He Betrayed the Heir, Then Returned to Save Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Not Tonight
At the welcome dinner Lu Chen stalls Su Lu's plan to get the paper signed, then kisses Su Ye in the library; Su Ye asks why Lu Chen looks at him as if he were already gone.
The welcome dinner was set for seven, and Lu Chen had laid the table himself.
He had laid it the same way in the first life.
Twelve chairs, white roses in the middle, and the chairman's seat at the head with a cushion for his bad back.
Last time he had put the cushion there because he liked the old man.
This time he put it there for the same reason, and his hands shook while he did it.
"You've straightened that fork four times," Su Lu said from the doorway.
She was smiling, with a glass of plum wine in each hand.
"Nerves," Lu Chen said. "I want tonight to go well."
"It will. Here." She gave him a glass. "Whatever you're afraid of, it won't show."
He took it and did not drink.
The family came in together.
The chairman leaned on his cane, seventy-one and sharp-eyed, and he would not let anyone hold his arm.
Su Ye's mother was already crying quietly, and his father kept patting her hand and saying, "Not at the table, not at the table."
Su Ye walked in between them with his hair still damp from the shower, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
The red cord showed at his left wrist.
He looked around the room, found Lu Chen at the far end, and smiled at him.
Lu Chen looked at the roses.
Dinner was loud, because Su Ye could not stop talking.
He told them he had been raised in a fishing town by a retired ferry captain, who died the winter before last, and who taught him to gut a fish, play cards and never trust a man who didn't tip.
He said the DNA test had come back in a plain envelope, and he had read it standing at a bus stop.
His mother laughed and wept at the same time.
His father asked three times what he wanted to eat, and Su Ye said yes to everything.
Even the chairman's mouth twitched.
Su Lu laughed in all the right places and refilled glasses.
She was good at it.
She had always been good at it.
Halfway through the fish, Su Ye swallowed wrong and a bone caught in his throat.
He coughed into his napkin.
Lu Chen's own throat seized, a sharp scrape from the back of his tongue to his collarbone, and he coughed too.
He turned it into a cough into his fist and drank water.
Across the table, Su Ye was holding his glass and watching him over the rim.
"Are you okay?" Su Ye asked.
"Fine. It went down the wrong way."
"Mine too. Funny." Su Ye's eyes stayed on him a moment longer. "We should be more careful with the fish."
His mother scolded him.
His father passed him rice.
Su Lu said brightly, "Su Ye, after dinner Chen can show you the library. He's the only person who knows where anything is."
Lu Chen looked up.
"He's tired, I think," he said. "He's had six hours in a car."
"I'm not tired," Su Ye said at once.
"You will be." Lu Chen spoke evenly. "If you go on like this, you'll be asleep before dessert."
Su Ye laughed out loud.
The chairman lifted his chin. "He's right, boy. You've been talking since the soup. Even I am tired."
Su Lu's smile did not change at all.
Under the table, her foot touched Lu Chen's ankle, once, a small nudge.
He knew the meaning of it.
She wanted the paper signed.
She wanted it signed tonight, tonight, while Su Ye was full of wine and gratitude and trusting everyone.
Not tonight, Lu Chen thought.
He lifted his glass to the chairman and said, "To a good rest, and to the heir."
The whole table drank to it.
Su Lu drank too, and her eyes stayed on him over her glass.
After dinner Lu Chen went to the library, because it was the only place in that house that was his.
It was a long room on the second floor, with a ladder on rails and a green lamp on the desk.
He had been a clerk in a public library for three years before Su Lu found him, and he had found this room the first week he came.
He took down a book he did not need and held it, to have something in his hands.
The door opened.
"Ah," Su Ye said. "Found you."
Lu Chen did not turn around.
"The chairman said you needed to rest."
"He also said I talk too much. I'm finding it hard to take his advice." The door shut. "This place is huge. It took me four tries to find the stairs."
His footsteps came closer, easy and unhurried.
"What are you reading?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
Lu Chen looked at the spine.
It was a book on accounting for small farms.
"It's a bad book," he said.
Su Ye laughed again, and the sound went through the room.
"You're strange," he said. "I like it. Everybody else in this house is polite to me from a very careful distance, and you've told me twice not to talk."
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it. You're very good at implying."
He was close now, close enough that Lu Chen could smell soap and the faint salt of the sea.
Lu Chen put the book back on the shelf with great care.
"Su Ye, I'm Su Lu's friend. I run errands. I'm not anyone you need to be kind to."
"Is that how you think I decide who to be kind to?"
"I think you're kind to everyone."
"True." Su Ye tipped his head. "But I only stand this close to some of them."
Lu Chen turned around.
Su Ye was a half-step away, tall, fair and open, with nothing hidden in his face at all.
It was the face from the photograph on the trial board.
It had been the face of the man who looked at the papers on the desk, said, "Is this the only place I sign?" and signed without reading.
Lu Chen's heart gave a hard, ugly beat.
"I'm going to kiss you," Su Ye said. "If that's a bad idea, tell me, and I'll go back to being annoying from across the room."
Lu Chen should have said it.
He should have said it was a bad idea, and that Su Ye should keep away from him for the rest of his life.
His mouth would not make the words.
"It's a bad idea," he said instead.
"Okay."
Su Ye did not move.
He was only waiting, with his eyes steady and kind.
Lu Chen took the front of Su Ye's shirt in his fist and pulled him down.
Their mouths met hard.
Su Ye made a small, surprised sound against his lips, and then his hand came up into Lu Chen's hair, and he kissed back with his whole body.
He was warm, and eager, and he tasted of plum wine.
Lu Chen had wanted this for years, in a life that no longer existed, and he had never known it would feel like this.
He backed Su Ye into the desk.
The green lamp rocked and settled.
Su Ye broke off, breathing hard, forehead pressed to his.
"Wow," he said, with a shaky laugh. "That was not a bad idea."
Lu Chen's hands were still gripping his shirt, and he could not make them let go.
Su Ye studied him from very close.
His smile slowly faded into something quieter.
"Lu Chen," he said. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"Why do you look at me as if I'm already gone?"
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