Page 67 of The Valiant Knight
And.
inside.
It was time to talk through this before he went absolutely insane.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked his friend, genuinely curious.
Graham turned.
“Pardon?” he asked, that sucker-punch to the chest reminding him that yeah, he had been in love.
Once.
D’Artangnan Graves had stolen his heart, and then broke it too. Then again, he’d done the same thing to him. Who was he kidding?
“Yeah,” he finally said, his whole being aching for the man. To that very day, every man he had sex with, and every person he touched never compared to D’Artangnan.
When he left, he took his heart.
That was the only way he could explain it.
God knew he tried to fill that hole as much as he possibly could, but that sucking hole was bottomless.
And he failed nonstop.
“I think I’m in love. How the hell did I fall in love so fast? And with someone I’ve never bet before just now?”
Graham shrugged.
“It’s your heart. You should know the answer to that. Maybe it was meant to be.”
That was a possibility.
“Plus, it’s absolutely bollocks to make me walk into that crypt and figure it out myself.”
Yeah, probably, but what was the universe going to do? Torment him?
Too late.
He was already there.
“Well, that’s for the whole‘stealing Sarah from me in grade school’.”
He stared at him.
“You’re gay. That meant nothing to you.”
Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong. He had a type, and it was a six-foot six, beast of a man who was a Marine. A man who disappeared off the face of the planet when he left and was likely living his best life with someone else.
God knew.
Yeah, Graham had tried to find him, but D’Artangnan Graves was gone. He was the only man he ever felt smaller than, and protected when he was with him.
He wasn’t a small man by any means, but D’Artangnan gave him that sense of security when they stood side-by-side.
Talking about D’Artangnan always made him testy—and that was why he rarely did it. It was best to not dwell on it because once he did, it was a downward spiral.
Every.
