Chapter 4

“Your drink’s ready, Mr. Dante.”

Jorge set a freshly brewed Americano in front of Dante, who remained standing before the counter in a daze.

Right. Payment.

Belatedly coming to his senses, Dante began rummaging through his jacket pockets once more.

Jorge shot a sidelong glance at Rhys before asking, “Did you leave your wallet behind? You should ask Mr. Rhys to pay for you.”

Apparently still refusing to believe the two had broken up, the barista was actively trying to force a reconciliation. Dante’s thick brows drew together, and he shot Jorge a sharp glare for so casually tying him to Rhys. Deep down, however, the spite failed to take root. A secret expectation stirred instead, and hope bloomed quietly inside his chest.

Rhys, who had been on the verge of tapping his phone against the tablet counter, must have caught the exchange. He paused, his hand hovering, before slowly withdrawing it. Dante watched the sharp, pale line of Rhys’s jaw turn toward him. Tension swept through his entire frame at the prospect of finally meeting those eyes after two long months. His body went rigid; his temperature spiked.

With a concerted effort, Dante shifted his gaze upward. Rhys’s gray-blue eyes looked down at him. They usually held a pale, cool cast, but perhaps because of the faint lavender shimmering like a heat haze near the center of his irises, they tended to take on a deep purple hue in the shadows.

Like now.

The moment Dante properly met Rhys’s eyes for the first time in two whole months, his brows twisted. He had intended to present himself as calm, entirely unshaken by this sudden reunion, but his physical reaction betrayed him first. Rhys watched in silence as Dante’s dark brows sagged in visible distress. For a fleeting second, that sculpted, alabaster face looked as if it might soften with familiar concern—as if he might ask, Are you all right?

“Would you like me to pay?” Rhys asked.

Instead of offering that old, aching tenderness, his question was entirely dry. His long eyelashes blinked mechanically. Dante’s eyes widened, the sharp sting of bewilderment hitting him like a physical slap across the face. A crushing wave of disappointment sank heavy in his chest, followed immediately by a burning shame.

What exactly had he been expecting?

“Huh? No, I’m fine,” Dante stammered.

Damn it. He should have answered more formally. His voice had trembled just enough for his own ears to catch it, making him feel all the more miserable. The only saving grace was the sudden discovery of a plastic card resting in the outer pocket of his coat. Rhys had spent ages urging him to set up contactless mobile payments, but Dante had always refused, arguing it made spending money far too frictionless. Had he known he would end up in a humiliation this acute, he would have installed the app ages ago.

“Here, see? I brought my card,” Dante added, pulling it free.

Rhys offered no reply. He simply withdrew his gaze, turning his head to give Jorge a look that clearly communicated, Satisfied? He then finalized his own transaction, tapping his phone against the tablet. Watching him act so thoroughly like a seasoned New Yorker by seamlessly adding a tip, Dante instantly regretted opening his mouth at all.

They had definitively made eye contact. They had exchanged actual words. Yet, Dante felt as though he had been utterly erased. Remaining beside Rhys any longer would only render him more pathetic, so he grabbed his takeout cup and stepped away from the counter. Leaving without looking back would at least preserve the final, ragged scraps of his pride—but Jorge’s voice caught his feet.

“So you two really did break up? Then are you single now, Mr. Rhys?”

The moment Dante heard Jorge’s sly tone shift into what anyone with ears could recognize as a blatant pickup attempt, he whipped around. His eyes locked onto Jorge’s. The barista merely winked back, a look that silently signaled, Sorry, but what can you do?

That shameless little brat.

The sheer audacity of Jorge flirting with Rhys made Dante’s stomach churn. He had always thought well of the young college student, respecting the kid for working three jobs just to survive the murderous cost of living in the city. But now that Jorge knew the relationship was over, he was already predatory, eyeing another man’s man? Dante hadn’t even known Jorge was into men in the first place. Come to think of it, hadn’t the barista mentioned he was an Omega? Unlike Betas, Omegas apparently dated other men quite frequently.

“Don’t ask personal questions,” Rhys stated flatly.

Fortunately, Rhys didn’t bite. That damn privacy of his. Usually, Rhys’s rigid boundaries made Dante angry enough to grit his teeth, but today, that coldness looked unbearably lovely.

Jorge, however, did not retreat so easily. “Then I’ll just assume you two are still together.”

Regardless of the chaos thrashing through his mind, Dante stared holes into Rhys’s back. He could not bring himself to physically leave without hearing the response. Dante had been the one to declare they should break up; they hadn’t seen each other in two months; and judging by Rhys’s icy demeanor just now, the separation was absolute. But still…

“…We did break up,” Rhys said, his voice dropping. “Happy now? Stop talking nonsense.”

Dante hadn’t truly believed it until he heard the reality formalized by Rhys’s own mouth.

“Oh my God. It’s true,” Jorge breathed.

Yeah. It really is.

As Jorge let out a stunned breath, Dante echoed the sentiment numbly in his own head. For a brief, suspended moment, he felt entirely detached, as if this were someone else’s tragedy. Then the pain began to gather, cold and sharp enough to sting the interior of his chest. A wave of nausea rose, bringing with it a lurching, motion-sick vertigo.

Afraid he might display something truly ugly if he stayed a second longer, Dante turned on his heel and fled. Blind to whatever expression was plastered across his face, he shoved the café door open, stepped outside, and began walking aimlessly. Though spring had technically begun, the New York wind remained bitter enough to rake like claws across his cheeks. His already bloodless face went completely pale.

He walked without direction all the way toward his neighborhood. When the signs of Chinatown, where his apartment was located, finally materialized in the distance, Dante came to a halt. The hollow ache expanding inside him became unbearable. He felt an desperate impulse to pour something into himself—anything at all to fill the void. Slowly, he raised the Americano, which had now lost nearly all its warmth, and took a sip.

The lukewarm espresso was bitter, tasting utterly awful. Frowning, Dante lifted the takeout cup to inspect the logo. Against a clean, minimalist white background, sharp blue letters spelled out Sei la mia vita.

The café where Jorge worked was one of those decent neighborhood hidden gems Rhys had discovered around the time he first started frequenting Dante’s apartment. Whenever Dante had visited the shop with Rhys, he used to state, out of sheer habit, that nowhere else in the city served coffee this good.

…Did they change the beans?

He murmured the words aloud to the empty street, swallowing another mouthful of the dark liquid. But the flavor lingering on his tongue was a harsh, unpleasant bitterness, entirely alien to what he remembered. Wondering if the establishment really had switched suppliers, he pulled out his phone, opened his map app, and scrolled through the review section. None of the latest reviews mentioned a change in quality or coffee beans.

Only one variable had actually changed.

Rhys was no longer by his side.

That single fact alone had fundamentally altered the world.

***