Chapter 24 Thiago
Chapter twenty-four
Thiago
Ipacked the go-bag in ten minutes. It took longer than usual.
I packed most of the contents the way I always did.
The compact trauma kit lived in the right-side pocket: tourniquet, compressed gauze, and a pair of gloves folded into a tight square.
The passport and emergency cash were in the outer sleeve, and the Glock was in the main compartment, with a soft holster and magazine removed.
The bag also held things it hadn’t carried on previous assignments. I had what I brought to New Orleans for a two-week leave as well as what I added while working for Dominic.
It held a pair of linen trousers bought on Magazine Street and a light blue shirt with narrow white stripes that Luca had held up in the shop and declared acceptable for daylight.
I had a second shirt the color of dark olive leaves, and I’d also acquired a pair of soft leather shoes that had replaced the boots I arrived in.
I’d packed the shirts myself after Luca had folded them.
I stood over the bag after the zipper had closed. Then I picked it up and carried it downstairs.
The kitchen smelled of coffee and citrus. The courtyard windows were open, and the fountain gurgled steadily.
Dominic was at the counter with one hand resting on it. An unopened bottle of Armagnac stood beside him. He was looking out toward the lemon trees, and he didn’t turn when I carried the go-bag out of the kitchen to the front door.
“I waited twenty years,” he said, “for the city to properly mark something that mattered.”
I returned to join him. His voice was entirely calm.
“I do not recommend waiting as a solid plan.”
“I’m familiar with the story,” I said.
He turned and studied me with the pale, unblinking gaze he used on scores that weren’t yet right. “I’m not telling you the story,” he said. “I’m giving you a data point.”
He reached for the Armagnac and poured a small measure into the glass beside it. “I have,” he said, “in the course of a long life, made errors in timing I cannot change. Not from cowardice.” He lifted the glass. “From the habit of believing there would always be more time.”
He took one small sip.
“You are thirty-eight years old and in good health, and there is a man in this house who made red beans on Monday while you were reading about Loire Valley architecture and who checked your bandage at seven this morning without being asked.”
“He checked it at six-forty.”
Dominic nodded once. “Even more impressive commitment.”
He set the glass down.
“While preparing for the concert,” he said. “And during my life after the concert, the epilogue, as it were, I was wrong about several things.” He turned to look at me directly. “Luca is not one of them.”
He walked past me toward the stairs. At the first step, he paused.
“The lemon trees want water. Luca will be back from Camille’s at four.”
Then he climbed the stairs.
The kitchen clock ticked once. I looked at the go-bag beside the door. I picked it up and carried it back upstairs.
The bedroom windows were open. August had not yet softened into September in any way that mattered; the air moved through the room warm and slow, lifting the linen curtains once and letting them fall.
I set the bag on the chair and unzipped it. The Glock came out first. I laid it on the dresser. Then the passport and the cash envelope followed by the trauma kit.
The new shirts stayed in the bag while I looked at them. Then I lifted the blue-striped one, the one Luca had chosen without asking, and ran my hand once across the fabric before setting it on the bed.
When the bag was empty, I folded it flat and slid it under the bed. The room looked the same.
I went downstairs and filled the watering can at the courtyard tap.
The stones held the afternoon’s heat, and the lemon trees cast thin shadows along the far wall.
I moved slowly from tree to tree, with the sling pulling against my shoulder each time I bent forward.
The ache beneath the brace had become familiar enough that I often ignored it.
When I finished the last tree, I sat beside the fountain. I stayed there until the courtyard gate opened.
Luca stepped inside, carrying a paper bag from Camille’s café. I followed him inside, and he offered me a pale green macaron. After I took one, he continued walking into the salon.
He looked at the front door. The go-bag was not there.
He exhaled once. Then he walked toward me and set the bag on the console table. “You should know,” he said, “that Camille has already told three people she thinks you should move here.”
“What did you tell her?”
He reached out for a hug. “I told her you have an apartment in Washington Heights with a room that looks out toward a river.”
“And?”
“She said New Orleans has a river. That’s not an argument with any structural integrity, but she’s not wrong.”
“It’s a different river.”
“You could have two.”
I looked at him. “That is a very Luca answer.”
“Thank you.”
He picked up the bag and walked back through the house toward the courtyard. “Come with me,” he said.
He reached for my hand and pulled me toward him, mindful of the sling, and pressed his lips to my cheek. He wrapped a hand around the back of my head, holding on for a moment.
“I want to check the shoulder,” he said.
I followed him to the bathroom. There, Luca checked the bandage without being asked. He peeled the edge of the medical tape back, pressed it smooth again, and ran his thumb once along the brace before releasing it. His hands were warm and steady.
“Still healing clean,” he said.
“Was there a question?”
“There is always a question until I check it.”
He was standing close enough that I could smell the citrus from his soap. I reached up with my right hand and touched his jaw. He turned his face slightly into my hand.
“I want to take your shirt off,” he said. “We’re going to have to be slow about it.”
“Yes.”
“It’s so I can check the shoulder more closely.”
“I assumed.”
“And you’re going to stop making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that says I’m terribly inconveniencing you, but you’re enduring it in silence.”
“That’s my regular face. You know, resting—“
Luca laughed softly. “And sometimes you’re impossible.” He reached for the top button of my shirt. “So very stoic. Sometimes, I find it maddening.”
“Being maddening is one of my finer talents.”
He worked the buttons slowly, from the collar down. The sling required slipping the shirt carefully off my right shoulder first, then freeing the fabric from around the brace without catching the tape. He folded the shirt over the back of the chair without looking away from me.
The sling came off last, after he’d walked me through the sequence the doctor had outlined. The shoulder moved without resistance. He pressed two fingers lightly against the deltoid, watching my face.
“Tell me.”
“It’s fine.”
“That is not the agreed-upon answer.”
“Mild,” I said. “Manageable.”
“Upstairs?” he asked.
I nodded and followed Luca to his room.
He undressed me the rest of the way with the careful attention he brought to everything. His touch was deliberate without being clinical. When I lay back against the pillows, he looked at me in the afternoon light.
“You’re going to tell me if anything pulls,” he said.
“I’ll tell you.”
“You won’t. You’ll remain quiet and decide it’s fine.”
“Luca.”
“Thiago.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He kissed me then, not a beginning so much as a continuation, the way it had always been between us, each time picking up precisely where the last left off.
He was still fully dressed. I reached for his shirt buttons with my right hand, and he shifted to let me manage it, patient while I worked through each one slowly. His collarbones appeared, and the fine silver chain he wore.
“You’re taking your time,” he said.
“Yes. Is that a complaint?”
“No.” He finished what I’d started, shrugging the shirt off and dropping it somewhere off the edge of the bed. “It’s an observation.”
Luca worked his way down my throat, collarbone, and the center of my chest with his tongue and lips. His mouth was warm.
His hand moved low on my stomach.
“Tell me what you need,” he said against my skin.
“Whatever you want to give me.”
He lifted his head and looked at me directly. “That’s not an answer.”
He was right. I had given that answer for years when what I meant was I didn’t know how to want things I couldn’t easily leave behind.
“You,” I said. “I want you.”
“I’m yours,” he whispered against my skin.
He kissed his way slowly down my stomach, his hands at my hips, and I stopped thinking about the shoulder or the brace or the careful angles required.
He took his time. He knew what he was doing, learning what I responded to with the same quiet attention he brought to everything. When I reached for him with my right hand, he caught my wrist gently.
“Not yet,” he said. “Stay here.”
I stayed. I let him take me apart at whatever pace he chose. When I finally finished, it was with his name on my lips and my right hand twisted into the sheets, holding nothing back.
The silence afterward was easy. That was the difference. Not the urgency of the first time in the kitchen or the careful vulnerability of the hospital room. This was something that belonged to two people who had made a decision, and both of us knew it.
I lay still afterward, breathing.
He moved back up beside me and lay against my right side, careful of the shoulder, with one hand resting on my chest.
I pulled him close and worked around the sling. He let me find the angle, and I took my time the way he had taken his, one hand against his stomach, feeling the muscles tighten and release. He wasn’t quiet. I had learned that about him, too.
He said my name.
Not Thiago—Santiago, the one he now favored.
I held him closer, and he pressed his forehead against my neck, whispering my name again. When he reached his orgasm, he shuddered against me.
I had spent twelve years running checklists in the quiet after military assignments: exits secured, client status confirmed, and departure window calculated. I ran my latest version of a checklist in my head and arrived at nothing that needed doing.
Looking up at the ceiling, I understood what I had to say, and that it was going to change my world. It was the truth, and I couldn’t leave it unsaid.
“Luca.”
He lifted his head and looked at me.
“I love you,” I said.
The words came out plain. They didn’t require elaboration.
He studied me for a moment. Then he raised up onto his elbow and looked at me.
“I love you,” he said.
Not a mirror. It was his own statement. I pulled him back down.
He settled against my side, and his breathing slowly evened out. I slept.
I was asleep for nearly twelve hours, but I woke before sunrise.
The early morning waking was an older habit than anything else I could name—older than the Rangers or New York. It was built into my bones, the pre-dawn readiness of a body preparing to move before the rest of the world.
I heard coffee grinding in the kitchen. Dominic was awake, too. I listened and heard the courtyard gate creaking in the morning breeze.
Luca was asleep beside me with one arm across my chest and his face turned toward my shoulder. His breathing was slow.
I lay still.
My go-bag was flat in my room under the bed. I could pack it again.
Instead, I settled back against the pillow and pulled Luca a little closer. He shifted without waking, and his hand moved to my ribs.
Morning arrived slowly, the light changing by degrees from gray to pale gold, filtering through the live oaks until it fell in patterns across the floor. Dominic’s footsteps moved through the kitchen below. Luca breathed slowly at my side.
As the sun rose, I stayed.