14. Present Day

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PRESENT DAY

MAX

I land on my ass, golden cat is in my hand. I drop it like Bast bit me and stare at her smiling cat-face as the echoes of two different deaths play through my mind. The scent of the blood and the taste of the liquor fill me.

What the fuck?

But I haven't been bitten by a scorpion because Cyril had the same experience when he touched the gold cat. We both were the priest who, in desperation to be with his lover as he died, ate his nose.

I cough as my stomach heaves.

Fuck. Talk about obsessed. But I'd rather that devotion than the darkness of Cyril's depression. The bleakness. I press my hand to my chest where my heart is aching, caving in. I am familiar with that loss, though for me, it was my brother.

For a couple of seconds, I can't breathe.

I'm only here because of him, and yet, I am meant to be here. With Harrison. He is Ay. He is Teddy.

Beneath my palm, my heart races. I am very much alive and with no stab wounds. A shudder runs through me; the memory of the bite of metal is far too real, as if it were my own. I half expect to see blood spilling over my clothes and pooling in the sand, but there's nothing there. I'm fine. I'm me. In my clothes, not someone else's uniform.

"You okay?" Harrison asks around the torch in his mouth, still reaching for the satchel as though no time has passed.

I scrub my hand over my face and sigh with relief. Whatever it was, it's over.

"Yeah…" I think I am. Was I in the past with Cyril and Djau? Dying with them?

I'd like to say it was a nightmare, but I wasn't asleep.

"What's this you dropped?" He picks up the gold lioness statue and my blood runs cold. Will he dive into the past?

"The Goddess Bast." I force out the words as I watch him.

Harrison frowns as if surprised I know anything about Egyptian gods. I don't, but Cyril and Djau recognized the golden cat. Then he shrugs and drops it into the satchel.

"Maybe they were stealing things to sell on the side." He flicks the light at the gold and lapis armband on Teddy's wrist as if that proved they were thieves.

"Or they found it in here, the same as we did, and he put in it the satchel for safekeeping." I don't care about the important intel in the satchel. I care about the letter written on the piece of map in Cyril's breast pocket.

I get to my knees and lean over Cyril's skeleton. My skeleton? Was I him, or was I just seeing his life? My mind is spinning with memories that can't be mine, yet they feel as though they are. I lift the pocket flap, knowing it's unbuttoned, and pull out the much-folded, blood-smeared, and well-read letter from Teddy.

Fuck. It was real .

I know what the letter says without reading it. Teddy's words ring in my ears, and I feel his hand as he presses the letter into mine, knowing that he's dying and that he'll never get an answer.

But Cyril didn't need to read the letter to know Teddy's heart, and in those last few minutes, he gave Teddy a glimpse of a future they'd never have.

"What have you got there?" Harrison takes the torch out of his mouth and shines it on the piece of map, the only thing Teddy had to write on, as he leans in closer. He smells of sweat and leather, the same as he has every day after riding, but today, there is nothing sweeter, and I want to fill my lungs with his scent.

Desperation consumes me.

These men missed their chance, and I don't want to make the same mistake.

Our lips connect, and for one blinding moment, my stomach drops. I forget how to breathe. How to exist, and who I am.

Harrison cups my face and stares into my eyes. "What was that for?"

I blink, breathing hard as I try to find the words without explaining the two lives I lived in half a second. I want him.

Does he not want me?

I took my shot. If he still sees me as Jay's younger brother, I can't do anything about that. I swallow my doubts and hold his gaze. "For being you."

I want him to kiss me back.

I need him to kiss me.

He's staring at me, eyes dark and skin green from the glow stick. His hand is still on my face. His thumb smooths over my cheek. "I've been me for a long time. "

"Yeah…" I glance down at the letter. "I guess I never really saw you until this trip."

I don't want to be like Cyril, who didn't realize until too late what Teddy meant to him. Or what Teddy might mean to him.

Harrison has always been important in my life. But I want more than being his friend, his younger brother by default.

"Is that right?" His eyebrows pull together.

This was a mistake. Don't kiss your brother's best friend. I'm sure that's a rule like don't date your best friend's ex.

Have I messed this up?

I shake my head and go to draw away, wanting to blame being swept up in the past and the echoes of their loss being too loud and sharp. "It doesn't matter."

His hand slides around the back of my neck to cradle my head so I have to look at him. "It does matter because you won't mind if I follow up with this."

His lips are on mine, but where I was tentative, he is demanding as if he knows what he wants and has been waiting for me to wake up and pay attention. My lips part, and his tongue dips in, teasing and tasting until I can think of nothing but the way his mouth moves on mine. The taste of him. The stubble on his face grazing my skin. The firm grip of his hand, possessive as if he never wants to let me go.

My hand finds his waist, and my fingers search out the skin in the gap between his pants and his T-shirt. The sweep of my fingers over his skin sends a jolt from my fingertips to my balls, and my dick hardens as if I have been waiting decades, centuries, for this moment .

With a groan, he pulls back. "We can't make out in front of the dead."

"They might be happy for us." I draw in a shaky breath. I want to tell him everything I saw, but that would mean admitting it was all real. And if it was real, does it cheapen what I'm feeling because fate has been pulling us together?

Did the storm force us into this cave to repeat the past and make it right? It seems that way. I lived two other lives in a heartbeat. Though to be fair, there wasn't much the priest could've done.

Or Cyril. I can't imagine it would have gone down too well with the other soldiers if he'd started hooking up with Teddy.

I lick my lip and swallow. We kissed, but what comes next? I already know everything about him. He's been my friend for years…how does that become more? How do I have a boyfriend?

I'm not worried about having a boyfriend…but I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm worried about screwing up what we have.

"Why don't we read the letter and find out who they were?" I offer Harrison the paper because the words are etched in my heart.

Cyril's regret at not saying something until it was too late because he was afraid of what others might think and say is bitter in my gut. If I'd failed to take this chance and walked out of the cave having done nothing, I would've lived with the regret for the rest of my life.

Assuming I got to walk out of the cave.

And now that I've taken the chance, what does it mean?

What does Harrison mean to me?

He's been a part of my life for so long that I can't imagine not having him there. I didn't want this trip to be goodbye because we no longer had Jay tying us together…yet also keeping us apart.

Maybe it wasn't that I wanted to grow up and be just like Harrison, but more that I wanted to be with him. Something I was too afraid to acknowledge, like Cyril. What he wanted was so close, but fear was so much closer. After what happened to Djau, I don't blame him for being afraid of losing his heart.

Harrison gives me a curious glance but carefully unfolds the paper.

I hold my breath; in my mind, the ink is fresh, and the handwriting so familiar, my heart aches and my eyes prickle. The paper has yellowed, and the ink has faded. The bloody fingerprints are now rusty instead of red.

"It's a love letter."

"Soldiers carry them, right?" Did Harrison? Did his lovers write? He never acted as though they were something serious.

"Not unless you want to give the enemy free intel or risk losing it." He smiles, his eyes dark. "I keep them and the photos safe, but it's been a while since I had either."

Is that a hint that he wants me to write when he leaves?

He sits back on his heels, and I move closer as though to read along with him. He hands me the torch, and I shine it on the page. He uses his now free hand to pull me closer and keep me there as if now we've acknowledged the attraction, I'm not allowed to run away.

Not that I have any thoughts of fleeing.

Not that there's anywhere to go.

We're stuck in the cave that's taken our lives twice already.

For some reason, I thought the storm might have stopped when we kissed as though a curse were broken. Cyril had thought about magic and curses on Bast because he'd slipped into the past and seen the world as Djau, the same as me.

Had Cyril and I both been with Djau? Were we one being for that moment in time? I wish I'd paid more attention. But even if we had all been there, there's nothing I could have done to change that past. It happened, and I was along for the ride. To witness. To remember.

Harrison shakes his head. "And I thought my handwriting was bad."

"It's cursive, not messy." Teddy guessed he was dying when he wrote this, bleeding internally from a wound that didn't appear fatal. There was nothing Cyril could've done to save him.

"I know what it is. Naming it doesn't make it any easier to read."

I'm tempted to take the letter off him and read it, but I want him to realize what we've found.

"My dearest Cyril…Cyril Brown." He glances at the skeleton wearing the C Brown name tag. "Nice to meet you, mate."

I press my lips together to hide my laughter as Harrison reads the letter aloud

"From the first day I saw you, I knew you were the man for me. I delight in seeing you every morning, even if you are barking orders. I have wanted to kiss you so many times it is impossible to count, but I never find the courage, even after too many drinks. If I were a braver man, I would have made my feelings clear and risked the rebuff. Instead, I have chosen the coward's way to avoid asking if you harbor similar feelings for me. Eternally yours, Teddy." Harrison is silent for several heartbeats as he stares at the letter. "Do you think they were trapped by a sandstorm? "

I know they were. "Perhaps they were hiding from the enemy and waiting for help. If Teddy was injured…" I swing the torch over to poor Teddy, who was so in love with Cyril but couldn't tell him, giving him the letter only when he was sure death was coming to claim him.

I'm sure Teddy expected Cyril to make it out alive, not knowing he was too lost in guilt, depression, and PTSD to do anything more than seek relief in the darkness. No doubt everyone assumed them dead, their bodies lost forever in the shifting sands.

If we hadn't taken this trip, they would've been lost for a lot longer.

I might never have realized I wanted more than being Harrison's friend.

"Why did you kiss me?" He asks, staring at the scrap of map bearing Teddy's last words. "Why now? Is it because you expect to die here?"

They died, unable to say what they wanted. Are we doomed to replay this until we make it right? Until Djau and Ay are reunited?

It is weird to think that this isn't because of me or Harrison but something that happened centuries ago.

While my feelings didn't sprout in the cave, being trapped here gave them a chance to grow without others watching. Without me judging myself for having them. It doesn't matter if this is fate or magic or something else. I've been given a warning, and I'm not going to make Cyril's mistake—whether I am him reborn is irrelevant.

My feelings are for Harrison, and ignoring them does us both a disservice. I've trusted him most of my life. It shouldn't be hard to trust him with my heart.

"I don't think we're going to die." I press my teeth into my lip. I imagine I can still taste him. I want to feel his hand on the back of my neck again. "I kissed you because I didn't this morning when you were drying off from your bucket bath. Because I didn't when you laughed earlier, even though all I wanted to do was lick the hollow of your throat." I can't look at him, and I'm glad the dark is hiding the heat on my cheeks. What if he still sees me as the kid brother? If he only kissed me because he was caught up in the moment, but now he has doubts. I need to say how I feel, not wait until it's too late. "Because I realized I don't want you to walk out of my life after this trip ends. I want…I want to be with you."

It's only then that I turn my head from Teddy's bones to look at Harrison.