Chapter 35: A Bed With His Name On It

Javier had been ready since nine.

He had showered, and changed his shirt twice, and put the kettle on and forgotten it.

The flat was two rooms and a kitchen on the third floor of an old harbor building.

His name was on the lease, and his books were on every shelf.

He had signed for it alone, with his own first salary, the week he passed his boards.

It had one bed, and a window over the water, and no door that anyone but him could lock.

At ten exactly there was a knock.

It was three knocks, light, the kind of knock a man gives when he has been told he may.

Javier opened the door.

Dante stood on the landing in his one good coat, with no car behind him and no guard on the stairs.

He had walked.

His hair was damp from the evening air.

His dark eyes were fixed on Javier's face.

"You're early," Javier said.

"I waited in the street. I didn't want to be early."

"Come in."

Dante stepped inside and stopped in the middle of the room.

He looked at the books, and the lamp, and the narrow bed by the window.

"It's yours," he said.

"It's mine."

"I've never been in anything that was only yours."

"Then you'll have to learn the rules."

Javier shut the door and turned the lock, and pressed his back against the wood.

His heart was going hard enough to hurt.

Two years of a hand hanging off the edge of a bed, and he had never once been so afraid.

He took a step toward Dante, and another.

"Say it," he said.

Dante knew what he meant.

His face opened slowly.

"I love you," he said. "I loved you in the other life, and I love you in this one.

I know every fact. I'd say it with all of them."

"Say it again."

"I love you."

Javier kissed him.

It was nothing like the careful kisses at the pillar, or the rough ones in the clinic.

It was slow and open and hungry, and Dante's hands rose to his face and stopped, and waited.

Javier laughed against his mouth.

"You can touch me," he said. "You can touch me anywhere. That's the rule."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.