Page 125 of Alessio

“I don’t understand,” Alessio said quietly.

Of course, not.

Because Corrado hadn’t explained.

All that shit unsaid.

“He didn’t give a fuck,” Corrado repeated, “because he didn’t know anything about us, and that’s what pissed me off, okay. All he sees are two men who are affectionate, and that made him uncomfortable enough to say something about it. Not because it hurts him, or affects his fucking life, but just because he didn’t like us.”

“There are millions of people like him, Corrado.”

Yeah, he understood.

Clearly.

“Does that mean they should open their stupid fucking mouths and spew their bullshit, though?” Corrado asked, lowering his gaze from the sky to stare at the man across the alley from him. Alessio stared back with his face an expressionless mask, not that Corrado took offense to that. They all needed a few seconds to deal with this, and what it meant. “When they know nothing—not what we are, what it’s been like for us together, or what you mean to me. And they sure as fuck don’t have a clue how much I fucking love you because they’re too worried about the fact two men might kiss where they can see.”

Silence echoed between the two in the alley.

Finally, Alessio cleared his throat and muttered, “You drop that bomb, huh?”

“What?”

“The love bit.”

Corrado gave him a look. “Cette partie de mon cœur est à toi—this part of my heart, it’s yours. I have been telling you this for years, but you only wanted to hear it in the way you wanted me to say it, Les.”

Alessio’s throat jumped, and his cheek twitched. Corrado waited him out because now, he didn’t have a choice. He did what he did—it’d been said. The rest would be determined by the man across from him.

“I figured out something over the last while,” Alessio murmured.

“Do tell.”

“You don’t have to be an asshole.”

Corrado checked his attitude. “Sorry.”

Alessio shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he looked up at the sky above them while he spoke. “I figured out I clung to that—to words, Corrado, putting too much faith and weight in what words meant, and not what’s true. I thought, if you said those words, then it would mean this was real. I held onto a need for words when literally everything else about us and what we are is the definition of what I wanted. It’s love, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this sooner.”

Corrado blinked, quiet again.

This thing that had been such a fucking problem … now wasn’t one. Like that, it was done, and he wasn’t sure if he understood what it meant.

“And you know I love you, so,” Alessio added. “I’ve always loved—”

Corrado crossed the alleyway before Alessio could even finish his sentence because no … no, that could not be an afterthought. Not when he was aware, regardless of what Alessio decided he had figured out about all of this, that those three little words had meant a lot to him when he felt like they weren’t freely given.

Alessio might have understood now Corrado wasn’t like him, and he didn’t show his affection and love in the same ways. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do it, anyway.

Because that was love.

Corrado crashed into Alessio hard enough to send them both into the wall beside the propped open door. Alessio’s fingers threaded into Corrado’s hair when their lips met, moving to a fast, familiar rhythm as his frustration and anger started to bleed away.

All the hatred?

Gone when he got a taste of Les on his tongue.

Because that was the thing about hate, too.