The First Hello

by Willa Okati

  “Oh God,” his lover breathed. “The way you feel.”

  Sean braced himself. Both hands on the man’s chest. He rocked once, to test, and he needed more time but he didn’t want to take it. He wanted to fly away in the velvet midnight and never, ever come back. To burst open and leave the flesh behind, but to never let it go either.

  To have the world in his palm. To be with this man, for always.

  “Don’t ever take that long to come around again,” his lover said, hands on Sean’s shoulder, at his hip, keeping him steady as he lifted one of Sean’s thighs so he would have room and leverage. The way Sean wanted but hadn’t known. Guiding him. A rock of ages, steering the ship. He could remember everything now, but it’d taken too long this time. Far, far too long. His lover would know that. He rolled his hips, fucking deep and drawing another cry from Sean. “Promise me.”

  And Sean—would have promised him anything as long as he didn’t, didn’t, didn’t stop—

  “I love you” wrote itself on his lips, because he always had, and he always would, and—

  * * * *

  The door of the caretaker’s cottage opened. Though he didn’t look up, Shawn heard the quiet click of the door shutting, and could feel it when Raleigh looked at him. Watched him. “You should have told me you didn’t have enough to eat, Shawn,” he said. “How long has that been going on?”

  Shawn bit at one thumbnail. He kept his eyes shut tight, waiting for the vertigo of the episode to fade. That’d been a strong one. “It’s not your problem.”

  Raleigh huffed quietly. “The hell it isn’t. Anyone going hungry in my own damned house and backyard is my problem.”

  Shawn said nothing. What was there to say?

  “I wish you would trust me,” Raleigh went on after a moment. “I guess this life didn’t build you that way, though. How long have you been trying to take care of everything without letting anyone help you, Shawn? Always?”

  Shawn dropped his face into his hands. If he looked over his shoulder at Raleigh, he’d give away too much, and anger—at least anger was easier than trying to make other words join together. “You don’t know us, Raleigh Carter. You don’t have the right to judge me. Or her.”

  “I never said I was.”

  Shawn made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that. They’re usually lying.”

  “I’m not.” Raleigh leaned his head against the wall. Once his gaze drifted away from Shawn, it was easier—a little—to look from the corner of his eye and watch the man. He looked like a tree that’d come off the worse for weathering a storm. Still there, still strong, but battered and bruised from a thousand lashes. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Call me by my full name. ‘Raleigh Carter.’ I’m just Raleigh.”

  Shawn—didn’t know, come to think of it. He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  “See, that’s the thing. If I knew you, I’d say it was a distancing technique,” Raleigh said, far too casually to be trusted. “If you keep me at official arm’s length, then I’m less of an individual person and more of a label. Labels can’t hurt you. They just stay where they’re stuck.”

  Shawn’s fists tightened, and his knuckles seemed to creak with the strain. “Stop it.”

  “Am I wrong?” Raleigh exhaled a sigh and pushed himself away from the wall. “You don’t have to answer that. Believe it or not, Shawn, despite the way things seem to go every time you and I cross paths, I didn’t come looking for trouble. I didn’t mean to be a problem for you.”

  Shawn let a flat stare be his answer.

  The corner of Raleigh’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d believe me. I wouldn’t have either, in your shoes.”

  A deep, bone-deep weariness began to creep through Shawn’s limbs. His muscles ached from crouching and begged him to stand, to stretch, to walk in Raleigh’s direction. Raleigh’s shoulders were wide, and his chest was deep. He’d be warm as a summer morning, and he would envelop Shawn in those sturdy arms without asking questions. Shawn knew it.

  “What do you want, Raleigh Carter?” he asked, extra emphasis on the double name. Let him think what he wanted. “Why are you here, really?”

  “Because I found you, and I don’t give up on things that matter to me. You’re one of those things. Just so you know,” Raleigh said. As if it was that simple, and that the only answer that mattered. “And to give you this. I found your note, but I’d left it on purpose, hoping you’d take it. So. Please.”

  Shawn watched, frowning, as Raleigh withdrew a small leather-bound book from his inside coat pocket. The book. He’d scuffed up his knuckles somewhere, somehow. Nearly split the skin on two of them. Shawn had seen those kinds of marks before, and when he brushed at the surface of his memories, he saw them in his mind’s eye. Punches. What happened when you hit something hard with a closed fist.

  Raleigh must have noticed his interest. He shrugged, not apologizing. Not explaining, either. But when he held the book out to Shawn, Shawn—he didn’t know why—took it.

  Why did Raleigh care so much about this? Just a little book. Palm-sized, smaller than a paperback novel. Old. Handwritten, crowded from cover to cover with spiky fading ink. Its pages crinkled yellow at the edges, and their smell of attics and dust was stronger than the bergamot soap and cedar aftershave from Raleigh’s coat, the heat of Raleigh’s body.

  He turned the book over in his hands as he looked up at the man. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Read it.”

  “Household accounts?”

  “They’re more than that.” Raleigh leaned his shoulder against the caretaker’s cottage and watched Shawn the same way he had before, at the beginning. As if Shawn had…done something to him…and only he knew what. “If you want to know what’s going on, why I care about you—and I do—it’s all in there. You have to read it, because you won’t believe me no matter how many words I waste trying to explain. It’s always been like that. I’ve got to go hands-on to win your trust. See? I do know you.”

  Uneasiness made Shawn fidget. He touched a fingertip to the angry, crowded script. There’d be no reading it without good strong light. If he chose to. “You never did tell me. Who wrote it?”

  The corner of Raleigh’s mouth turned up. “I had hoped you’d guess on your own. It never happened. You want to know who wrote that, Shawn? That’s an easy one. You did.”

  Chapter Seven

  Flat silence echoed Raleigh’s declaration.

  “Jesus.” Shawn shook his head, the words rattling in his ears. “If you’re going to try and pull one over on me, at least make it believable.”

  Raleigh stopped and turned to face him. He raised one shoulder. “I’m not the one who’s been lying all along, Shawn. It’s true. Whether you want to believe it or not, that doesn’t change the facts.”

  “Facts?” Shawn asked, disbelieving. He flipped the book open, just in case he’d been wrong—he hadn’t—and held it up with the pages facing Raleigh. They made a hell of a noise in the wind, the fragile paper ready to tear apart. “Facts, what? This isn’t my handwriting. It’s over a hundred years old, and you’re saying facts?”

  Raleigh’s jaw worked as if he gritted his teeth against something he wanted to say.

  Funny. Shawn would have thought he wanted silence, but God no, he didn’t. He closed the book and fired it at Raleigh, who as far as he cared could either catch it or let it fly. It hit Raleigh dead on in the chest, though, and he clapped a hand over the cover, his eyes wide with surprise.

  Good.

  “And what facts, Raleigh?” Shawn demanded. For once, he was the one to close the gap between them. Anger made him fast, and panic made him clumsy. He stumbled. Raleigh didn’t catch him, but if he’d fallen, he would have fallen into the man. Fury swept aside a curl of want. He slapped his palm against the book, against Raleigh’s hand, and it was like clapping stone. “What. Facts?”


  Raleigh gazed down at him, steady, immovable, merciless, and with his heart breaking in the lights of his eyes. “Do you really want to know? You’re not going to believe me. I can just about promise you that.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have brought them up. Fuck.” Shawn took one step back. The wind—never still this close to the coast—kicked up, tearing his hair across his face. He tried in vain to scrape it back, to keep his eyes on Raleigh despite the dimming darkness of a storm coming on fast. He had to bow his head as he scraped his hair into a loose queue, and hunted in his pockets for a rubber band.

  Warmth, the kind that threatened to soak into his bones, arrested his movement. “Here,” Raleigh said. He had a black nylon fastener stretched around fingers and thumb. “Let go. I’ll do it.”

  And before Shawn could protest, he had, as neatly and knackily as if he’d done it a hundred times despite the elegantly shaped neatness of his own cut. Shawn put up a startled hand to touch the fastening. Secure and safe as houses.

  Raleigh hadn’t stepped away. He cradled Shawn’s skull in the palm of his hand, touch light as a breath, hard as steel. Killing him with kindness. “Here’s the truth, Shawn. You did write that book. Just not in this life. Nor the last one, but I know it was you.” He touched his chest. “In here. It’s always just you. You and me. Life after life. World after world. The same choice to be made. I’d almost given up looking for you this time around, you know? Thought maybe I’d missed you, somehow. All I came here for was a place where I used to be happy, and a book I knew would be on those shelves. I didn’t think I’d find you, but when I saw your face—”

  Disbelief shattered the spell of his touch into splinters. Shawn knocked Raleigh’s arm aside and jerked away from him. “Bullshit.”

  Raleigh looked as if he’d expected that. He sighed. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Because it’s not believable!” Shawn shivered against the icy curls of wind snaking through the small yard, and crossed his arms to tuck his hands underneath them. He wished, for a fleeting breath, he could curl up inside that lamb’s-wool coat. He gritted his teeth before he went on. “You’re saying, what? Past lives? That’s not a real thing. It doesn’t happen.”

  “Yes. It does.” Raleigh started to strip the coat off his shoulders. “For God’s sake, you’re freezing. Let me help you.”

  “Don’t—” Shawn put his arm out straight between them.

  Raleigh shook his head, his chin stubborn, and carried on. “Then make me stop.” He tossed the coat at Shawn, and Shawn—

  He—

  * * * *

  A handful of snow and ice crystals packed into a ball, the cold of it enough to put his teeth on edge if his mouth hadn’t been open wide in a full-throated laugh. He threw one arm over his face to block a snowball that exploded against his elbow. “Ha! Too slow!”

  “Oh, so that’s how it is?” his lover teased, the excitement of a child ringing in the deep voice of a man. “Or is it this way?”

  “What?” Stefan lowered his arm—only to take the next missile, the one his lover had held up his sleeve, directly in the face. He spluttered and yelped, flailing at the powder and getting it up his nose. “You absolute wretch of a man, you—”

  “I’ve got you,” his lover said, looping one strong arm around Stefan’s shoulders. He’d come up fast, his body heat shocking in the frozen air, drawing a gasp from Stefan that parted his lips. “I always will, and that’s my choice. Why can’t you trust in that?”

  Like this, he could almost forget his reservations and believe that all would be happiness from now until the end. That they were only ordinary men, falling in love. When Stefan knew—he knew—it would not be that way. To have his lover meant that someday, Stefan would lose him again.

  Someone had to be merciful, not just to one, but to both.

  His lover never wanted to listen. Refused to hear. He must have known Stefan meant to speak of it then, and planned for it, for before a single word could emerge, his mouth covered Stefan’s and—

  And—

  * * * *

  Raleigh had Shawn hard by the elbow, giving him a sharp shake. Shawn drew in a startled breath as his eyelashes battered his cheeks too many times, too fast.

  “Do you know how I know you’re lying to me?” Raleigh asked, nose to nose. “Because you do that.”

  Shawn’s gut twisted around a stony knot. “You…” He’d seen, then. He’d noticed the episodes all along. Fuck.

  “It looks like an absence seizure,” Raleigh said. “In case you were about to ask, which I know you were. I know you. You stop like you’ve just been shot, or like you’ve run into a glass wall. You stare at nothing, but the way you stare is so busy. Eyes moving, moving, moving. Your skin turns darker, pinker. Your mouth is open, sometimes. And sometimes, you make these noises that…” He swallowed a brittle breath and pressed his forehead hard against Shawn’s. He’d put his hand on Shawn’s face again—Shawn hadn’t even noticed at first—and his fingers flexed as if desperate to hold on. “God, Shawn.”

  Shawn shut his eyes and kept them closed. This close, Raleigh’s scent dizzied him, and the hard planes of the man’s body were an intoxicant. He didn’t dare move, and he barely dared breathe, because if he did—

  “Where do you go, Shawn?” Raleigh whispered against his cheek. “What are you seeing when you’re there?”

  “Nothing,” Shawn said around a stiffly wooden tongue, not opening his eyes. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.

  “Lying,” Raleigh said. His arm locked Shawn in, his fist knotted at the small of Shawn’s back. His lips touched Shawn’s cheek, then the corner of his mouth, and he licked at the fragment of a moan that slipped through Shawn’s teeth. “Lying, Shawn, so many lies. I tried to be patient, but you look at me and you don’t know me. That’s not how it should be, and I’m done waiting. I look at you, and I see it all. Why don’t you remember?”

  “Because it’s not real,” Shawn said, a ghost of sound. “It’s not like that memory game I play with Gabrielle, talking about places we’ve been and things we’ve seen. It isn’t real.”

  “It is.” Raleigh’s mouth brushed over Shawn’s, chasing his quickening breath. “Tell me where you go, when you’re not here inside your skin. What do you see that makes you look like you’ve just been fucked?”

  Shawn hissed between his teeth, dragging in air as cold as slivers of ice. He didn’t mean to but couldn’t stop himself—his hips jolted forward, driving his trapped hard-on against Raleigh’s thigh. It was Raleigh who groaned then, as if it had been torn from him, and who wrapped his arms tighter around Shawn. He’d gone hard too. Harder, an urgent press that made Shawn bite down on a moan.

  “Tell you?” he said, fraying, raw, the weight of the world tumbling away from him without any hope of stopping it. He knotted his fist and thumped it knuckles-first against Raleigh’s chest. “Tell you? Fuck you. I don’t know what I’m seeing. I’m running through the snow, or on a beach. I’m naked in a feather bed that puffs up like a cloud. I’m leaning on my arms, against a wall, and a—a—man is behind me. Same man. Always. I don’t know how, it doesn’t make sense, but he’s fucking me, Raleigh Carter. He’s owning me body and soul every time he drives his cock in, and I’m begging for more, and—”

  “Oh God, Shawn,” Raleigh said. He crushed his mouth against Shawn’s, ripe and sweet as raspberries in the snow. “Shawn, God.”

  Shawn heard it, then. Wished he couldn’t, but he did, and he couldn’t unhear it. Raleigh believed him, just as much as Shawn couldn’t believe him.

  And it broke his brain. Right down the middle.

  He would have said Raleigh crashed into him, and he did. Even though he was already there, it still happened, like a wave breaking over their heads and the undertow dragging them deep, deep, deep. Kissing Shawn in a way that not even the dreams had managed, because this was real. Lips hot and hard on Shawn’s mouth, each breath crushing their chests together, and God he was hard, so hard
that it hurt from groin to thighs.

  He’d fallen, somehow. Didn’t know when. Only that the dry leaves and sawdust and splinters that littered the yard of the caretaker’s cottage cut though the washed-thin denim of his jeans and into his knees, and that Raleigh Carter was the only damned thing in the world keeping him from dropping to his face. Raleigh held him around the waist, the shoulders, that strong hand of his on Shawn’s ass, dragging him closer still to grind their cocks together though their clothes.

  Wetness splashed on his cheek, against the top of his head. Once, twice, and then again, heavy, cold splashes. Startled, Shawn looked up at the sky. Almost full dark, and laden with angry gray clouds fat with rain.

  “Shawn.” Raleigh took him by the back of the head, drawing him down. He looked—Shawn almost couldn’t bear to look at the man. He was more. Too much. Lips red from kissing, eyes heavy, hands cold now from the weather but aching on Shawn’s skin. “There’s a storm coming. It’s not safe out here. We don’t have to do this now, but if you think I’m done with you already, then think again.”

  Shawn knew that. As much as he knew he should break away now, when he had the chance. As much as he knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It’d all go to hell after this, but he wanted it. He’d been hungry for too damn long.

  Raleigh watched him, seeming just as hungry, as Shawn licked rain away from his lips. He made himself speak. “Inside,” he said. “Come in. With me.”

  He could hear it, after he’d spoken. For once in his life, he’d found the right words to say.

  * * * *

  The door to the old bedroom stuck in its frame, swollen from the moisture in the air and warped with time, but it couldn’t stand up against Raleigh when he wanted something any more than Shawn could. He set his shoulders and didn’t give up until he’d turned the old-fashioned latch that locked them both in.

  Then, he looked over his shoulder. “Okay?”

  “Little late to ask,” Shawn said. He’d taken a position nearly in the corner of the room. Just kept walking once he’d crossed the threshold, and stopped only once he had nowhere to go. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his lips tingled as if he’d been eating sprigs of the wild peppermint that hung in the kitchen where Gabrielle slept, unaware. He hoped.