Chapter 52

For a long while, Dante simply committed the sight of Rhys’s profile to memory as the younger man stared into the interior of the restaurant. Dante had always assumed that when Rhys expressed grievances in such roundabout, subtle ways, it was merely an unchangeable facet of his personality. Because Dante himself was a creature who rarely dug beneath the surface of what was visible, he had never even entertained the thought that Rhys might be actively hiding or enduring deep pain.

The truth was, Dante had always avoided peeling back the layers of other people. He knew all too well how complicated, messy, and agonizingly difficult the thoughts and feelings hidden underneath could be.

But how could someone who refused to examine his own inner self ever hope to truly understand another person’s heart?

Because he had never felt the necessity, Dante had lived his life completely ignoring the internal mechanisms of his own heart. But now, looking at the man across from him, he knew he needed to change. He had to.

The relationship he had blindly believed was rock-solid had actually been a complete, structurally compromised mess, just as Rhys had said. And one of the primary reasons it had degraded to this point was the fatal flaw of the man named Dante: that damned, reflexive habit of declaring a breakup the moment things got heavy. In truth, he had never actually needed to say those words. Instead of threatening an end, he should have just been honest. He should have shown Rhys that he was scared, that he was terrified of losing him.

In the midst of his heavy realization, the cocktails arrived. The bright, crystal-clear orange spritz in a balloon wine glass was placed before Dante, while the opaque, pale pink and deep orange layers of the champagne flute were set down before Rhys. After informing the waiter that they would need a few more minutes to look over the menu before ordering food, Rhys finally turned his head to look directly at Dante.

Dante lifted his glass, extending it toward Rhys’s champagne flute. Rhys kept his arms crossed, watching the gesture with a completely unreadable, blank expression—and Dante couldn’t fathom why that stubborn look made him look so utterly lovable. Even if this entire day was nothing more than an act, it was enough. Because as long as Rhys chose to behave this way, it meant he was actively remembering the two of them as they used to be.

“We almost never talked about our families, did we?” Dante voiced softly.

After Dante had first thrown out the word breakup months ago, he had ended up meeting Rhys’s mother. She was an elegant, middle-aged blonde woman from whom one could instantly trace the origin of Rhys’s striking beauty. Rather than looking down on Dante for coming from a completely different social strata, she had welcomed him with open arms. It was true that Dante’s deep-seated anxieties about their relationship had eased significantly after that meeting; after all, introducing a partner to one’s family—especially one’s mother—carried an undeniably heavy significance.

But neither Rhys nor his mother had ever once uttered a single word regarding the other two men featured in the silver-framed family photograph in her home. As if bound by a silent, ironclad agreement, both mother and son kept their mouths entirely shut about the men who appeared to be Rhys’s father and brother.

Dante, conversely, had occasionally dropped casual mentions of his own family, but the thought of actually bringing Rhys home to meet them had never once crossed his mind. Dante hadn’t set foot in his childhood home a single time since graduating high school, and he had no desire to drag Rhys into that space. To Dante, ‘home’ was not a sanctuary, but a vacuum of absence. He had refused to expose Rhys to the barren, cold landscape of his memories.

The look in Rhys’s eyes shifted, a faint glint of genuine curiosity breaking through his guarded expression at the abrupt mention of family.

Reading the shift, Dante grinned. “I’m actually a very twisted adult. I have a rare talent for pretending not to know there’s something fundamentally wrong with me, even when I’m fully aware of it.”

“…I don’t know what tactic you’re trying to deploy right now, but it won’t work,” Rhys cut in, his voice dripping with deep distrust. “Bringing up that topic now isn’t going to change anything.”

It was entirely his own fault, but the sharp rejection left a bitter taste in Dante’s mouth. “If my only goal here was to score cheap points with you, I would be talking about something else entirely,” Dante murmured. “For example…”

He paused, realizing he had far fewer selling points than he had thought. That the natural arch of his eyebrows was ridiculously well-formed? The chest muscles that even Lazzaro openly envied? His soccer skills? The sheer, unyielding patience it took to sit through an incredibly boring arthouse movie that made him want to yawn a hundred times, purely because Rhys wanted to watch it? All of it felt entirely trivial now.

“…That our sexual compatibility turned out to be far more incredible than expected?” Dante tried to provoke him, throwing out the most recent, charged topic they shared.

Instead of flushing, Rhys merely let out a crooked, razor-sharp smile, expertly turning the blade back on him. “More than expected… which implies it wasn’t particularly good before.”

Damn it. He hadn’t expected Rhys to counter the bait so flawlessly. Because Dante had genuinely believed Rhys was largely inexperienced before him, he failed to quickly formulate a smooth lie to save face. He had never possessed much of a talent for deception anyway.

Watching Dante’s flustered, silent expression, Rhys erased the crooked smirk, his face returning to a smooth, chilly slate. “I don’t care either way. It’s not as if we’ll ever do it again.”

Does he really have to twist the knife like that when I’m trying this hard to piece us back together? Dante swallowed the ache in his chest, arguing softly, “…The four hours aren’t up yet.”

“Yes, fine.” Rhys finally uncrossed his arms, picking up his menu and holding it out toward Dante. “Choose what you want to eat first. If we keep wasting time on meaningless conversations like this, our hours are going to run out in the middle of the entrée.”

“Meaningless? That’s incredibly harsh.” Dante quickly opened his own menu, pointing down at the dishes he had already meticulously researched. “For the appetizer, how about prosciutto and melon? And for the pasta, the cacio e pepe and carbonara look great. Let’s order those grilled vegetables you like, too.”

“Do whatever Tay wants,” Rhys replied smoothly.

“At least choose the dessert, Rhys.”

“You’re the one who actually likes sweets, aren’t you?”

“I’ll eat absolutely anything, as long as you’re the one feeding it to me,” Dante murmured, propping his chin on the hand that wasn’t holding his wine glass.

Rhys lowered his gaze, fixing his eyes firmly on the Italian text of the menu. After a long, heavy silence, he bypassed the tiramisu that was heavily highlighted as the house specialty. “Let’s get the panna cotta.”

A sharp, hollow laugh escaped Dante’s throat before he could stop it. How on earth could the timing be this perfect? If the topic of panna cotta was coming up right as he was preparing to tell Rhys a story—not just any story, but the exact reality of his family—then today must truly be the day he was meant to bare it all.

Rhys narrowed his eyes at the sudden, sharp laughter. “…Why are you laughing?”

Looking at the suspicion in those blue eyes, Dante gently swirled the orange liquid in his glass. “I’ll tell you if you toast with me.”

“Haah…” Rhys exhaled a soft, exasperated sigh.

Look at this one. He had agreed to act exactly like the past, but the more time that ticked by, the more his sharp, prickly instincts kept breaking through the veneer. But perhaps… that raw edge really was Rhys’s truest self.

“How on earth did you manage to hide that personality from me all this time?” Dante mused aloud. And your designation, too.

In truth, Dante had been burning to ask that exact question ever since he had burst out of the hotel bathroom earlier. But he knew that if he dragged that specific topic into the light, the fragile illusion would shatter, pulling them both right back into their harsh reality instantly. So, he swallowed the remaining words.

Instead of offering a verbal answer, Rhys lifted his champagne flute, lightly tapping the crystal rim against Dante’s glass. Before the clear, ringing sound of the toast could fade into the open air, Dante took a slow sip of his spritz. A beautifully bitter sweetness, heavy with the sharp aroma of orange peel, washed over the tip of his tongue.

It was a taste, he thought, that suited this exact situation perfectly.

***