Rivals 🌈 ✔

47 - Never Let Me Go

This time, it was Juice who averted his eyes. 

"I can't even look in the mirror," Raine muttered. "It never crossed my mind that you would ever want to forgive me. The way I see it, you're better off with practically every other girl or guy. We were happy — I just... didn't understand how it could have happened. I still don't get it and it messes with my head."

Because it never happened. You never cheated. 

Juice wanted to say it so badly — it was torture not to take his struggle away. Keeping him in the dark was horrible. 

"You were drunk," he said in a weak voice. "You weren't yourself." He looked him in the eye again. "And I think you never became yourself again after that night."

Raine bent his head. His hand glided off Juice's jaw. 

Juice could no longer bear the distance. If Raine failed to cross the border, he would do it. He turned on his knees and wrapped his arms around the man. For a moment every muscle seemed to tense; then, he felt how Raine surrendered to the embrace, his body melting against Juice's while holding him tightly, almost as if he was afraid that Juice would vanish any moment. Raine's chin rested on his shoulder, their heads leaning against each other. Finally, it felt like something clicked inside him. 

"I love you, Juan." Raine's voice was shaking. "I love you so much and I feel so fucking broken and hollow without you."

Juice closed his eyes. Warm tears slipped between his eyelashes. 

He held Raine tighter, his heart was racing in his chest. 

Oh, how he had longed for a moment like this...

"Then come back to me." He pulled back a little to look Raine in the eye. "And never let me go again."

Raine cupped his jaw, caressing his cheek with his thumb, their eyes locked. Despite the pain, he felt how he got all mushy. 

"If you want me back, despite of what I've done, I swear I will never let you go again and I will never make such a horrible mistake again. If the past weeks taught me one thing, it's that I'm nothing without you."

I'm nothing without you too. 

The words stilled on his tongue when Raine leaned into him, kissing him softly. It was a tentative kiss as if the man wasn't sure if Juice wanted to be kissed. But he wanted it — with every fiber of his being he wanted things to go back to how they used to be. He wanted to leave all this behind. Cupping Raine's face with his hand to keep him from moving away, he pressed his lips to Raine's. He could have sworn that all his bones were trembling as he tasted Raine and a raging heat spread across his veins as their lips parted and they deepened their kiss. It was a strange mixture — emotional, hungry, full of longing, full of regrets. He seemed to be able to taste all these emotions; salt and sweet and bitter, until they returned to the comfort of each other's arms, snuggling into a warm embrace. 

For quite some time they were just sitting there. Juice found it hard to pull away; it meant that he would have to talk. That he would have to keep silent about things. Yet, they couldn't simply pretend that the past weeks hadn't been real. They had to talk about things and find each other back. And so, Juice sat straight and glanced at Raine's bruised face. The man avoided his stare. The shame and the guilt hadn't disappeared because of their reunion, it was a battle Raine was still fighting. 

"Did your brothers do that to you?" Carefully, Juice touched the bruises on his face. 

"No," Raine muttered. "I did some illegal fighting. Just to get rid of the aggression I felt." He picked at the scab on his knuckle. "Every day I woke up realizing what I had done. That I lost you. The anger just piled up and I took it out on the wrong people. Sammy and Sasha. My brothers. Random people on the streets. Joining cage fights felt like a solution. It eased the darkness I felt for a moment — and every beat-up felt like something I deserved."

Juice swallowed. It was hard to hear that Raine had been willingly hurting himself. That he had started to hate himself so much because of a lie. Uncomfortably, he laid his hand upon Raine's. His own guilt was reappearing as well, for he was keeping the lie going. 

"Did the bond with your brothers become worse?"

Raine still refused to look at him. "No. Well — I won't say the bond got better. But I've done things I never would have done otherwise. My moral limits were... blurred. I think they made good use of it."

Of course they did. He hadn't expected anything else from these assholes. Juice clenched his jaw. 

"What about you?" Raine asked. "Did they... forgive you for being with me?"

"I think they gave up on me," Juice muttered. "My head was a mess. Most days I couldn't even get out of bed. I was way too indifferent to care about their lectures."

"You were depressed." Raine's voice sounded shaky. Briefly, he wiped his eyes. "I don't know how I can ever make up for this, Juice. I hurt you so much."

Not you, baby. It wasn't you. 

By the heavens — he really had no idea how long he could keep this to himself. 

With a hand against Raine's cheek, he forced his face up. "By looking forward," he answered. "By believing that we need each other. By trusting that our love is stronger than our pain. For that's why we're here. Because we're a mess without each other, unable to solve it on our own." 

Raine leaned into Juice's palm and closed his eyes for a moment. 

"I will never let you go again," he said with tears in his eyes. "And I will do everything I can to become the man you deserve."

He already was. He had always been.

Yet another thing he couldn't say to him. His heart cried because of all the things that couldn't leave his lips.

He would make Esai pay for every word he couldn't say to his lover.

___

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