Page 73 of From Beijing, With Love

Yang would have listened, but for the first time he wondered what the right thing really was. Maybe the right thing was the honest thing.

Before he could change his mind, Yang clicked send on the proposal and slammed his laptop shut.

Daniel looked like a dream standing in the open doorway—tousled brown hair just the right amount of messy, loosely cinched hotel robe, and hazel eyes hazy with sleep.

“You are up super early. Thought we weren’t meeting until noon?” Daniel yawned as he moved aside to let Yang into the hotel room.

“Super early?” Yang laughed as he looked at his watch. “It’s nine o’clock. I’ve been up for four hours. Is the hotel okay?” He surveyed the room. Compared to Hotel Alium, it was modest at best. Xi’an was in a different category than Beijing—smaller, older, and not quite on the radar of the foreign masses yet. There were a few five-star hotels in the Old City by the tourist sites, but Daniel and Poppy had chosen this apartment hotel near Yang’s family home, whose clientele were mostly visitors to the nearby university.

“Stop worrying about me,” Daniel said, looking like he meant it. “A hotel is just a bed … a clean bed, to sleep in at night. I’m here to see Xi’an.” Stepping back, Daniel surveyed Yang’s outfit—polyester T-shirt and running shorts. “And you are here to … exercise?”

“I just submitted my proposal, and I really needed a run. I normally jog in the park, and your hotel was on the way.” Yang felt heat rise up his neck, coloring the tips of his earlobes. The truth was that he couldn’t pass by Daniel’s hotel without seeing him. “Come run with me?”

“I hate running,” Daniel said with absolute certainty and just a hint of petulance that Yang actually found endearing. What was Daniel doing to him?

“Who doesn’t,” Yang said with a smile. He was still smiling when he kissed Daniel. “What about now?”

“I hate it a tiny bit less.”

“How about now?” Yang let his next kiss linger, pulling away just as Daniel began to open up to it.

“Damn you.” Daniel sighed as he slid open the closet door. “I’ll get changed. Give me ten—no, fifteen—minutes.”

As Yang had expected, the fifteen-minute promise turned into half an hour. By the time they walked through the red gates of Xingqinggong Park, it was nearly ten o’clock. The park was just as Yang remembered, with its Tang dynasty–style pavilions surrounded by lush greenery and blooming flowers.

“Do you come here often?” Daniel asked as they came upon the manmade lake.

“Before my mom got sick, we came here every night after dinner. Just the two of us, as my dad was always working late at the lab,” Yang said, fixing his eyes on the blue ripples of the water.

Daniel looked at Yang, his open-book face soft and earnest. “Tell me more about your mom.”

Yang’s instinct was to deflect, but his words spilled out. As they walked through the grounds that he knew so well, he talked about everything he remembered about his mom—her love of books, floral dresses, and Sichuan food so spicy it’d turn anyone into a fire-breathing dragon. When he ran out of his own memories, he shared hers. “She grew up in Beijing, right on Hua Jie.”

“That’s the street you took me to with the flowers,” Daniel said, surprise flashing across his face. “Do you take a lot of people there?”

Yang took a deep breath and stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “I don’t.”

The revelation hung in the air between them, with Yang doing his best to ignore it. Why had he taken Daniel, who was practically a stranger back then, to Hua Jie? Then he saw a smile bloom on Daniel’s face, and he knew.

“Come on. Let’s run.” Yang broke into a jog. If he didn’t run, he was at a serious risk of kissing Daniel in the middle of the park in front of the group of pensioners doing tai chi.

After Shanqi, he knew better than anyone how risky it was to want what he wanted. To be who he was, where he was. Like when he’d kissed Daniel against the mailbox last night like a dumb sixteen-year-old. Ten years after he kissed someone he wasn’t supposed to kiss, he had come full circle.

But when he looked at Daniel, huffing and puffing like the light jog was killing him one step at a time, he saw a risk that was maybe worth taking.

“This is my stop,” Daniel said as they stood in front of his hotel.

Yang looked up at the dated sign hanging above them that spelled Hotel Ziyin in Chinese, still not convinced that Daniel was comfortable at this modest hotel or in his humble hometown. “I’ll head home for a quick shower. Meet you back here for lunch in an hour?”

“Or you could just shower here,” Daniel said, blushing through feigned nonchalance.

Yang was certain his complexion mirrored Daniel’s. He swallowed. “Yeah, why not.”

As the elevator ascended, Yang kept Daniel at arm’s length. He didn’t trust himself not to shove Daniel against the mirrored wall and make a mess of him.

After they got into the room, Daniel hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign, locked the deadbolt, and flipped the security latch. He was thorough—and Yang’s patience was thoroughly worn out.

He shoved Daniel against the door and kissed him, a messy and rushed kind of kiss that had their teeth knocking together until he tasted the metallic tang of blood.