Don’t do this to me again.
Those words echoed in his mind. Søren had warned him it was the wrong thing to say. And it had been. That night.
But tonight? Tonight, Kingsley found himself smiling at the memory of those words, the heartfelt pain behind them. Kingsley had left Søren. That was a fact. He’d left, disappeared, not come back. And all the while, he later learned, Søren had been waiting for him, wanting him, even searching for him with a Paris Saint-Germain football shirt in his old schoolbag wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.
That wasn’t something a man without a heart would do.
That was something a man with a broken heart would do.
And what if Kingsley was breaking his heart again by keeping his distance? Only one way to find out.
It was embarrassing how much mental effort it took for Kingsley to call Søren.
As soon as Søren answered, Kingsley said, “What did you get me for Christmas?”
A soft mocking laugh. “Who told you I got you anything?”
“Nora.”
“She’ll be flogged for that. I was saving your present for our last Christmas together.”
“You mean in ten months?” Kingsley said.
“Yes.”
“You were going to keep a present out in plain sight for ten months? That’s torture.”
“Of course it is. The torture is half the gift.”
Kingsley grinned and leaned back against a lamppost. “Can’t we consider it a late Christmas gift from last year?”
“We can. But only if you come over tonight to open it.”
A yellow cab moved slowly down the street toward him. Kingsley raised his arm.
“I’m on my way. I need to stop by the house first and pick up your souvenir from New Orleans.”
“Why am I suddenly terrified?”
“Because you should be,” Kingsley said. “See you soon.”
“I miss you, too.”
The cab pulled to the curb. Kingsley was frozen to the spot, though, phone to his ear. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “What was that?”
“You texted me from New Orleans and said you miss me,” Søren said. “And I said, I miss you, too.”
Kingsley nearly laughed. “You really do love me, then.”
“I do. Are you finally getting used to that?”
Kingsley breathed out a thick exhale that hung in the air.
“Almost.”
Chapter Sixteen
When Kingsley arrived at the rectory, he heard music wafting through the door. He stopped before entering, listened. Was that Vivaldi’s “Winter” from Four Seasons? He quietly opened the door.
He passed through the cozy old kitchen with its hardwood floors worn slick by time and stood in the arched entryway to the living room. The fire was bright in the fireplace and Søren sat with his back to Kingsley at the piano, still playing as if he hadn’t heard Kingsley come into the house.
Kingsley told himself he shouldn’t do it…but he also told himself he wanted to do it. He’d envied Griffin and Michael their easy way with each other. Yet he knew that would never be him and Søren. His lover didn’t like being touched when he wasn’t ready for it. And knowing that, respecting that, was a deeper, more meaningful type of intimacy than just walking up behind your lover and embracing them. So Kingsley waited until the piece came to an end.
Søren’s fingers lifted off the keys, and he rested his hands on his lap.
Kingsley approached, with loud footfalls. Søren didn’t face him until Kingsley was setting his gift on the piano.
Søren picked up the black bag. The cuffs of his black, long-sleeved pullover were pushed up to reveal his forearms. For some reason, Søren also liked to play piano in bare feet. Something about feeling the vibrations of the music through the floor.
“What’s in the bag?” Søren asked.
“Just a souvenir from New Orleans.”
“If it’s not beignets, I’m going to be a little disappointed,” Søren said.
“It’s not beignets. I can’t have those in the house without eating a dozen of them.”
Søren pulled the tissue from the bag, revealing a mask in the old Venetian style. It was painted red on one side, solid white on the other, with elaborate gilding around the mouth and eyes. The work of a famous local artist, popular at Mardi Gras.
Søren examined the mask closely. “This is disturbing. I assume that’s the point?”
“It might be.”
Søren put on the mask and was transformed into a strange and mysterious blank-faced figure, a nightmare come to life.
“Take it off,” Kingsley said. “It’s too bizarre. This was a mistake. Huge mistake.”
Søren didn’t take it off. He just laughed a low sinister laugh. Nora was right. He was the fucking Phantom of the Rectory.
“Just toss it in the trash,” Kingsley said.
“Oh no. I’ll find a use for it.” He set the mask on the top of the piano, where it looked like a face was trying to escape a pool of liquid ebony. “Thank you. It’s good to see you again.”
“Nora said you were pining for me.”
“I do not pine. But,” Søren said, his tone conciliatory, “you have been on my mind.”
“She said you were playing ‘Winter’ in my honor. Why that piece?” Kingsley asked. “Vivaldi wasn’t French.”
“When I was twenty, living in Rome at school, I went to Magdalena’s house for Christmas. I’d said something to her months earlier about you, how I was worried you might be dead. After losing your parents and your sister, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that you’d commit suicide or drink yourself to death. That night, Magda had me play that song for her on her new piano. As she was turning the pages of the sheet music, suddenly….there you were.”
“There I was?”
“A picture of you. She’d hired an investigator to find you.”
Kingsley stared, wide-eyed. “You knew where I was?”
Søren shook his head. “Magda was too much of a sadist to tell me. She showed me you were alive, as I’d wished, and nothing else. Besides, I was already in the Jesuits by then, and I knew if you wanted me, you could have found me. All you had to do was—”
“Call our school. I did.”
Now it was Søren’s turn to be struck silent.
“I called a couple of times but never could bring myself to leave a message for you,” Kingsley said. “Too much of a coward to face you. I didn’t know you were worried about me.”
“Every second of every hour of every day and every night. If you knew how white-hot my anger at you was for disappearing on me without a trace… It took until that room, I think, to finally forgive you for your disappearing act.”
“You forgave Nora a lot faster.”
“I knew where she was. I knew she was safe. And she was gone one year, while I didn’t see you for a decade. When I did see you again, you were dying in a hospital bed.”
Silence again. A deep and honest silence.
“So,” Søren said as he stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles, crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged, “That’s why I tend to gravitate toward Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ when I’m thinking of you. It worked once before, playing ‘Winter,’ and then there you were. Maybe it would work again. And so it has, finally.”