Grazie
FELIX MUST have been drinking for some time, because he fell asleep on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny was grateful. Felix was a light sleeper on the best of days, and when he was stressed or upset, he would go for a week without lying down and shutting his eyes.
He’d done that when his parents had threatened to disown him if he didn’t leave Danny and come home from Europe to go back to school.
He hadn’t slept, he hadn’t eaten. Danny had finally gotten him drunk on a bottle of the cheapest wine he could find, just so he would shut his eyes.
When Felix had awakened, he’d been dehydrated and headachy—and absolutely lucid.
He’d written his parents and told them that he’d rather make his own way in the world than be dependent on their judgment for a dime. Danny had been so proud of him then; his lover was confident, independent, wouldn’t let money ever dictate what he did with his life.
His disappointment when that had proved to be something of an overstatement had been… acute.
But when a guy is young, it’s harder to forgive people for just being human. Felix’s basic qualities—kindness, intelligence, decisiveness, seeing the big picture—had remained. The fact that Danny was the one without the strength to put up with being the hidden mistress didn’t change that. It had taken Danny a long time to come to that conclusion—and even longer to forgive Felix.
And longest of all to forgive himself.
He scooted sideways on the bed to help Felix find the pillow, then stripped off Felix’s loafers and pants. He was going to flip the duvet over the top of Felix like a man burrito, but Felix surprised him by half opening his eyes.
“If I get under the covers, will you turn out the lights and lie down with me?”
Danny couldn’t have stopped the wounded sound that came out of his throat if they’d been in the middle of a game and their lives had hung on him being silent as stone.
“Just to sleep, Danny,” Felix murmured. “I wouldn’t hurt you like that.”
“Didn’t hurt the way we did it,” Danny replied lightly, playing for time. He wandered around the room, turning off the lights, closing the door enough that the light from the hallway didn’t slice through the room.
“No. It was the other stuff that hurt.”
Danny couldn’t argue with him there. He finished his round and paused, watching as Felix rolled under the covers and snuggled down. God, he looked so innocent like that, hands under his cheeks like a choirboy. It was easy to forget that he was as wild in bed as Danny was, so single-minded in passion that he could block out the sun and make you think he was the thing around which the world revolved.
He’d been Danny’s sun for eleven years, hadn’t he?
“Please,” Felix whispered, and Danny let out a sigh. He shed his topcoat and suitcoat and hung them over the chair by the old-style oak dressing table, then stripped down to his T-shirt and silk boxers. He wasn’t planning to sleep, but he’d left his clothes at his apartment before he’d decided to come visit Felix, and he hated being rumpled. When he was done, he grabbed the throw—red cashmere, because Felix loved it so—from the top of the bed and went to lie down on top of the covers, using the throw for warmth.
“Thank you,” Felix said as Danny wrapped the throw around his shoulders.
“I’m sorry this happened to your legacy,” Danny told him soberly. “Don’t worry. Josh and I have some plans to get it back.”
Felix struggled to open his eyes wider, but Danny chuckled and passed his hand over them.
He gasped when Felix grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand in to kiss his palm.
“Fox—”
Felix released his hand and closed his eyes. “Don’t game her, Lightfingers. She’ll… she’ll expose you. She’ll figure out who you are and spread your real name across the internet. Lots of people still want your head on a platter. I need you alive, Danny. Just… don’t cross her.”
“We will talk about this in the morning,” Danny said, yawning. That morning he’d stepped off an international flight, dropped his luggage at his Chicago condo, and gone to check his mail.
It was nearing ten o’clock in Chicago now, he’d been up for nearly thirty-six hours, and his head was starting to pound with jet lag. He’d close his eyes for a minute here—an hour, maybe—before he went downstairs and spoke to Julia, told her what he and Josh had talked about, made more plans with Josh to see the people he’d lined up.
But first he’d watch Felix sleep for a moment, see the rise and fall of his chest. He’d kept himself in tip-top shape—had eaten well and walked daily, even on the streets of Rome when they’d been too young to diet.
Felix had aged well. He had only a few strands of silver in his blond hair, blending in like they were supposed to be there. His blue eyes were just as striking in his tanned face, his jaw as square and masculine as it had been even when it held the softness of youth.
It wasn’t soft anymore, was it?
It was hard and decisive, the jaw of a man used to making tough decisions.
Julia’s father had put him in charge of a growing cable network and made Julia’s and Josh’s fortunes dependent on Felix making it work. Danny had chosen the worst time in the world to go off the rails. He hadn’t known it then, but he knew it now.
A couple more years. Felix had begged for a couple more years. But Danny had spent a decade playing the mistress, being “Uncle Danny” to Josh and a ghost to Hiram Dormer, and he’d needed more, so much more than what Felix could give him.
He’d picked that fight, and he knew it. But he’d had to get roaring drunk to do it. In those days, it hadn’t been much of a stretch; he’d been drunk most of the time anyway. But he’d needed to be extra-strength Macallan-scotch drunk to give Felix an ultimatum, because it was the only way to forget the way Felix’s eyes had looked in the moonlight when they were making love. The only way to forget the touch of Felix’s skin or the whispered promises of “someday” he’d been giving since Danny and Felix had decided to try that long con on Hiram Dormer and his spoiled daughter in the first place, before really knowing what poor Julia’s life was like.
Danny watched Felix sleep and wished for those ten years back, wished he could undo the hateful things he’d said, wished he had a time machine so they could travel back to Rome and leave Julia Dormer and her snake-mean father alone.
Except—oh God—then Josh would have had another stepfather, one probably more like Julia’s old man and less like Felix.
The idea of it made Danny’s head throb with exhaustion, and he couldn’t stay awake for another minute, even to watch his Fox sleep. Instead, he closed his eyes and breathed in, smelling wine and pine nuts, hot dusty roads, and olive trees in the sun.
Danny didn’t dream of their final fight. Maybe his heart was too sore, but more likely he was too soothed by having Felix next to him again. Instead he dreamed of their last perfect day in Rome, before they decided to take on Hiram Dormer, before they got taught a real lesson about who was innocent and who was just in it to hurt.
Past