Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Luke

"Luke," he whispered, his voice a fragile thread hanging in the air.

I huddled in my brown jacket and tucked my hands deeper into my pockets. It hadn't suddenly gotten cold. This was something else. The chills that ran down my spine at the way he said my name had nothing to do with the early evening weather. "I can't wait to see the room you booked up," I said in a light, conversational tone I might use with a friend. I didn't feel these things. The yearning that ravaged the bars of the cage I had to put around my heart was too much to ignore.

"Remember how you came out to me?" Rafael asked, walking shoulder to shoulder with me toward the narrow steps leading to the battlements. "Do you remember how relieved you were and how scared?"

"I remember." The sensation had never become anything less than what you might feel like if you were shot out of a circus cannon with a fifty-fifty chance of landing safely.

He nodded shortly, looking at the path ahead of us. "Then you remember how hard it can be to admit some things aloud."

"Rafael, I…" My gaze darted from the paved path to his sculpted face and back. Something clenched my heart, some fearful expectation, and I wanted to find the escape I had promised him. "We don't need to do this. I can…" I knew what I had to offer. It hurt more than anything to shut the door on all my heart desired, but he needed it. "I can be your friend." And I mustered a little smile for him as we paused at the foot of the stone stairs.

There. I had said it. And I did a damn good job making it convincing. And as I said the words, I knew that they were true. If I could be in Rafael's life, I would do it even if I could never hope to touch him. I would be the smallest, most distant moon, barely more than a speck on the night sky, if he were the center of gravity that kept me in his orbit.

"You told me your truth two years ago," he said carefully. "And now I'll tell you mine."

I braced myself for whatever burden he wanted to share. I could take it.

Rafael shuddered as he exhaled, his breath misty in the cooling air. "I never told this to anyone, Luke."

I stepped closer to him. I didn't know why. He wasn't going to faint in my arms, but I was still anxious and on alert.

His lips trembled. It was strange to see him afraid. He was the bravest soul I knew. What could he possibly be scared of? "I…wasn't…" He blinked and looked down as if my gaze was too heavy. "I wasn't clumsy."

My ears flooded with silence. I was on the verge of saying something useless like what , but then it came together. My brain was cold and slow and stupid.

Before I knew it, my hand was on his cheek, my thumb caressing the split eyebrow, my heart burning with fury that grew so hot it melted my facial expression into some grotesque mask of anger and pain. "He did this to you," I hissed in a barely contained whisper.

Rafael's eyes glimmered as he gazed at my chest, not my face. He didn't pull away as my thumb moved gently over the cut again and again as if I could will it into healing just by the power of my touch. I couldn't do anything close to it, but my hand was warm on his cold cheek, so that was what I offered him.

"It wasn't on purpose," Rafael said, convincing neither of us. Abruptly, he pulled his head away.

I feared I had pressed his cut too hard. My lungs filled with air to apologize.

"Do you have any idea how stupid I feel?" he asked as he turned away from me and faced the stairs. "How pathetic and weak?"

"I do," I said. There was no point in convincing him he shouldn't feel that way. It was an emotion, not a fact.

He shrugged deeply, his broad shoulders rising and falling, his head drooping. "I didn't wanna feel this way with you," he said in a whisper just loud enough for me to hear. "I hoped to forget about everything like the first time I met you." He swiped at his face with the back of his left hand, then turned his gaze to me, looking over his shoulder. "Let's go up." He made the first step before the words were out of his mouth.

I followed.

We climbed the steep stairs without speaking, without huffing for air, or complaining that the climb was hard. We went up and emerged on the thick, medieval battlements that would have held back an army simply by existing this high above the town. The view was everything Rafael had promised and more. The rows of houses dotted along the narrow streets were lit with orange lamplights chasing away the night. People moved around, but they were merely bundled dots hurrying and scurrying back and forth, indistinguishable from this height. The wind whipped us harshly at times, yielding every so often.

"It's so peaceful out there," Rafael said softly. "In the hustle and bustle, I keep forgetting that calm places exist."

But I was no longer looking at the quaint town below. In my world, only he existed. Now that he had returned against all odds, he was destined to be a fact of my life. I knew that even then, even before a decade of us circling each other like twin planets, sharing a single orbit, always on the opposite ends of a giant burning star, destined to never meet.

"I like running into you, Luke," he said, tucking his hands into his pockets. His eyes were shiny with unspilled tears until he blinked a few times. "I wish I'd run into you more often."

Anger simmered in my stomach despite Rafael's attempt to talk about something else. This person I had never seen or met in my life had caused Rafael pain. I never knew I could have a nemesis, let alone one I hadn't met before. I hadn't known the taste of bloodlust, the bitter flavor of having a mortal enemy. And I hadn't known, until this moment, what it felt like to want to hurt someone.

"…and I ruined it," Rafael said, pulling me back into the moment.

I grabbed his arm above the elbow and squeezed him hard. "You didn't ruin anything." It was a growl that left my lips, so unlike my voice.

He looked into my eyes with nothing but honesty. "I upset you. And I still feel like a loser. I…shouldn't have said hello on the train."

To imagine that my life could have gone in a different direction today on his whim scared me to my bones, but I could put my fears aside in favor of this fuming, boiling rage. " He makes you feel that way. That's not who you are."

Rafael shook his head. "I don't even know who I am anymore."

If I told him I knew, he would know it for a lie it was. The devastating truth was that I didn't know who Rafael was. I only knew he was something bigger than life. "You are a good person trapped in a bad relationship."

He pondered that for a moment without meeting my gaze again. "I could be a bad person in a just relationship."

"Would a bad person take a stranger out for ice cream to make up for scaring him?" I asked, failing to keep hopefulness out of my tone. As we spoke, we neared each other fractionally, not noticing it. Or buy him a book that would change his entire life?"

A sad smile touched his perfect lips. "And if I told you I did it just because you were too cute to let you leave so soon?"

Those words pushed a laugh out of me before I could rein myself in. "Then I would say you were a much bigger romantic than I realized."

That dragged a smile from him, even if he fought against it. "You'll find an excuse no matter what I do, huh?"

"What's so bad that you did to deserve this?" I asked.

Rafael lifted his chin a little as he stepped back from me. I released his arm, and he inhaled. "I'm stubborn as a mule. Willful, flirtatious, impossible to deal with."

"Those aren't your words." Urgency and the offense at this injustice mixed in my voice as I bit the words off.

Rafael sucked his teeth. No. Those hadn't been his words. Those were the reasons why it was perfectly fine to react explosively and, meaning to do it or not, hurt this beautiful soul.

I couldn't keep it back any longer. "You need to leave him." Damn , I thought. I had hoped to be more diplomatic with that.

Rafael only shook his head.

"Why not? He hit you. Is there anything worse than that? I don't care what he told you. I don't care what you think was the reason. He hurt you." My fists closed tightly like I was about to smash this villain into pieces .

"And who's gonna believe me?" Rafael asked angrily. "Our families have been close since before I was born. We have been friends since we were children. They know him the way they want to know him."

Something bothered me about this, but it took me a few moments to get to the answer. Something rubbed me slightly wrong. How would he know this, unless…? "They already know, don't they?"

He pursed his lips. The silence was too heavy to bear, but Rafael didn't let it linger for too long. "I told you because I didn't want to lie, Luke. Not to you. But I don't need you to solve this."

"Well, tough," I said, my anger running wild and unchecked. I wanted to see that man ripped to pieces. I wanted him to never find a shred of happiness so long as he lived, and to learn his mistake in the final hour before death, and to regret it while knowing he could do nothing about it. Not a damn thing. And I wanted him to know, without a shred of doubt, that his entire life had been a punishment for laying a finger on this beautiful man. "You're acting like there's no way out, and I don't get it."

He snorted dismissively. It didn't offend me. In fact, it was only a prelude to an explanation. "My father's career leans on his family's donations. Say what you will, but that's not a small thing. And they told me not to fool around. They told me it could get complicated if things didn't turn out great." Rafael slowly turned away from me and observed the town, his hands resting on the thick stone battlement. "But I didn't listen, Luke. I said they were paranoid. I said I knew him too well for anything bad to happen. But…" His voice trembled, and he cleared his throat. "The truth is, I didn't want to be alone."

If I had gone with you, you wouldn't have been alone , I thought. Not even the years that followed would persuade me differently. Had I gone with him to Budapest, our lives would have been shaped differently in all the ways. We would forever have this disruptive energy between us. We would never meet each other without inflicting changes on one another's lives too great to understand at the time of their creation. "And you still don't want to be alone," I concluded.

His lips twisted downward as he steadied his gaze and fixed it on something distant.

"You don't have to be alone," I offered. I wasn't sure what it was that I suggested. I didn't know what it was I could give him, but I knew fully that I would give it. I would give whatever it took to save him. "All you have to do is leave him. For your own sake."

"And go where?" That softly spoken question carried so much more than words could describe. It was as though a lifetime of possibilities dangled between us.

I held down this oncoming flood of potential that threatened to take over me, down me, pull me apart. "I think there's a reason we met again."

"I'm not sure I believe in fate," Rafael said softly like he regretted those words and what they entailed.

"Do or don't, we're here regardless. And I'm not going to let you go back to someone who's capable of this. I don't have all the answers, but I know what you need to do. And I know I'll be there when you do it." Resolving this was easy. I wasn't going to the conference. I was going to Innsbruck with Rafael to watch his back while he dumped that piece of shit he'd called a friend and a boyfriend.

"And then what?" Rafael asked, his eyes closed and lips stretched into a ghost of a smile.

If he daydreamed about some way we could make it work, then it was a dream I wished to share. "I'm still in Paris. I'll stay in Paris for the rest of this semester."

"Uh-huh," Rafael said in a tone that begged me to continue.

I stepped to the wall, shoulder to shoulder with him, watching the peaceful town below and the turquoise hue of the sky that softened the orange glow of the street lamps. I wasn't a fortune-teller, but I could tell him this. "I'll be there for you, Rafael. And when my time is up, I'll figure it out."

"You'd do that for me?" he asked. It was odd to meet this side of him. In my mind, he had always existed as this confident, unbreakable being, but finding out that he was neither made him so much more human in my eyes and heart. It brought him back to Earth, where I lived, and it put him within my reach. I couldn't hope for a celestial being to fall for me. But a human? With human flaws and fallacies? Oh yes. I could see a future in which this brave, bruised boy saw me and thought I was worth the fight.

"Call it what you will, this randomness of the universe, but I think we're here because you needed me," I said softly. And when I realized how important that made me sound, I added, "Like I needed you when we first met. I'd been too scared to admit it aloud that I was…gay. You helped me grow up." You shaped me and made me into who I am today .

"I do need you, Luke," Rafael said, opening his beautiful eyes and gazing at me warmly.

"I'm here," I promised. My hand fumbled between us, and I found his. As our fingers threaded, warmth coursed through me. It had been close to two years since the first and last time I had held his hand. In Paris, he had taken mine; it was only right that I should be the one doing it now.

"I know what I need to do," Rafael said, squeezing my hand like he was holding on to me for his life. After a moment's hesitation, he glanced at me. "Thank you."

I shook my head. "You don't need to thank me." Any decent person would have wanted to stand up to a bully, regardless of who the victim was.

Rafael inhaled a deep breath that must have filled him down to his toes, lifting his chin and gazing at the night sky. "I didn't realize how much I needed you, Luke." His perfect lips morphed into their finest form, their corners quirking up with hope. A laugh burst out of him like the last thunder before the storm cleared away. He pushed himself to the tips of his toes, gaining a couple more inches on me, his hips leaning against the thick wall, fingers twining with mine, clutching my hand tightly. "I feel free already."

He looked like it.

The sorrow I hadn't realized was pulling his features down lifted and disappeared. He beamed with the same optimism as the young man I had fallen for in Paris. He looked again like the person I would have followed across Europe just to have a sliver of a chance to touch again.

He had me to lean on. Two outcasts, unable to go to our families, roaming the world and hoping for a better tomorrow. I would be there for him no matter what happened to us. I would give him a hand and pull him from the whirlpool that had caught him and dragged him down and away.

"And we'll go to Paris," he said, turning toward me and taking my other hand. "You and I."

"You and I," I whispered, my heart pounding hard inside my chest, my breaths shallow, and my stomach filled with flutters I hadn't felt in years—since that night in Paris, to be exact.

A slight frown creased his brow. "We'll make it work."

I nodded heartily.

"My parents will come around," Rafael said. I couldn't agree with that; I didn't know them. "They'll be mad, yeah, but they'll come around. When it's all said and done, there won't be going back."

"Blitzkrieg. You can negotiate after you have the leverage." My heart stumbled. He would be with me until then. And I would heal the wounds, the physical and the invisible ones. I would let him nap all he liked. I would read to him from his favorite books. I would go to hell and back, return Persephone to Demeter, and set the winter gardens to bloom if it brought a smile to Rafael's face .

Rafael smiled without any of the burdens he'd carried so far. "Randomness."

"Fate," I suggested.

We stood in absolute silence. The wind yielded, the town's chatter and clamoring faded, and the stillness wrapped us into its soft hold. Rafael and I held each other's hands between our bodies, our torsos inches apart. His face was amber and glowing under the lamplights flooding us from below, lighting the entire castle orange.

Overpowered by instinct rather than any command I could wield over my body, I licked my lips. My heart stopped for what felt like an eternity of expectation. It was only fitting. We delivered one another from the pits of despair. We had earned our reward.

Some things you would wait a lifetime for. Some things, after years of wishing to have, were only enhanced by the time that passed, like a good wine. Some things, when they arrived, tasted so much sweeter because of the torture of the wait.

And when Rafael's lips quivered, when he fearfully leaned in and approached me, when the alarms of dishonesty to a vile creature a few towns away sounded, I knew that waiting had been worth it. And I was willing to damn us if his faithlessness to that monster made this moment sinful.

I ripped away from the ropes that tied me back. My body lifted to the tips of my toes, and I pressed my lips against his without another moment of hesitation. Two long years I had spent hoping for Rafael's lips on mine. Two years I had wondered about what could have been. And today, as though nothing at all had happened in the meantime, Rafael swaggered back into my life and made everything brighter and bigger and better.

He didn't pull back. The restraints shattered. He let go of my hands and put one on the back of my head. It was a simple gesture, yet it made my soul beam as brightly as the floodlights around the castle. His eagerness to hold me made me want to burst.

I kissed him clumsily. I kissed him honestly. I kissed him precisely the way I wanted to kiss him. My mouth moved over his, and the sensation spilled through me like a hot shower after a long day out in the cold. And when I clutched the lapels of his black jacket, I held on to him because I feared I would float off the earth if I let go.

Rafael placed his other hand on the small of my back. It was far from intimate when it came to anatomy, yet my heart flickered, and my desire for his proximity skyrocketed. His hands on my body, his mouth on my mouth, our hearts beating in unison, I opened my eyes a little to prove to myself that this was not just a daydream. He was real; his beautiful face was there in front of mine, and his long, black eyelashes framed his eyes and made me short of breath. And when Rafael opened his eyes, eyelashes batting in a way that distracted me from everything else, I felt the heat rise to my face.

Rafael pulled back, his lower lip dragging between his teeth as he cocked his head. "That…I…" He exhaled, his face glowing like mine.

"Yeah," I huffed. "Me too. "

Rafael's left hand rested on the back of my neck, and his right was on my hip. "I could do that all night."

My throat seized, and I forced myself not to grin like a fool. My first kiss. My first kiss would lead into a night of kisses. "You can," I said, restraining the childish squeal of excitement that wanted to rise from me. Deepening my voice just a little, I added, "You absolutely can."

Rafael bit his lip hard, dragging his hands over me until they found mine. He swung them left and right, then yanked me into his embrace. We didn't kiss again, but it was just as powerful. It was a hug so tight, so close, so warm and innocent that my heart sped up to twice its normal pace.

"I like this very much, Luke," he whispered, his lips so near my ear that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my earlobe. "Whatever this is, I want it."

"You can have it," I said, feeling like I swore an oath with those words. I'm yours. All of me belongs to you. We didn't know it then, but I gave you my heart as we adventured down the streets of Paris. I gave it to you, and I don't ever want it back. Why else had I waited so long? Why else had I saved my first kiss for someone special? And why hadn't I thought of saving it any longer when Rafael was standing in front of me?

Glimpses of the days to come beamed through the cracks in the wall I had built around this moment. Consciously, I wanted to be nowhere but here, but the ideas of what tomorrow would bring were too powerful to be kept out. The fight and the pain of tomorrow would leave their mark on him, but I would be tender and sweet. I would help him get back on his feet. I would help him build back his confidence and that zest for life that pulled me in so effortlessly.

We separated and watched one another's faces. My head tilted this way and that as I examined his features. Nobody was this pretty. Nobody was allowed to be this pretty. His beauty was devastating, putting to shame every sculptor and painter and illustrator. None had dared to create a face as gorgeous as his.

And in his eyes, relief and hope ran wild.

Tonight, we would sit and talk and kiss. I felt destiny bringing us together for this, and I felt it in my marrow.

But fate was a treacherous bitch. The frown came first, then the vibration intensifying in his pocket, then the name of a girl called Christine, and the confused tilt of Rafael's head. I didn't know it then, but a single phone call could wipe out an immovable mountain of hope. Had I had the foresight to say it, I might have asked him not to pick up. Not yet. But even if I had done that, even if I had somehow made him stay in this bubble with me, the news would have found its way to Rafael. And the longer he was with me, the worse it would be.

Something of a pattern would weave itself into a tapestry of our failed romance. That night, on the walls of Kufstein fortress, pain and rage and guilt would fill the gap where my heart had been. Not for the first or last time, Rafael and I would find ourselves on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gap.

I had never been tied to another creature the way I was to Rafael. Nobody's emotions had the colors and sounds and the sort of intensity that could make the ground beneath my feet tremble. He was a tornado and an earthquake made into one. His despair was a devastation of the ages.

"It's his sister," Rafael said in the final moments of tranquility that would soon be less than a distant memory. "She's a good person." The assurance was quickly followed by Rafael accepting the call and turning away from me. "Christine?"

The thunderous pain that swirled around us made little of what followed remain in its exact place in the flow of time. Here, now, everything happened at once and years apart. Piecing it together would remain a challenge for all my years to come until a day I decided it served no purpose to know what came before and what came after.

Some things were etched too deep into my memory to forget: his pretty face ravaged by tears, my anger at a god I didn't believe in for daring to exist and meddle in our lives. Words. I remembered a lot of words, although not the order in which they were spoken.

You can't leave me here . That had been me speaking. It had to be.

He had told me that there had been an accident. In the last seconds before Rafael's strength disappeared, he had managed to tell me that Robbie had skied down a risky slope. … operating table while I was here with you…fighting for his life…can never be happy… "I am cursed, Luke," he cried bitterly. "Everything I touch withers and dies." …will book a taxi there…hours… "You should run away from me if you know what's good. "

"I'm not leaving you," I said, my voice carrying.

Rafael didn't bother wiping the pearly tears that rolled down his cheeks. He was furious. "And if he dies while I'm holding you in my arms? Do you think we'll ever be happy?" He glared, but not at me. He wasn't furious with me, I realized. And when his booted foot kicked the three-foot-thick wall, I knew for a fact that I had lost him again. Fortuna had won, the scheming witch. Rafael cried out at the pain in his foot. He grabbed the edge of the wall and leaned down as if something was pulling him to tumble to the ground. He held himself there and stared at the stones. "Don't you see it's impossible?"

No. It's never impossible. This changes nothing . I could have said any of those things, but they were all false. The truth was so devastatingly simple that I decided to say nothing instead.

"I'm sorry, Luke," he whispered hoarsely.

That man could live or die for all I cared in this moment of anger and injustice. He'd gotten no more than what he deserved for splitting that one beautiful eyebrow. But this sentiment wouldn't tie Rafael to me any more than it would liberate us from the guilt.

And who was I to try to cage this beautiful hawk? I would be no better than the guy on the operating table.

I didn't let my tears spill. "Yeah," I whispered as I stepped back. "I'm sorry, too."

Rafael lifted his gaze to me, lips pressed into a tight, thin line, eyes shining with angry tears, shoulders trembling with unreleased sobs. He straightened, hesitated, and took the first step to walk by me. As he neared me, he grabbed my wrist tightly and looked into my eyes. I didn't doubt the depth of his regret, but we both knew where we stood. "I really am sorry, Luke," he said in a strained voice.

I watched him in silence, then moved my gaze to my feet. My lips moved up, down, left, and right as I tried to keep my mouth closed. The man was possibly dying, and it might not have happened had Rafael gone there instead of here. Who was to say what could have been? Perhaps Rafael would have been the one fighting for his life had he not met me on the train. Or he would have reasoned with Robbie against that reckless attempt.

But nothing—no amount of bargaining and pleading and twisting of logic—could put us back on the path we had chosen moments before the disaster. And nothing could clear away the weight of our transgression.

Rafael left again.