Chapter 55. The Almost

The private airstrip near Aosta was little more than a scar of tarmac carved into a pine-dense valley, its lights a faint, lonely constellation against the oppressive dark of the Alps. Sabe brought the Pilatus down with a surgeon's precision, the wheels kissing the runway with a whisper of rubber and a sigh of hydraulics. The violence of the storm was now a memory, a phantom tremor in their bones.

He guided the plane into a dilapidated hangar at the far end of the strip, its corrugated metal walls rattling in the wind that still howled down from the peaks. The instant the engine spooled down into silence, the world became unnervingly quiet, a stillness broken only by the drumming of rain on the metal roof and the ragged sound of their own breathing.

Neither of them moved.

The confession-I'm so scared I might want someone I shouldn't-was heavy in that stagnant air, as thick and unresolved as could be. It had been much easier to disregard, inside that roaring cacophony of the storm. Here, in this profound quiet, it was deafening.

Sabe unclipped his harness; the click was unnaturally loud. His movements were stiff, robotic, as he worked his way through the post-flight shutdown sequence. He could feel Anton's gaze on him, a physical weight, but he didn't turn. He couldn't. To look at him now was to acknowledge the chasm that had opened between them - a chasm not of distance, but of terrifying proximity.

“We’re safe here,” Sabe said, his voice rough from strain and disuse. “It’s a… legacy holding. Off the books. Even Evelyn shouldn’t know about it.” He finally risked a glance.

Anton sat, his head leaning against the headrest, eyes closed. He looked utterly spent in the dim shine of the standby lights of the panel. The urbane, unflappable billionaire had vanished into nothingness. A man drained by betrayal and pared-down to the barest essentials by his admission stood before him now. A stray track of moisture glimmered on his temple, tracing from his eye to his jaw. This was the only sign that a tempest had raged inside his being.

Something in Sabe's chest, a thing long fortified and frozen, gave a painful seismic crack.

He stood, his body aching with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle. He moved to the rear of the cabin, where a small utilitarian bench was bolted to the wall, opposite Anton's seat. He sat; the space between them, now measured in feet, felt like the span of a lifetime.

“We need to talk about what happens next,” Sabe said, forcing his voice into a professional cadence. It was a flimsy shield. “The villa, the exchange… we’ve lost the element of surprise. Evelyn will know we’re coming.”

Anton’s eyes opened. They were dark pools full of a wounded, defiant honesty. “I don’t care about the villa right now, Sabatine.”

Yet, the use of his full name, usually a marker of distance or annoyance, felt intimate, like some kind of purposeful, deliberate pulling closer.

“You have to care,” Sabe insisted, clinging to the logic of the mission. “It’s the only move we have left.”

"Is that all this is to you?" Anton's voice was soft, but it carried the sharp edge of a challenge. "The next move? The final objective? Am I just the asset you have to deliver to the end of the game?"

“You know it’s not.” The retort was out before Sabe could stop it, stripped of all professional pretense.

“Do I?” Anton pushed himself upright, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. The movement brought him closer. The air in the cramped space seemed to thin, to crackle. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve done nothing but retreat since I laid my neck on the chopping block back in that storm. You’re hiding behind tactics and protocols.”

“I’m trying to keep you alive!” Sabe’s control snapped, his voice rising and echoing in the metal hangar. “That is my job. That is the one thing I am supposed to do that doesn’t end in a catastrophic failure! Everything else… everything else is a distraction we cannot afford.”

"A distraction," Anton repeated, the word a flat, wounded thing. He gave a hollow laugh. "Is that what I am to you?"

“God, Anton, no.” Sabe jumped to his feet, the stillness too much to bear. He paced the short length of the cabin, a caged animal. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” Anton was on his feet now, too, facing him. The space between them vanished. They were close enough for Sabe to see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, to smell the faint, expensive scent of his shampoo mixed with the sharp tang of adrenaline and fear. “Tell me what it is, Sabatine. Because I am standing here, stripped of everything—my company, my legacy, my dignity—and the only thing I have left that feels real, that feels solid, is this… this terrifying, impossible thing I feel for you. So if it’s a distraction, then for God’s sake, distract me.”

The plea was raw, unvarnished, and it shattered the last of Sabe's defenses. He saw it all-the utter loneliness, the courage it took to admit such a need, the profound, reckless trust being placed in him. It was a mirror of his own desperate, hidden yearning.

His gaze fell to Anton's mouth.

It was the slightest of movements, but it was a surrender. A silent answer to the question hanging between them.

The world narrowed to the space between their bodies. The drumming rain faded, the chill of the hangar disappeared, leaving only the frantic beat of his own heart and the magnetic pull of the man in front of him.

Anton saw the shift. A wild, vulnerable flicker of hope sparked in his eyes. He leaned in, his head tilting just so, an invitation, a question.

Sabe's breath hitched. Every cell in his body was screaming to close the distance, to finally, finally stop fighting the current that had been pulling him under since the moment they met. To feel something other than guilt and duty and the cold weight of the past. To lose himself in the heat and truth of this man.

He leaned in closer.

Their breaths mingled, warm in the cold air. He could feel the phantom press of Anton's lips, the promise of a solace he had never dared to imagine.

And then he stopped.

His hand, which had risen of its own volition to cup Anton's jaw, froze a hair's breadth from his skin. His whole body went rigid, a statue of conflicted desire.

Anton's eyes, which had begun to flutter shut, snapped open. Hope flickered within them, dying, to be replaced by a new wave of confusion and pain.

"Not now," Sabe whispered-the words torn from a place of deep, anguished sacrifice. His voice was ragged, barely audible. "Not like this." 

He let his hand fall back to his side, the aborted touch more painful than a slap. The space between them, which a second before had been charged with possibility, was now a frozen wasteland. 

“Like what?” Anton’s voice was a broken whisper. “What is this if not the right time? When death is on our heels and the world has fallen away? What better time could there possibly be?” "This is when we're most vulnerable," Sabe said, forcing the words out, each one feeling like a betrayal. 

"This is when we're raw and bleeding. I won't… I can't be just another person who takes advantage of you when you're shattered. I won't be the thing you cling to in the storm only to regret in the cold light of day." He took a step backward, and it felt like a mile. "What you're feeling… it might just be the adrenaline. The fear. The need for an anchor. And what I'm feeling…" He trailed off, shaking his head, his own turmoil a tempest in his eyes. "I need to know it's real. And this… this isn't the place for real. This is the place for survival." 

The restraint was a physical force, a wall he'd built with his own two hands. It cut deeper than any touch, any kiss, ever could. It was a rejection born not from lack of desire, but from a terrifying, principled excess of it. Anton stared at him, the raw hurt slowly hardening into something else—a bleak, cold understanding. He gave a slow, jerky nod, wrapping the tattered remains of his pride around himself like a cloak. "Of course," he said, his voice flat, devoid of all emotion. He turned away, looking out the small window at the rain-lashed night. 

"Survival. Right." Sabe stood there, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, the ghost of Anton's warmth still haunting his skin. He had done the right thing.

 The honorable thing. He had protected the integrity of a moment that deserved more than a desperate fumble in the dark. So why did it feel like he had just broken the one truly good, true thing that had happened to him in years? The silence that fell was absolute and suffocating. The word 'almost' hung in the air between them, a ghost of what might have been, a wound that throbbed with every beat of their hearts.

 They were together in the dark, but they had never been further apart.

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