Collaring Chaz (Dante's Infernal #2) - Joel Abernathy Page 0,60

dipshit who moved to Athens thinking he actually belonged there. He fell in love with this gorgeous Greek god named Meles, and in the continuation of his dumbfuckery, Timagoras confessed his love for Meles. Meles thought it was funny as shit, and who could blame him? So he told Timmy to jump off a cliff, and he did it, lovesick fool that he was.”

“Chaz…”

“I hate to spoil it for you, but it ends with two guys at the bottom of the cliff,” I continued. “That’s it. That’s the whole story, and the thing about a tragedy is that the longer it goes on, the more fucked the ending is.”

“And in this story, I’m supposed to be Meles?” he challenged.

I laughed, shaking my head. “No. No, you’re Apollo, who’s madly in love with his brother Dionysus, and I’m just an idiot at the bottom of a cliff.”

His face went blank, but his silence said enough. “You were there the night of the wedding,” he murmured. “You heard the song.”

My car pulled up under the awning in front of the hospital lobby, and I motioned for the driver to wait. This wasn’t going to take long. “It’s good. Everything you write is, but that one…” I laughed quietly. “That one was a masterpiece. It’s a shame he’ll never hear it.”

“You don’t understand,” Rafael said, grabbing my arm as if he knew I was about to leave. He always had been good at reading my body. My heart was another story. Or maybe it was just easier to pretend he didn’t know. I wasn’t sure which was worse. “I started writing that song years ago, and I wanted to finish it the night of the wedding because…I don’t know, I just wanted closure.” He ran a hand through his hair. It was starting to rain, like this wasn’t depressing enough. “But those words don’t mean what they did back then. And I couldn’t even finish it, because every verse I tried to write ended up being about you.”

My throat grew tight, and I knew if I didn’t leave soon, I was going to lose the nerve, so I said the only thing that was guaranteed to end it. To settle any doubt or delusion we were both clinging onto for the sake of nostalgia.

“You could come with me.”

His silence told me what I already knew. It wasn’t even a question. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I know.” I leaned in to kiss him, brushing a damp strand of hair back from his face. When I pulled away, my lips tingled with the same magic I’d felt the first time he’d kissed me, and every time since. But even magic had its limits. “And that’s why I can’t stay.”

He dropped his grasp on my arm and let me walk away this time.

“The airport, please,” I told the driver once I’d climbed into the back. He nodded, giving me a sympathetic look in the rearview mirror.

As we drove away, I refused to look back, because I knew how that tragedy ended, too.

Chapter 21

Rafael

In the months that had elapsed since Chaz had officially quit the band, the rumors and truths about the split became all the tabloids and celebrity gossip blogs would talk about. Now that everyone knew Chaz and I were a thing thanks to that song getting leaked, there was no end to it. The media was more in love with us now that we’d split than they had been before, which was probably the only reason Drake hadn’t had a stroke.

Some people thought Chaz and Dante were fucking in secret, and that was why he split so soon after the wedding. Others insisted I was the one who’d chased him off because I was a shitty boyfriend, and they were closer than anyone, with the single exception that I hadn’t even gotten to the boyfriend stage before I managed to fuck everything up.

Things were still tense between me and Dante, since I’d lashed out at him for saying whatever he’d said to Chaz in the hospital, and things were tense between me and Cash because of that. Over the last few days, the only words we’d spoken to each other were about the show for that night. However, I’d already come to accept the fact that Dante being a dick might have been what finally pushed Chaz over the edge, but it wasn’t the catalyst.

The lion’s share of the blame fell on me. I’d acknowledged it, and I would apologize eventually, but I