Thomas’s eyes flew to Micha’s, searching them for answers and finding none, for Micha hardly knew them himself. “What do you mean? This is what we want, isn’t it?”
“More than anything.” A breath he did not realise he had been holding rushed out of Micha, roaring in his ears. He knew he should have lied and made it easier on both of them. Unfortunately, he hadlost the habit, along with his other dependencies. “But you ... your faith ... I didn’t understand before. It’s as real to you as I am. It’s who you are. It’s—”
“It’s who I’ve become,” interrupted Thomas gently. “Because of you.”
Micha laughed, with a trace of his old bitterness, swiftly whisked away with the cherry blossom on the breeze. That, too, had faded with the lies, the laudanum, and the memories of hands and bodies and strangers. “I’m so fucking in love with you.” His eyes stung, the light pressing against his eyelids like needles. “And this is bloody typical.”
“Micha, please don’t talk like this. Something has changed and I don’t understand what it is, and”—Thomas’s voice twisted in sudden uncertainty—“you’re worrying me.”
Thomas had told him once:It’s all connected. Micha hadn’t understood at the time, but he did now. Him, and God, and love and faith, and Thomas and Nettlefield, inseparable and impossible. “You can’t give up everything for me. And I don’t want you to.”
There was a long silence. Thomas’s hand closed desperately over Micha’s, trapping his fingers between flesh and stone. “I’m not Isidore.”
“I know. He left me for his world. You gave me faith in yours.”
“My love, you are my world. Without you, I would still be lost.”
Micha swallowed. There were hooks in his throat, catching his words, making them hurt. “And you’ve changed me too. I was base metal before you found me.”
“You were always gold,” whispered Thomas.
“Only in your eyes.” Micha lifted the knot of their hands and kissed across Thomas’s fingertips. “But I’m not the man I used to be. I want to love as you love, with my whole heart and what little goodness I possess. I want you, almost past bearing, but I can’t—I won’t—be the villain in your story. I’m not going to take you from your faith, and your home, and the people you care for.”
“Do I have no say in this?” Thomas’s voice trembled like the grass at their feet. “I chose you.”
“Yes.” Micha smiled, jagged as the cracks in his heart. “And I chose you. So I’m leaving.”
“No. I ... no. Please. Please.”
The despair in Thomas’s voice seared Micha to blood and ashes. “Don’t,” he choked out. “Don’t. You know you’re needed here. I love you, but I don’t need you. You’ve already saved me.”
“No.” Thomas’s hands struggled in Micha’s, as if he could hold him forever with something as simple as the touch of skin. Perhaps, had everything been different, he could have.
Micha gazed at him helplessly, but Thomas’s attention was locked on the writhing muddle of their hands. “Thomas,” he pleaded, “you have to understand. You made me believe. I believe in you. I believe in this love of yours, this boundless, endless love, and I cannot keep it for myself alone.”
“You think this life is so important to me?” Thomas had gone as still as the carved monuments that surrounded them.
For long moments Micha was silent too. Then, “Tell me truly, Thomas, if I was to say, ‘Very well, let us go and post that letter now,’ would you?”
“The post office is closed,” Thomas whispered, for he was hopeless at dissembling.
“Would you?” Micha asked again. And when Thomas said nothing more, he plucked the envelope from his hand.
“What are you—”
Without another word, Micha tore the letter to pieces.
“Micha, I worked hard on that.”
“I know you want to send it. I know you wish you could. But I also know you can’t.”
Thomas tried to frame some kind of answer and, instead, uttered only a noise of bewildered, incoherent misery. He pulled himself sharply from Micha’s hold. “Without you,” he said, “how can anything else mean anything to me?” Then he leaned in and kissed him, right there in full daylight, in the middle of the churchyard. Micha tried toprotest, but beneath the sweet, familiar pressure of Thomas’s lips, his words became a gasp, which became an offering. He unspooled beneath spring’s careless sun in threads of amber and gold, love and loss and an ever-restless wanting.
Thomas pushed him down and stretched full-length over him, locking them in an embrace so shockingly, undeniably carnal that Micha forgot himself. The stone was cold beneath his shoulders, but Thomas was all heat and strength, pinning Micha beneath him and grinding their bodies together, rough and relentless, upon the harsh edge of pleasure, the sweet edge of pain. Micha writhed, moaned, and clutched mindlessly at Thomas, driving up against him, surrendered to the madness of a moment, and a kiss made raw with the salt of tears.
Suddenly he could think of nothing but Thomas, the way their bodies moved together in love and passion, and lay together in sleep. All their smiles and touches and little jokes, as countless as the stars. He turned his head, tearing his mouth away from Thomas. “What the fuck are you doing?” There was no answer. Just the movement of Thomas’s lips over his throat, a string of savage little kisses that made Micha’s pulse crackle like fireworks. “Someone will see, and it will ruin you.”
Thomas glanced up, wild-eyed. “If that is what it takes to keep you, I will be ruined.”
