Rivals ? - Chapter 47: Chapter 47

Juice barely recognized the man sitting next to him. His face was a rich color palette, swollen and there were cuts across his right eyebrow and along his jaw. Had his brothers done this to him? It looked like a reflection of how Juice had looked like after the Mayans had manhandled him. Something in his stomach contracted at the memory of how caring Raine had been and how Juice had muttered that he wanted to marry him.
His eyes stung at the memory.
Now however, he saw a hard shell that was starting to show cracks on all sides. There was a storm raging in Raine's eyes; self-hatred, despair, fear — emotions he'd never seen before. The past weeks Juice had felt awful; discarded and worthless, but right now he also saw the devastating effect of guilt.
Feelings of guilt could only exist if Raine had really loved him; if he truly regretted what he had done and couldn't live with his mistakes. And to think that Raine hated himself so much for something he had never done... it broke Juice's heart.
Esai hadn't only destroyed their relationship, he had also destroyed his friend.
How could Juice keep the truth from him? Letting him wander in the darkness filled with self-loathing and pain? He wasn't sure he could — but now he had seen what Esai had done to his best friend, he didn't even want to imagine what he would do to Phantom when he found out he'd talked.
Raine hadn't moved after Juice's last words — his expressed longing to be held by him and to hear that Raine still loved him. Numbly he stared at Juice's hand which was holding his. His knuckles were bruised and swollen. He heard Raine's ragged breath; his fight against himself, a pathetic attempt to keep himself together.
Juice stood up and pulled Raine on his feet. "Come," he said in a soft tone. "Mouse will take care of Sammy and Sasha." He nodded to his friend, who was talking to Raine's sister a few feet away from them.
He understood the crowd was suffocating Raine; when he was close to a panic attack he also longed for seclusion. Holding Raine's hand, he led him away from the fairground, relieved the man didn't tear his arm away. There was a meadow bordering on the parking lot in front of the carnival. Under one of the trees that were scattered across the field, he sat down, his back towards the parking lot. The chaos of the carnival was still in the background, but he was sure they would be able to have a quiet conversation.
Juice searched for words. Raine had never been the quiet one. Had he talked about his feelings at all over the past weeks? Or had he bottled everything up? Juice suspected the latter. He moved his free hand to Raine's face, carefully wiping away the tears. Raine held his breath; then, he turned his face away.
"Stop." His voice sounded hoarse — tormented.
Pain seeped into his heart. Not only because it hurt that Raine didn't want to be touched by him; also because there was a giant wall between them while they had always been so open in the past.
"I love you," Juice said softly. "I still love you."
"I ripped out your heart."
Juice lifted Raine's hand and laid it across his heart. "And yet it still beats. For you."
Skittishly, his brown eyes looked up. Raine lifted his other hand and caressed his cheek; his fingers shaking. "I don't deserve you." His voice cracked.
Juice shoved his hand across Raine's, moved it aside a little and kissed his fingertips. "You made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes." He hated himself for keeping the lie going by letting Raine believe that he had really cheated on him. To ease his conscience, he shared something that truly bothered him. "I just wish you'd tried harder to make it up to me, instead of giving up."
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.