He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust novel · Chapter 3 of 40

Chapter 3: On His Knees Again

The don kneels in the dean's office, the dean and the warden swear silence, and Dante is placed in room 14, where Javier is laughing on a bed beside Daniel.

The dean of the medical college had not expected a visitor at nine o'clock on a Wednesday.

He had certainly not expected the man who walked into his office and closed the door behind him.

The man stood very still in the middle of the carpet.

The dean knew that face.

Everyone in the city's old families knew it, though it had never once appeared in a newspaper.

He half rose from his chair. "Mr. Rossi."

"Please sit," Dante said.

The dean sat down so quickly the chair rolled back into the bookcase.

"I haven't broken any rules," he said. "The hospital contracts are all in order."

"Dean."

"The donation for the east wing was returned, I swear it was returned. My secretary has the receipt."

"Dean."

"If it is about the parking structure, I can explain."

"It's not about the parking structure."

Dante crossed the room and went down on both knees in front of the desk.

The dean made a small, choked sound.

"Mr. Rossi!"

"I'm asking for something," Dante said. "I don't ask well, so forgive me. I'd rather you didn't stand."

The dean had been halfway out of his seat again.

He sat down very slowly and gripped the armrests.

"There is a student in this college," Dante said. "I'm not going to say his name yet."

He drew a breath.

"I did him a wrong, in a way you would not believe. I want to earn the right to stand near him."

"A student."

"I want to enroll. As a student, in his year and his lectures, under a different surname."

"Which surname?"

"My mother's. Greco. No one outside this room is to know who I am."

For a moment the dean forgot to be afraid.

"Mr. Rossi, you are twenty-six."

"Yes."

"The entrance requirements for a transfer in the second year are..." He stopped. "They are very rigorous."

"Then I'll sit the exams and fail them honestly, and you can decide."

Dante lifted his head.

"I'm not asking you to hand me anything. I'm asking you to let me through the door."

The dean looked at the man kneeling on his carpet.

That man could have bought the college and the hill it stood on.

He looked at the hands resting open on the man's knees.

They were not clenched.

They were not even particularly steady.

"Why would a man like you do this?" he said, quietly.

Dante took a moment before he answered.

"Because I kept someone close for a year, and called it love, and he died not knowing the difference."

The dean was a soft-hearted man who taught the endocrine system and had a framed photograph of his wife on the desk.

His eyes went wet before he could stop them.

"Oh," he said. "Oh, no. Get up, please. I have a seat."

"A seat?"

"In the second row of the physiology hall, by the window. It was reserved for a visiting scholar who never came."

The dean blew his nose into a handkerchief.

"You will do the coursework like anyone else. If you fail, I will not save you."

"Good."

"And no one will hear your name from me. Not the registrar, not the board."

He dabbed his eyes.

"I shall have to tell the warden, though. He controls the rooms."

"Then tell him."

"He is a nervous man."

"So I'm told," Dante said.

The hostel warden took ten minutes to arrive.

He was short, round, bald and sweating through his shirt before he reached the office.

He saw Dante standing by the window and stopped dead in the doorway with the keys hanging from his hand.

"Warden," the dean said. "This is Mr. Greco, a new transfer. Mr. Greco, the warden."

"Greco," the warden repeated, in a very thin voice.

"Hello," Dante said.

"Hello. Sir. I am very pleased. Everything is... We have a new boiler. Very reliable."

"I'm not here about the boiler."

"No, sir. Of course not, sir."

"I would like a bed in the dormitory. A shared room. No special treatment, no guards at the door, no private bathroom."

The warden blinked three times.

"A shared room," he said. "In the dormitory. With students."

"Yes."

The warden looked at the dean.

The dean gave him a very small nod.

The warden looked at the ceiling, and then at his keys, and then he said, "Room fourteen."

"Is it clean?"

"Third floor. Three beds, one is free. The, uh. The occupants are very good students."

"How good?"

"One is first in the whole second year." The warden swallowed. "Rank one, sir. A scholarship boy. Very quiet. Very, very quiet."

Dante's hands went cold.

"Which of them?"

"The window bed is Javier's. The door bed is a boy named Daniel."

The warden wiped his forehead.

"He is a chatterbox. He eats a great deal. But he is kind."

"Javier," Dante said.

The name came out in a voice the dean and the warden had never heard him use.

Both men looked away at once.

"Take me up," he said.

He had brought one bag.

He had left the guards at the bottom of the hill, in a car with blacked windows.

He had told them to go home by noon and not come back unless he called.

It was the hardest order he had ever given.

His mother had stood in the car park and held his face in both hands before he went.

"Behave," she had said. "He is not yours to keep."

"I know."

"Good. Then say it to yourself, every morning."

The dormitory stairwell smelled of floor polish and instant noodles.

The warden went ahead of him, jangling, glancing back every few steps to check that Dante was still there.

On the third floor, the corridor was long and yellow, with posters on the doors and wet footprints on the floor.

Somebody was laughing behind the door at the end.

It was a young man's laugh, helpless, warm, a little hoarse at the edges.

Dante knew it.

He had heard that laugh perhaps six times in a year, and he had counted every one.

The warden stopped in front of room fourteen and held the key out in a sweating hand.

Dante did not take it.

He could not make his arm lift.

"Sir?"

"One minute," Dante said, and put his palm flat on the wooden door.

Through it, he heard a plate scrape, and a chair.

Then the same voice said, breathless, "No, no, stop, it's not even funny."

Then the laughing started again.

He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Javier was sitting cross-legged on the window bed with a textbook on his lap.

His glasses were pushed up on his head, and his gray college sweatshirt had a hole in the cuff.

He was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes.

He was alive, and warm, and eight feet away.

And he looked up at the stranger in the doorway and said, still smiling, "Hi, are you lost?"

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