“Bonnie. My sister.” These people were lost the way she had been.

“I should have told you where we were going. I’m sorry. Do we need to leave?” There was nothing except sincerity in Dante’s voice yet it felt like the most unlike Dante thing Ben had ever heard come out of his mouth. He didn’t usually ask, he told. His question felt intimate, in a way. Intimate in a different way from the fucking they usually did. Maybe intimate like their phone calls, which were made easier by the miles between them when they spoke.

“Don’t do that. Don’t go soft on me now.”

Dante smiled. Not a smirk, a smile and damned if it didn’t look good on him.

“Let’s go then.”

Dante lead Ben through the park. It was fairly quiet as they made their way through what was supposed to be a manmade paradise, turned mecca for the indigent. Ben still had no idea what this had to do with art, but still, he followed Dante.

Pretty soon they came up on a tunnel. He had no doubt there would be people sleeping inside. People doing a whole lot worse than that.

“I’ll protect you.” Dante winked at him and Ben laughed.

“You’re talking to the man who tried to get beat one night, remember?”

The look in Dante’s eyes changed from laughter, to anger. It was almost cold...it was memories. Ben could tell.

“Not again. I get being self-destructive, but not in that way.” Dante grabbed ahold of Ben’s wrist, protective. Things were changing...shifting, and he could feel it. “Not again,” Dante said again and then he let go. Ben nodded once at him. Maybe he was lying, maybe he wasn’t but he knew he had to agree right now. Knew that this was tied to the past in the same way so many of Ben’s hang-ups were with him.

There was a scurrying of bodies—people and rats both, he assumed when they stepped inside the tunnel. It was dark, despite the light outside but then Dante pulled his phone from his pocket. It lit like a flashlight before Dante shined it on the walls.

People slept through the light. Others groaned and walked out but that wasn’t what caught and held Ben’s attention.

Every inch of the tunnel walls were painted. Part of it was tagging that had been painted over the picture beneath but it’s that image that stood out. It was like nothing Ben had ever seen in street art. It wasn’t street art. Not in the standard definition. It looked like the walls of a church would—the way an old church in Italy would, he thought. There were golds and yellows and white. Paintings of God, and crosses and stained glass windows. Angels intertwined, men with women, men with men, and women with women.

It was the most beautiful thing Ben had ever seen. In a place full of ugliness, it was beautiful.

“People are ruining it. Every time I come there’s more and more of it covered up.” Dante shown the light around the walls, the ceiling, so Ben could see.

Ben didn’t answer. Not right away. He couldn’t.

“Do you like it?” Dante asked. Damned if it didn’t sound like there was vulnerability in his voice.

“It’s incredible.”

“Come on. Let’s walk toward the end.”

Ben felt the urge to reach out for Dante. Wanted to hold him though he wasn’t sure why. He wanted to know what about this place brought out the sadness in him, because it was there. Ben saw and heard it in him.

Ben studied every inch of the tunnel as they walked. It got more and more elaborate, more bodies of angels and people closer together. Mixed between the different pictures were symbols, swirls and curves that Ben had seen before.

“Your back.” He hadn’t planned for the words to come out of his mouth but they did.

“Yes.”

“He did this? The man you loved?” Ben’s chest got tighter, jealousy had no business creeping in.

“Abel. Yes.”

It was the first time Dante had given Ben his ex’s name. And as jealous as he wanted to feel, he suddenly couldn’t. Dante had brought him here. Dante had given Ben another piece of who he was. Something painful and meaningful. Something he knew would mean something to Ben.

“Thank you.” Ben grabbed ahold of Dante as they stepped out of the tunnel. “Thank you,” he said again.

Dante didn’t answer. Instead he cupped Ben’s cheek with one of his hands, and rubbed his thumb against Ben’s face. “I’m not ready to leave yet. Walk.”

And then he dropped his hand, but didn’t walk away. This time, he waited for Ben and then stepped in line beside him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN