Page 2 of A Life Betrayed

Rayan lifted the remote to mute the TV and listened for Mathias’s voice through the wall. If it was English, it would be Giovanni on the other end—the boss himself, on speed dial—with Mathias devising carefully worded excuses for his absence.If it was French, he would be speaking to Jacques, imparting a brisk set of instructions, no questions asked.

Rayan knew better than to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help himself. He was still desperate for any part of Mathias’s world, even that which he’d left behind. He heard a snatch of clipped French in a tone he remembered well and smirked. Jacques had his sympathy.

Turning his attention back to the television, Rayan stared at the buried cars—the people whose lives had ground to a halt—and tried to stem his growing sense of elation. As selfish as it was, he could think only of the fact that he had Mathias to himself.

“There’s only one thing to remember about cooking pasta.” Mathias, shirtless, stood before a steaming pan of boiling water, a wooden spoon in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “You’ll be forgiven for not knowing,estraneo.”

Rayan snorted, loose with pleasure, Mathias having moments ago fucked every coherent thought from his brain. “Go on,” he goaded.

It was past midnight the following day, and they hadn’t yet eaten dinner. Time seemed to have lost its temporality while, outside, the snow refused to let up. It heaped along the windowsills and piled up on the balcony. Mathias had taken it upon himself to give Rayan a condensed lesson in Italian cooking. Despite having drunk his weight in scotch, the man had a steady hand and moved about the kitchen like a pro.

“Always take it out just before you think it’s done. That’s when it’s done.”

Mathias took the pan off the stove and tipped it into a colander in the sink. Then he fished out a piece of penne with a fork,stepped over to where Rayan was seated at the counter, and pushed the pasta into his mouth. Rayan ate it dutifully.

“If it’s mushy, you fucked up,” Mathias said.

Rayan nodded, not overwhelmed. He’d always preferred rice to pasta, and he much preferred Mathias’s lips to food—lips that now pressed against his. Rayan reached instinctively for Mathias’s neck, and he felt himself once again begin to stir.

It was ridiculous, the sex they were having, as though they had nothing else to do while snowed in. He had a hunch Mathias was using it as a distraction from his gradual nicotine withdrawal. He’d been forced to ration his remaining cigarettes as long as snow barred the building’s entrance and the street, making a run for supplies impossible. Even if they could leave, nothing was open. The official word was that the plows were prioritizing important routes, but the storm was delaying clearing efforts. “Stay inside and hold tight” was the general message.

Mathias refused to watch television and had instead raided Rayan’s bookshelves, leaving a trail of books strewn about the apartment, each abandoned after barely a chapter. Rayan had made several attempts to get started on the readings for his classes but got only a few pages in before Mathias, restless and irritated, would appear and jump him. Not that he wasn’t a willing participant. They’d exhausted their usual repertoire—the hurried release that typically characterized their coupling during Mathias’s too-short visits to the city—and moved to a whole new playing field. Without Rayan realizing it, Mathias had begun to manipulate him like a finely tuned instrument, knowing exactly what got him off and how to hold him at bay, edging him so that when he finally came, he was so far gone he couldn’t speak.

Earlier that afternoon, when Mathias had him bent over the bed, coring him slowly, he’d pressed his mouth to Rayan’s shoulder and spoken in a tight voice. “What do you think about when I’m not here?”

Mathias was deep, pushed hard up against him, and Rayan could only groan as the pressure built, threatening to spill over. Mathias, whether he was there or not, was all Rayan thought about. Lying with him afterward, Rayan realized he couldn’t remember what day it was. He brushed his fingers against the layer of stubble on Mathias’s cheek, taking pleasure in his private dishevelment.

“You’d think they’d know how winter works by now,” Mathias scoffed and raised his arms above his head in a lazy stretch. “What a fucking joke.”

When this is over, don’t bother driving back,Rayan thought.Just stay here.

“What are you plotting?” Mathias asked, giving him a curious look.

“Nothing,” Rayan mumbled.

They’d spent two years like this, capturing days and weekends between the long stretches of time they were apart. If it took a snowstorm to ground Mathias for a couple of days, Rayan would take it. He’d known what it was to lose Mathias completely and was forever grateful to have him at all. But it didn’t stop him from harboring covert imaginings of a life in which each day began and ended with the man’s face, as it was now, turned toward him.

At the front of a gaudily decorated hotel ballroom, the wedding party was seated along a large table draped with white lace. In the center of the table, Enzo Carbone’s youngest daughter and her new husband—neither of whose names Mathias knew or cared to remember—crossed arms to tilt flutes of champagne into each other’s mouths. Enzo sat beside his daughter, grinning broadly, his face flushed from the free-flowing booze and theheat of more than two hundred guests packed into the airless room.

Weddings, funerals, christenings—an endless rotation of mindless engagements. Here he was, finally accepted into the family’s inner circle, and Mathias felt more out of place than he had as a grunt. He’d left Toronto as soon as the roads had cleared but now wished the snow had lingered another day, if only so he could avoid this teeth-pulling spectacle.

Mathias scanned the sea of attendees, his mind elsewhere. He was growing concerned that the time spent with Rayan, fractured as it was and never long enough, was beginning to eclipse the rest of his life—threatening to render it meaningless. Because to be with Rayan was like a long breath out. In every other aspect of his life, Mathias rotated the pieces of himself out of view so that the full picture remained obscured. But Rayan knew it all: his work, his past, who he liked to fuck. He hadn’t realized how heavy the armor had been until he’d taken it off, and it was becoming harder to walk through the world as he once had.

In the end, Mathias had only himself to blame. Up until recently, he’d managed to navigate life by avoiding this. He’d thought the risk of getting close to someone lay in its ability to compromise him. Now he knew the real danger was how good it felt—waking to Rayan’s mouth, feeling the brush of his slick body against him in the shower, watching him appear uncannily with the exact thing Mathias needed a second before he needed it, whether it was food, coffee, or a hand around his cock. Something this good made everything else pale in comparison.

Still, Rayan remained a puzzle to him. There were long silences when he disappeared into himself, and Mathias could only guess at what he was thinking. In bed, the man was mercurial. He liked to be dominated but was equally roused when he was the one in control. His impatience meant he oftenwanted things fast and rough—yet he would sometimes melt into Mathias, pressing against him as though they shared the same skin. Then it had to be slow and all-consuming. Mathias didn’t possess the same ability to intuit what Rayan needed, unaccustomed to giving people what they wanted without expecting something in return.

“When are we going to see you up there?” Gabriele Giordano asked from across the table. He gave Mathias a tipsy grin and leaned forward in his chair as a waitress appeared beside him to refill his glass.

Mathias was seated with the remaining members of the Quintino and a handful of older family stalwarts. The boss had chosen not to attend. Giovanni retained the ability to opt out of various functions as he pleased, whereas Mathias was bound to them.

“I’ve negotiated enough deals to know a bad one when I see it,” Mathias replied coolly.

The men around the table chuckled. “Perhaps you could convince a nice Italian girl to take your name,” Armando Bernardi offered, gesturing at the room dotted with an array of young female guests.

Mathias was not oblivious to the attempts. Eligible girls from good families were sent to sidle by his table at events like these—all with the same empty faces and cloying laughs. Their fathers assumed his proximity to Giovanni Bianchi would boost their clout. Mathias had to be careful not to think too hard about the life these old men envisioned for him.

“Or you could take hers,” Gabriele quipped.

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