He told her he’d be there in fifteen minutes.
David raised a heavy eyebrow.
“Can you work on our post alone? I know you’ll think up something amazing. You always do.”
Rounding the potted hyacinths, David gripped his arm. “What’s wrong?”
David refused to stay behind, and he buffered Jonathan against the cliff-face as they descended into town.
They told Jacquie to stay put at the hotel just in case, and searched the streets. Narrow cobbled roads wound over hilly terrain, bordered by crumbling houses and glimpses of the ocean.
“Where?” Jonathan gritted out in the middle of a shadowed alley.
David took hold of his elbow and stopped him, his eyes bright with concern. A question.
His stomach twisted sharply. “I ran away after you left. I went to the stables, rode until I couldn’t see where I was anymore. It was dark, I was stupid. We slipped down a bank and I came off. The horse ran back to the stable and I lost my bearings, got lost. I ran a terrible cold after, fevers for a week—”
David slid a hand behind his neck and pulled him into a kiss. Their warm foreheads pressed together.
From the moment David had entered his life again, he’d lost all control. He couldn’t anticipate . . . couldn’t know he was doing the right thing. His heart sang in sympathy for Savvy, and it wrenched with frustration, anger. At Nate. At Savvy. Why now? When he needed to be all David’s . . . They had half an hour to complete a challenge and win it. He balled his fists.
Earnestly, “We will find them, Jonathan.”
A tight nod.
Something passed over David’s face; he gripped his wrist and dragged him through the alley to a broader street. Salty breezes whipped around them and gulls squawked and circled at the wharf. They halted as bicycles flew past. Across the street, over a sand-gritty stone wall, their feet sank in soft sand. No sign of short blonde hair . . .
David pulled him along the shore, away from the crowds, over a divide of wet-slick boulders—
There, at the remotest end of the beach, arms around knees, water lapping at bare feet.
He stared at David. “How did you know?”
“We talked, when you were at my place.” Green eyes gazed out at Savvy and the endless blue ocean. “I went to the beach. The furthest corner. Every day.”
My heart had broken too.
He followed behind David, each step an ache.
Savvy sniffed into their knees; Jonathan called their name on a sigh as he sat next to them, David on their other side. A sob landed on Jonathan’s chest and he wrapped his arm around his sibling, kissed the top of their head.
“You were right. It just hurts.”
A long stroke down their back and another kiss. “This part hurts, yes. But I was wrong.” He looked at the same far-off point in the sea as David. “You can’t stop love.”
They called Jacquie to meet them, and after a few more hugs, Savvy shoved him away. “You have to finish the challenge.”
He glanced at David waiting patiently, even as the minutes of their hour ticked down.
Thirteen left.
They wouldn’t make it. Jonathan had no tricks up his sleeve this time.
They stared at one another at this lonely end of the beach, just him and David and ten minutes to losing.
“Roses are red?” David offered, biting his bottom lip.
“Somehow I doubt that will be enough.”
“We could pray to Erato, muse of love poetry.”
Jonathan closed his eyes and reopened them. The dimple was fading from David’s softly curved lips. He wanted it to deepen again. Wanted the lilt in his voice that came with his smiles.
“I know a poem. You film.”
Jonathan and David sitting in the sand, David holding up his phone filming them as Jonathan reads Paul Roche’s translation of Sappho’s Love Poem, gazing at David’s profile.
Your magical laughter
—this I swear—
Batters my heart
—my breast astir—
My voice when I see you
suddenly near
Refuses to come.
Chapter Eighteen
The glow of a warm room, and muesli bars for breakfast
They explored, the four of them together, until the sun dipped and sank and the stars blinked to life. At a yawn, they walked Savvy back to the hotel. Jonathan wished he could simply make them new wings, better wings so when they flew again nothing could melt them. All he could do was hold them close.
When the Sapphires stopped David in the lobby and pulled him towards the bar, Jonathan headed to bed, exhausted.
The room was freshly straightened, the curtains still drawn. A note in David’s hand sat on the dresser, asking the housekeepers to keep it so. Slung over the armchair, David’s t-shirt from last night took on a golden sheen in the lamplight.
The same golden notes stretched over the white cotton duvet and pillows, warm and beckoning.
He moved to the armchair and sank into it, head resting back against David’s t-shirt. The air in the room was sweetly fragrant, like the cleaning staff had drawn in the scent of hyacinths.