He looked like he had been struck by lightning. His chest was rising and falling in shallow, rapid breaths. He raised a hand to his chest, gripping the fabric of his sweatpants, his fingers digging into the cotton.
“Blake,” Andre sobbed, reaching a hand out toward him. “Blake,s’il te plaît, please. I am so sorry. I was high, I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t,” Blake gasped, taking another step back, putting more distance between them. “Don’t touch me. Don’t.”
Blake turned away, bracing his hands against the wall, his head bowed. He was taking deep, shuddering breaths, trying to force air into his lungs. He felt like he was having a heart attack. The pain in his chest was physical, a sharp, tearing agony that radiated down his arms and up into his jaw. He closed his eyes, and the images flashed behind his eyelids, vivid and horrifying. Andre and Talia. Andre and Liam. The three of them, tangled together, while he was in a hotel room in Melbourne, missing the man he loved.
Had he ever thought Talia was pretty? Of course he had. She was beautiful.
Had he ever been attracted to Liam? Yes. He wasn’t blind.
But he loved Andre. He loved Andre with a devotion that eclipsed everything else. When Tyler had offered him an out, a chance to explore adifferent path, Blake had shut the door without a second thought. Because Andre was his world.
And Andre had thrown that world away for a plate of drugged scones and a cheap thrill. Blake pushed himself off the wall. He didn’t look at Andre. He couldn’t. If he looked at him, he would break apart completely. He walked past the sofa, his movements stiff and angry, and went into the bedroom. Andre scrambled off the sofa, following him, panic rising in his chest.
“Blake, please. Please talk to me. Yell at me. Hit me. Do something.”
Blake ignored him. He walked to the closet, pulled out a pair of jeans and a sweater, and dressed quickly, his movements precise and efficient. He grabbed his wallet, his phone, and his passport from the nightstand.
“What are you doing?” Andre asked, his voice rising in panic. “Your flight isn’t until noon. It is three in the morning.”
Blake didn’t answer. He walked out of the bedroom, down the hall, and stopped by the front door. His tennis bags were sitting there, packed and ready for Dubai. He picked them up, slinging the heavy racket bag over his shoulder.
“Blake, please,” Andre begged, standing in the hallway, tears streaming down his face. “Please don’t leave like this. I love you. I love you so much. It meant nothing. It was a mistake.”
Blake stopped, his hand on the doorknob. He turned slowly, looking at Andre. Andre looked broken. He looked small and fragile and terrified. But Blake felt nothing. The anger, the pain, the betrayal — it had allcoalesced into a cold, hard knot in the center of his chest, freezing him from the inside out.
“You love me,” Blake said, his voice a quiet, broken whisper. “But you didn’t love me enough to say no.”
He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and closed it quietly behind him. The click of the lock echoing in the silent flat was the loudest sound Andre had ever heard.
Andre stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door. His legs gave out beneath him, and he slid down the wall, his back scraping against the plaster, until he was sitting on the cold hardwood floor.
He sat there for a long time. He didn’t know how long. The flat was completely silent, the only sound the faint hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. At some point, the sky outside the windows began to lighten, the deep black softening to a bruised, purple gray. The first sounds of the city waking up filtered through the walls — a delivery truck rumbling down the street, the distant clatter of Pierre opening the bakery below.
Andre’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out with numb, clumsy fingers.
Talia (06:47): Andre, are you okay? Liam and I are worried. Please text us back.
He stared at the message. He couldn’t respond. He couldn’t form words. He couldn’t do anything except sit on the floor of the hallway and feel the full, devastating weight of what he had lost.
Downstairs, the bakery opened. The smell of fresh bread drifted up through the floorboards, the warm, yeasty scent that had once been the comforting backdrop of their mornings together. Now it made Andre’s stomach turn.
He thought about Blake, somewhere in the dark London streets at three in the morning, carrying his tennis bags, walking away from the life they had built. He thought about the look on Blake’s face — not anger, not rage, but something far worse.
A quiet, devastating resignation, as if some fundamental part of him had simply switched off.
You love me. But you didn’t love me enough to say no.
The words echoed in Andre’s head, a relentless, punishing refrain that he knew would follow him for the rest of his life.
He pulled his knees tighter to his chest, pressed his forehead against them, and waited for a morning that offered no comfort.
Chapter fifteen
Silence
The heat in Dubai was oppressive, a dry, baking intensity that radiated from the hard courts and shimmered in the air above the stadium.
