Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Dante
The takeaway containers are spread across the coffee table like a small feast. Thai food, because Dylan mentioned he missed it. Green curry and pad thai and spring rolls and sticky rice. Far too much for two people, but I wanted him to have options.
I wanted him to have everything.
We’re sitting on the horrible orange sofa, plates balanced on our knees, and I can’t stop thinking about this afternoon.
About the way Dylan moved through my kitchen like he belonged there, hands steady and sure as he measured and mixed and folded.
About the furrow of concentration between his brows.
About the way his whole face transformed when those macarons came out of the oven with their perfect little feet.
He was beautiful. He’s always beautiful, but there was something different about it today. Something luminous. Watching him work, watching him create, I felt like I was witnessing something sacred.
And then he cried.
Not sad tears. Happy tears, overwhelmed tears, the kind that spill over when something you’ve wanted finally happens. He stood there in my kitchen with a tray of perfect macarons and tears streaming down his face, and I swear my heart started beating for the first time in my life.
I didn’t know it could feel like this. Didn’t know anything could feel like this.
“This is really good,” Dylan says, pulling me back to the present.
He’s working his way through the pad thai with enthusiasm, chopsticks moving with surprising dexterity.
“I haven’t had Thai food in ages. There’s a place near the bakery that does amazing drunken noodles, but I never seem to have time to go.
Always working, you know? Sean says I need to get a life, but the bakery is my life, so I’m not sure what he expects me to do about that. ”
He’s rambling. He always rambles when he’s nervous or happy or comfortable. I’ve learned to read the different flavors of his rambling, to distinguish between anxious chatter and genuine enthusiasm.
This is the good kind. The relaxed kind. The kind that means he feels safe enough to let his guard down.
The realization sends warmth spreading through my chest.
“You work too hard,” I say.
Dylan snorts. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean...” He gestures vaguely with his chopsticks. “You’re always doing something. Working or planning, or thinking about work. Even when you’re sitting still, you act all calm, but I can see your brain going a million miles an hour. You never just... stop.”
He’s not wrong. I’ve never been good at stillness. Stillness leaves too much room for thoughts I’d rather not have, feelings I’d rather not feel. Better to stay busy. Better to stay focused.
But sitting here with Dylan, eating Thai food on my horrible sofa, I find I don’t want to be anywhere else. Don’t want to be doing anything else. For once, the present moment is exactly where I want to be.
“I’ve stopped now,” I say quietly.
Dylan looks up from his noodles, those hazel eyes meeting mine. Something passes between us. Something soft and fragile and terrifying.
“Yeah,” he says. “I suppose you have.”
We eat in comfortable silence for a while. The curry is good, rich and creamy with just enough heat. I watch Dylan try a spring roll and make a small sound of approval that does things to my insides.
Everything he does affects me now. Every smile, every laugh, every unconscious gesture. I’m attuned to him in a way I’ve never been attuned to anyone. It should be unsettling. Instead, it just feels right.
“Tell me about the bakery,” I say, because I want to hear him talk. Want to learn everything about the life he had before I tore him away from it.
Dylan’s face lights up. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. How did you start it? What’s your favorite thing to make? What does it smell like first thing in the morning?”
The questions tumble out before I can stop them, revealing more of my hunger than I intended. But Dylan doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he doesn’t mind.
“I started it with money from my aunt,” he begins, settling back into the sofa cushions.
“She gave me my inheritance early, said I should use it for something that made me happy while she was still alive to see it. She pulled strings to get me a unit in Borough Market. Sean thought I was mad. Said the location was wrong, the rent was too high, the neighborhood was too much of a tourist trap. But I had a good feeling about it.”
“And you were right.”
“I was right.” He smiles, soft and proud.
“It took a while. The first year was brutal. I’d go home and cry and wonder what I was thinking, trying to compete with all the Instagram-worthy cafes and established bakeries.
But I kept at it. Kept experimenting with recipes, kept trying to make each thing better than the last. And slowly, people started talking about us. Started queuing up before we opened.”
His eyes have gone distant, lost in memory. I can picture it so clearly. Dylan in his little shop, flour on his apron, determination in his jaw despite the doubt gnawing at his insides. Building something from nothing through sheer stubbornness and talent.
“My favorite thing to make changes depending on my mood,” he continues.
“Sometimes it’s bread. There’s something meditative about bread, the kneading and the waiting, and the way it transforms in the oven.
Other times it’s something fiddly and technical, like choux pastry or croissants.
And sometimes I just want to make a really good chocolate chip cookie, you know? Something simple and comforting.”
He stops and picks up his glass of water. He takes a sip and his throat bobs as he swallows. For some reason, I cannot look away. I’m enthralled by him.
“And honestly,” he continues. “Sometimes, when I want comfort, I just make a cup of tea and demolish half a packet of McVities dark chocolate digestives. Sean says I have the snack habits of someone’s nan, but I maintain that store-bought chocolate digestives are a perfect food and I will die on that hill. ”
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips, but I don’t want to break the spell. Don’t want to do anything to disturb the happy look on Dylan’s face.
“I imagine your bakery smells amazing.” I prompt. I want to keep him mentally in his bakery for as long as I can. Evoke all of his senses.
Dylan closes his eyes. A small smile plays at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh it does. Mostly of butter,” he says softly. “Warm butter and sugar and yeast. Maybe a hint of cinnamon if I’ve been making morning buns. It smells like... like possibility. Like potential. Like all the things you could create if you just tried.”
When he opens his eyes, they’re shining.
“I miss it,” he admits. “I miss it so much.”
The words hit me stronger than a slap to the face. I’ve taken all of that from him. Locked him away in my pathetic flat with my horrible sofa and my desperate, growing need to keep him close.
“Dylan.” His name comes out rough. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of this.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Those hazel eyes searching my face, looking for something I hope he finds.
“I know,” he says finally. “I know you are.”
It’s not forgiveness. But it’s something. Something that feels like a door cracking open, just a sliver, just enough to let a little light through.
We finish eating. Dylan insists on cleaning up, gathering the containers and carrying them to the kitchen. I watch him move through my space, comfortable and familiar now, and something aches in my chest.
This afternoon, when he touched my arm, I nearly came undone. Such a small thing. The briefest press of his fingers against my skin, gone before I could fully register it. But I felt it for hours afterward. Still feel it now, a phantom warmth that won’t fade.
I want more. Want to touch him, hold him, pull him close and never let go. Want to feel his hands on my skin, his breath against my neck, his heart beating in time with mine.
But I can’t. He’s my prisoner. Whatever is growing between us, however real it feels, it’s built on a foundation of cruelty and captivity. I have no right to want him. No right to imagine a future where he’s mine by choice rather than circumstance.
Dylan returns from the kitchen and settles back onto the sofa. Closer than before, I notice. Close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I dared.
“Today was nice,” he says quietly. “The baking. The dinner. All of it.”
“It was.”
“Maybe tomorrow we could...” He trails off, a faint blush coloring his cheeks.
“I don’t know. Try something else? There’s a recipe in the cookbook for opera cake that I’ve always wanted to attempt.
It’s complicated, layers of almond sponge and coffee buttercream and chocolate ganache. Probably beyond my skill level, but...”
“I’d like that.”
The smile he gives me is small but real. It lights up his whole face, crinkles the corners of his eyes, makes him look young and hopeful and heartbreakingly beautiful.
I would give him anything. Everything. The world, if he asked for it.
My phone buzzes.
I ignore it. Whatever it is can wait. This moment, this soft, perfect moment with Dylan smiling at me, is more important than anything else.
It buzzes again. And again.
Dylan’s smile falters. “You should probably check that.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But I don’t want to. I want to stay here, suspended in this warmth, pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.
I pull out my phone and look at the screen.
Three messages from Nicolo. Short, businesslike, the kind of messages that only mean one thing.
Delivery in 30 minutes. Russian. Priority extraction.
My stomach drops.
I look up and find Dylan watching me. His face has changed. The softness is gone, replaced by something guarded and tense. He knows. Of course he knows.
“You have to work,” he says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
The word hangs between us, heavy with everything it implies. I have to go. I have to go to my studio and do the things I do, the things that made me into the monster I am. I have to leave this warm, soft moment and become someone else entirely.
Dylan’s eyes fill with something I’ve seen before. Terror. Horror. The remembered trauma of what he witnessed, what he heard, what he knows I’m capable of.
He’s looking at me like I’m a monster again.
And I deserve it. I am a monster. I’ve just been pretending otherwise, playing house, acting like I could be something different. But the truth is always there, waiting. The truth is that I hurt people for a living. That I’m good at it. That in thirty minutes, I’ll be making someone scream.
“Dylan.” I don’t know what I’m going to say. Don’t know what words could possibly bridge the gap between who I was five minutes ago and who I have to become.
“It’s fine.” His voice is flat. Distant. He’s retreating behind his own walls, protecting himself from the reality of what I am. “You should go. Don’t want to keep them waiting.”
The coldness in his tone cuts deeper than any knife.
I stand up, and every movement feels wrong. My body doesn’t want to do this. For the first time in my entire career, I don’t want to go to work. I want to stay here on this awful sofa with this beautiful man and pretend I’m someone worthy of the way he smiled at me moments ago.
But I can’t. The family calls, and I answer. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it has to be.
“I’ll try not to be long,” I say, and the words taste like ash.
Dylan doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the coffee table, at the spot where our takeaway containers sat, at anything that isn’t me. His shoulders are hunched, arms wrapped around himself as if he’s trying to hold himself together.
I did this. I shattered the fragile peace we were building. Not through any action, but simply by being who I am. What I am.
I want to touch him. Want to tip his chin up and make him look at me, want to promise him that this doesn’t change anything, that I’m still the man who bought him cookbooks and watched him bake and felt his heart start beating for the first time when Dylan cried over perfect macarons.
But that would be a lie. Because I’m also the man who’s about to go through a newly soundproofed door and do unspeakable things.
Both versions of me exist simultaneously, and I can’t ask Dylan to accept that.
Can’t ask him to reconcile the person who ordered him Thai food with the person who makes people beg for death.
“Goodnight, Dylan,” I say quietly.
I’m almost to the door when his voice stops me.
“Dante.”
I turn. He’s looking at me now, those hazel eyes swimming with emotions I can’t fully read. Fear, yes. Horror, yes. But something else too. Something that looks almost like grief.
“Stay safe,” he says.
Two words. Such simple words. But they crack something open inside me, something I didn’t know was still capable of feeling.
He’s afraid of what I am. Horrified by what I do. And yet some part of him still cares enough to want me safe.
I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him. But God help me, I’m going to find a way to keep him anyway.
“I will,” I say.
Then I walk out the door and become the monster again.