stayed in the room and Rhys returned, he did not know what he might say or how he might cling. Unable to trust his own resolve, Dante decided it would be better to go outside. If he came back around the time Rhys would be asleep and avoided running into him entirely, he could somehow get through the rest of the trip.

Probably.

With steps that were incredibly reluctant, Dante changed his clothes. Earlier he had been cold enough to shiver, but when he opened the window and felt the evening air, it was pleasantly cool rather than freezing.

With no one left to look good for, Dante put on a simple navy short-sleeved polo shirt and jeans, both easy to move in. He had brought no extra shoes, so he slipped on his only pair of loafers and left the suite. He went down to the lobby more or less aimlessly, only to realize he had absolutely nowhere to go. It was just past five in the afternoon.

Well, if he just walked, he would eventually find somewhere. Going outside would make him feel better; he could not stay gloomy forever. If he wanted Rhys to worry as little as possible the next time they crossed paths, he had no choice but to pull himself together.

He would overcome this like a man. He could do it. Dante Bellini could handle this.

“Oh, hello?”

The voice that briefly stopped Dante just as he decided to follow wherever his feet took him belonged to the front desk clerk he had seen that morning. As he watched the young, bright-faced man approach, Dante remembered what Rhys had said. Now that he thought about it, hadn’t Rhys called that young man an Omega? He was much shorter and thinner than Dante, but that did not mean every Omega was small. Not every Alpha was large, either. Besides, a tall frame like Dante’s was rare, so it seemed difficult to determine someone’s designation by height or build alone.

But how on earth had Rhys known?

“Hello. Good evening,” Dante returned the greeting, setting aside his curiosity for the moment. Because he was painfully conscious of Rhys’s accusation that he went around smiling prettily at anyone and everyone, he intentionally withheld the bright smile he had offered that morning.

The young man approached him, noting the faint, polite expression. “I guess you and the boyfriend you came with are going around separately today?”

“Oh, you remember us?”

“Ah,” the young man looked up at Dante bashfully. “Handsome guests tend to stay in my memory. I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

Even if Dante knew the fact perfectly well, he could hardly pretend not to understand when someone complimented him directly. He raised the brightness of his smile by just one polite degree. “Thank you for saying that.”

Without meaning to, his gaze drifted down to the young man’s name tag. The name written there was Mateo.

“You’re cute too, Mateo.”

His eyes and mouth moved before he could even become conscious of the impulse. Dante was instantly appalled by how instinctively he had reacted. He had not particularly meant anything by it, but the words had slipped out as if he were actively flirting. Now that he looked at it, Rhys had been right about everything. This habit, carved into Dante down to the bone, activated automatically unless he paid strict attention.

But truly, it was only a habit; the words came out without any actual thought or intention. Dante did not actually think Mateo was all that cute—his behavior, perhaps, but certainly not his looks. If one was going to use the word cute, shouldn’t the absolute baseline standard be someone like Rhys?

Damn it. If my phone hadn’t been stolen, I would have pulled up Rhys’s photos right now. When Rhys was asleep, he was the very image of a kitten. The way he tried to keep either his back or his arm pressed against Dante’s side as much as possible was unbelievably endearing. Even right after waking, he would sit there with his eyes squeezed shut. If that was not a kitten, then what was?

“Wow, are you allowed to say that?” Mateo asked with a teasing grin. “The boyfriend you came with looked terrifying.”

Dante, who had briefly fled reality while thinking of his adorable Rhys, raised an eyebrow at Mateo’s words. That statement brought a prick of irritation. How could this boy call Dante’s pretty one scary? Rhys might be a little expressionless, but shouldn’t his overwhelming beauty be the very first thing anyone noticed?

“You think someone as beautiful as my Rhys is scary?”

“Mm… a little. He’s so beautiful that he actually feels hard to approach,” Mateo admitted, shrugging. “But he was the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen! Including actors and singers.”

At the word most, Dante’s sour mood instantly vanished, replaced by pride. “Right?”

Smiling with satisfaction, Dante decided to correct the facts for Mateo. “But we’re broken up. I lost my phone, so he’s just letting me stay here with him for a little while.”

“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.” Even as Mateo listened to Dante’s explanation, something seemed not to add up to him. He tilted his head, then shrugged. “How did you lose your phone? Don’t tell me you set it down somewhere for a second.”

“Correct.”

“I’m sorry again. Never do that in Europe from now on. Well, it’s still better than Barcelona or Paris. There, they snatch it straight out of your hand.”

“What a dangerous world,” Dante noted. “You be careful too, Mateo.”

At his words, Mateo smiled brightly, hesitated briefly, and then asked, “So, are you going out now?”

“Yes. I haven’t decided where yet, though. Do you have any recommendations? Somewhere that isn’t too expensive.”

When Dante added that playfully, Mateo burst into a peal of laughter. “Come out with me! My shift is ending right now. I’ll show you somewhere locals go, not a tourist trap restaurant.”

Dante thought for a moment and concluded that getting help from a local—especially one who spoke fluent English—would be much better than wandering the streets aimlessly without a phone. It was not as if he had any better options. There was nowhere he truly wanted to go and nothing he wanted to do; the only reason he had wanted to come to Rome in the first place had been to make memories with Rhys.

“Then… I’ll impose on you for a bit.”

Mateo answered in an excited voice, “You can repay me later with a glass of wine!”

Apparently, he really would have to buy him at least one drink. Dante had expected as much, but the routine was painfully obvious. Swallowing his mild discomfort, he gave an appropriate nod.

Mateo asked him to wait there for just a moment, then ran off to the employee break room. Seeing that effortless, energetic vigor of someone in their early twenties already made Dante feel tired.

After changing into his street clothes, Mateo took Dante with him and began walking. Like a true local and an Italian, Mateo chattered without pause the entire way. He insisted that Dante absolutely had to visit the Spanish Steps, that the gelato shop near the Vatican was superior, and that Italians didn’t actually care all that much about coffee beans—all delivered in the polished cadence of a man offering tourist-friendly commentary.

Perhaps because he remembered Dante saying he had lost his phone, Mateo asked whether he planned to buy a new one. When Dante muttered that it would probably be best, Mateo asked whether he wanted something temporary or a proper replacement. Lacking motivation for anything, Dante simply said he wanted the cheapest option available. Before, he had always used the same brand of phone as Rhys so they could use FaceTime.

There was absolutely no need for that anymore.

Mateo took him to a shopping district about ten minutes away on foot. The shop was a little shabby-looking but still clean enough, with a few customers inside. It sold not only phones but various electronics, operating like a small Italian electronics chain.

The moment Mateo entered the store, he exchanged cheerful greetings in rapid Italian with the employee behind the counter. They seemed to know each other well, speaking casually. From what little Dante could decipher, Mateo was explaining that this handsome foreigner had gotten his phone stolen and, as if that weren’t enough, seemed to have broken up with the lover he arrived with today, so the employee should take pity on him.

Hey, don’t just go making assumptions. We broke up two months ago, all right? Though today was when it ended completely…

For such a young guy, Mateo had incredibly sharp eyes. Earlier he had looked naive, but he had read straight through Dante’s situation. Dante, thoroughly embarrassed, wandered around the store while pretending he understood nothing, until Mateo approached him.

Leaning close to Dante’s ear, Mateo whispered proudly, “They don’t usually give discounts, but I explained your situation, and he said he could secretly knock off about twenty percent. He has a previous-generation iPhone he’d set aside for himself. Do you want it?”

Dante had asked for anything cheap, but now that there was a discounted iPhone available, his heart tilted that way. Now that he thought about it, he needed the same operating system if he wanted to sync his old photos. Earlier, drowning in misery, he had firmly resolved to delete them, but it seemed impossible to do that right away after all. Would his lingering attachment finally disappear if he looked through them ten more times before deleting them?

“I do,” Dante said.

As if he had been waiting for that exact answer, Mateo shot him a sharp wink. “You can be grateful to me.”

“I am grateful.”

“Not just with words.”

Mateo’s determination to have a glass of wine with him was obvious, so Dante nodded for the time being. After securing his agreement, Mateo flew back to his friend and spent a long while talking, mixing in plenty of social chatter that had nothing to do with the actual purchase. Something that should have taken ten minutes easily stretched to thirty.

Waiting was boring, but not entirely unbearable. Unlike Rhys, who had actual business to conduct here, Dante’s only purpose in coming to Rome had been Rhys himself. So even if he spent a great deal of money to come overseas and then wasted his time doing nothing, it did not feel like a tangible loss. Far from feeling wasteful, he just wanted to go home as soon as possible.

…Wait. If I go home, I won’t be able to see Rhys anymore. I don’t want that.

His head knew he had to let Rhys go now, but hardening his heart proved excruciatingly difficult. Regret kept circling back. By the time he emerged from the store, he was already indulging in a delusion—that by some impossible miracle, Rhys might want him again.

He had bought a new phone since his had been stolen, but he had no one to contact anyway, and there was Wi-Fi all over the city, so he decided not to purchase a SIM card. When he converted the euros printed on the receipt into dollars, it really was true that he had bought the new device cheaply. At this point, he felt he should buy Mateo drinks equal to what he had saved on the phone. Ordinarily, he never would have had a drink alone with a man who was not even a friend, but this time, he owed him.

“Dante, you must never put your phone in your back pocket,” Mateo chided immediately, making a fuss the moment Dante slipped his newly bought device into his jeans. “That’s basically tempting someone to take it. Look!”

Saying he would demonstrate it himself, Mateo swerved past Dante from behind. Without even breaking stride, he moved naturally and snatched the half-exposed phone free, waving it triumphantly in front of Dante’s eyes. His skill was so smooth that Dante briefly wondered whether pickpocketing was the kid’s actual side job.

“What about the front pocket?” Dante asked, taking it back.

“Better than the back pocket, but you should always keep your hand nearby.”

“Thanks.”

“Good grief, Dante is clumsier than he looks. If I hadn’t told you, you’d have lost the phone you just bought all over again! Why not make ‘walking charity drive’ your official job?”

Did young people these days all talk with that much attitude? Between Rhys and Mateo, Dante found himself completely bewildered by the sheer nerve of people in their twenties.

“I’ll be careful from now on,” Dante promised with a faint chuckle. “So, where are we having wine?”

“You’re really going to buy?” Mateo asked back in a surprised voice, as if he had not actually expected the offer to stand.

Dante, equally puzzled, countered with a question of his own. “You asked me to, didn’t you? You did help me out, so of course I was planning to.”

“You just didn’t seem very interested in me,” Mateo expressed his feelings openly. It wasn’t wrong, but Dante felt a little guilty, so he swept a hand through his hair and answered in a troubled voice, “That’s true.”

“Well, that’s how it looked. I thought you seemed like the type to only date Alphas.”