Chapter 8 — The Only One
1047 Words
Raphaël's POV
Bangkok, Thailand
My father called three times.
I watched the screen light up. Watched his name pulse against the dark. Watched it die.
I didn't move.
The fourth call I declined without looking up from the laptop — the same laptop I had been staring at for the better part of three days. Same image. Same blurred figure. Same dark hair caught for exactly one frame in early Bangkok light before the corner swallowed him whole.
Still nothing.
Marc's team had hit every lead. Every camera. Every record. And come back with precisely this — a ghost in my shirt moving through Bangkok streets like he had rehearsed his own disappearance.
I leaned back.
Pressed two fingers against my mouth.
One regret.
That was all I had about that night. One single thing I would rewrite if I could go back —
I had kept him facing away.
The whole night.
Because that was what I preferred. Always. There was something about that position — the complete surrender it demanded, the rawness of it, the way every reaction became impossible to fake or hide — that I found more compelling than anything else. More honest than looking someone in the eye and pretending that meant something.
But now.
Now I had scratches on my back that were fading and a warmth in my hands that wasn't and absolutely nothing to show for it except a blurred silhouette and the ghost of a feeling I couldn't shake loose no matter how hard I tried.
I remember your body, I thought. Every sound you tried to swallow. Every time you failed.
But your face—
I closed the laptop.
Hard.
I'm going to find you. The thought arrived not as a question or a hope but as a simple fact. Quiet. Absolute. However long it takes.
My phone buzzed.
Marc: The man you requested has arrived, sir.
Right.
Two days ago I had told Marc to make arrangements. The usual kind. The kind I had been making without particular thought for years — different face, different night, clean and simple and completely forgettable by morning.
I hadn't made any such arrangement since Bangkok.
Hadn't wanted to.
Which was new.
Which was — inconvenient.
Send him up, I typed.
He was attractive. Obviously. Marc knew better than to send anything less.
Tall. Dark haired. Moved through my penthouse like he owned the air inside it — that particular practiced confidence of someone who had done this enough times to stop being nervous about it.
He went straight to the bar.
Made two drinks without being asked. Brought one to me at the window. Set his own down on the side table and positioned himself behind me with quiet efficiency.
His hands landed on my shoulders.
Warm. Certain. Professional.
I felt —
Nothing.
He sank to his knees. His hands moved lower. His head dipped toward my lap with the seamless ease of someone following a script they had memorized long ago.
I stared at Bangkok.
The city blazed below — gold and chaotic and indifferent. Ten thousand lights and not one of them mine.
His mouth moved closer to my face.
"You didn't read the contract." My voice came out flat. Cold. Like commenting on the weather. "I don't kiss."
He pulled back. A flash of something crossed his face — irritation, quickly buried — and he adjusted without a word.
Continued.
I turned back to the window.
Why isn't this working.
It had always worked before. Every single time. A different face, a different evening, and by morning the particular restlessness that drove me to make the call in the first place had been dealt with cleanly and efficiently and without leaving marks.
But his hands felt wrong.
Too practiced. Too smooth. Moving across my skin like someone who had learned exactly where to touch without ever understanding why it was supposed to matter.
I stood up.
He startled.
I grabbed him by the arm — not roughly, but with a decisiveness that left no room for interpretation — and pulled him toward the bed. He went. Arranged himself against the sheets with automatic ease.
I looked at him.
Dark hair. Wrong shade. Wrong angle. Wrong face.
This isn't you.
The thought hit me like something physical and I shoved it aside immediately.
I moved over him. No preamble. No softness. Entered without ceremony and felt him go rigid beneath me — a sharp sound tearing out of him that he clearly hadn't prepared for.
I didn't stop.
He was loud about it. Vocal. The kind of sounds that filled every corner of the room and echoed off expensive walls and meant — absolutely nothing. Background noise. A performance I wasn't watching.
I moved through it mechanically.
Efficiently.
My mind elsewhere entirely.
Bangkok. A room I didn't own. Hands gripping my back hard enough to leave marks that lasted days. Sounds that were nothing like this — raw and involuntary and completely, devastatingly real—
I stopped.
Pulled back.
Stood up from the bed in one motion and walked straight to the bathroom without a word.
Closed the door.
Turned the cold tap on full and pressed both hands flat against the sink and stared at my own reflection in the mirror above it.
The man in the mirror looked —
Hollow.
Not satisfied. Not relieved. Not any of the things this arrangement was supposed to produce.
Just — hollow. Like eating a meal that had no taste. Like sleeping in a bed that had the wrong smell. Like reaching with complete certainty for something specific and closing your hand around empty air.
I tried, I told my reflection. It's not working.
The water ran cold over my wrists.
It's not you, I thought. Directed at no one present. Directed at a blurred image and a ghost feeling and a face I had never seen. None of them are you.
I turned the tap off.
Straightened up.
Looked at myself for one more moment — jaw tight, eyes dark, completely certain —
Find him Marc, I thought. Find him before I lose what's left of my patience.
Because I can do this a hundred more times.
And it will never be enough.
It will never be you.
- Writer
