Love Him Desperate (On the Market #5) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,18

going back and living in that flat forever and listening to Şima tell me stories of what her life was like in Istanbul before she moved to Germany.” Raphael closed his eyes and rolled onto his back, taking a deep breath. His head was starting to hurt a little, but the soft breeze off the meadow was soothing. “She was a wild girl in her youth. She lived in the city and she used to dance. She had this very old trunk—like you see in the movies, and they were full of photos.”

“Why didn’t you?” Dmitri asked quietly.

Raphael laughed again, his smile tugging a little too hard at the corners of his mouth when he thought about Cody’s soft eyes, and the little splatter of freckles over his cheeks. “A good looking boy, why else? I had been living in Örebro for just over ten years, working in a little salon. He was on vacation, and he was very…American. We spent two weeks there together, then he asked me to come home with him, so I did.”

Dmitri made a small noise in the back of his throat. “Just like that?”

Raphael shrugged. “Just like that. I knew it wasn’t going to last, but I packed up all my things and said goodbye to my former life. We broke up about two months after I got here.”

“Why? What happened?” Dmitri stopped abruptly and sighed. “God, you don’t have to tell me that. I’m being nosy.”

“I don’t mind.” Raphael turned toward him again and rested his arm under his head, the glass hard and a little cold beneath his sleeve. “I don’t think he ever really understood what it was like to date someone like me. Some people want to prove something when they date me or when they fuck me. Mostly to themselves—that they’re not so shallow that my disability couldn’t matter.”

“It shouldn’t,” Dmitri said, a little bit rough.

Raphael shook his head. “It has to. It’s down to the very fabric of my atoms. I can’t turn it off. It never goes away. Chiara wanted to travel the world with me, but my body wouldn’t let me climb all those mountains. Cody wanted to settle down and have something stable, but he couldn’t stomach the sight of me after a seizure, and he was tired of having to consider every place we went out and every bite of food I could eat. I’m not angry at them—it is what it is.”

“But you loved them.”

Raphael grinned even wider. “Of course I loved them. They were worth loving for the time we spent together. And now I’m here, and I don’t want to go back to what I had before. I like this place.”

“Aren’t you lonely though?” Dmitri sat up and hugged his legs to his chest. “I get so fucking lonely here, but every time I think about dating, I know it’s going to be a big mess. How do you fall in love when sex is…”

“Repulsive?” Raphael offered.

Dmitri shook his head. “Uninteresting. Sex is a big deal in relationships. How can I fall in love if it’s not for me?”

“Sex isn’t a big deal for everyone,” Raphael countered.

Dmitri let out a bitter snort. “It is for most people.”

And well, Raphael couldn’t deny that. He liked sex. He was good at it, he liked making his partners feel good, and he liked the pleasure for himself. Sex was something he considered the only thing not lacking in his former relationships. It was the one thing holding together what fragile bond he had with Isaac.

But it wasn’t everything.

In the face of actual love, and being cared for, it was too far down on his list to truly matter. All the same, he understood what Dmitri was saying. He understood it probably too well—being denied the ability to be seen as a sexual being at all by so damn many people.

Raphael sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the car, and he dropped to the ground before turning to grab the food. “I’m going to put this away.”

“You want to take off?” Dmitri asked.

Shaking his head, Raphael rested one hand on the car and carefully tried to lift his feet through the tall, thick grass. “No, no. Just wait there. I have something for you.” He opened the door and traded the untouched dinner for the little gas station bag, and then he took Dmitri’s extended hand and heaved himself back up.

It took too long to situate himself, and he was clumsy. The