He was going to tell him.

Mikhail chewed it over the whole night. Once his head hit his pillow, and it dawned on him that sleep wouldn’t be visiting him any time soon.

Yawning, he opened the stall up earlier than usual.

Ali looked at a loss for something to do when he arrived, his first task completed for him. Bored, he sat with Mikhail in the back, his fingers twisting a wooden top on the floor near Mikhail’s work papers.

Mikhail was busy working out how he’d tell Kamar the truth. He didn’t mean to leave anything out, either.

Made sense to start from the beginning, with the fake death and work your way from there. He agreed, the beginning was best–he’d pour his heart out and wait for Kamar to decide how to react.

Mikhail swallowed, not at all sure if he liked giving away that much control. Yet he wouldn’t do it for anyone, he knew. Kamar was special. Kamar was his…

Your what? his mind retorted sharply, demanding clarification. Mikhail had no idea what to think about his relationship with Kamar.

After they had sex, after Kamar had given him the gift of his virginity, he had left Kamar’s home followed by the strong need to dispense with the truth. It felt wrong holding his secrets when Kamar had shared so much with him already.

Kamar had cried on him last evening, venting about his father. Mikhail had listened patiently, and then he’d kissed his swollen, tear dappled mouth. Leaving Kamar at that moment had been the hardest thing next to faking his own death.

You love him.

Since that thought had teased its way into his head, it refused to leave him. Mikhail’s shoulders sagged with the brunt of his confusion and his frustration at feeling so lost.

It was a good thing Ali spoke up then.

Mikhail dropped his papers to regard the boy when he called for his attention.

“Sir?” he said, his gaze lifting up from the top in his hand. “My mom wants to know if you’re planning to get married.”

“Married?” Mikhail echoed.

Ali continued over him. “It’s only because she thought you could teach me how to run the shop. Perhaps I could take over for you.” He puffed out his chest then. “I know I’m young, but I’ve been helping you for three months now. I know how to open and close, and I do pretty well haggling—”

“Ali, stop,” Mikhail cut into his diatribe. He shook his head. “I’m not getting married. Where did your mother get such an idea?”

Mikhail had only met the woman a handful of times, and that’s when the nights grew longer and he walked Ali home himself.

“I told her about that guy who keeps visiting–what’s his name again?” Ali screwed up his face in thought. His expression relaxing when he remembered. “Khalid, right?”

Mikhail nodded, slowly, contemplating how all this had to do with his nuptials. “That’s right. But where did you get the idea I was getting married?”

“I don’t know.” Ali shrugged. It was such a light-hearted, boyish action. “You two just looked…cozy, I guess. I told my mom, and she said it had to be love, or something. Then she started talking stuff about marriage.”

Mikhail laughed abruptly, the sound sharp and short.

It was an unexpected reaction, even for him. But Ali’s eyes grew wide with his shock, his small mouth parting. He blinked several times before he closed his mouth and leaned in. “So, are you?”

The laughter still bubbling like warm fizz in his belly, Mikhail shook his head. “I’m not getting married, Ali.”

“Not even to that Khalid guy?” Ali stared with blunt suspicion. He wasn’t alone in the suspicion, really. Mikhail was distrusting of his own true feelings for Kamar.

“Not even to Khalid,” he promised, his teeth biting down on the words. They refused to fall off his tongue and out into the open. Besides, it came off as so final when, truthfully, the only kind of forever he’d been entertaining with Khalid was quite the opposite.

Ali continued staring until Mikhail found him a task better for his time, counting their stock. While his stall hand got to work, Mikhail tried and failed at focusing on his paperwork. There was a new price contract with the supplier in Djanna for the fruits and applications for the latest increase in taxes from Zhebair’s crooked law enforcement.

He’d sit on both for now.

Anyway, something told Mikhail he wouldn’t be getting much done until he had that heart-to-heart with Kamar.

When customers started stopping by during lunch, Mikhail relieved Ali of his numeracy task. They had to work together, side by side, until the crowd cleared. Ali proudly boasted he could handle customers by himself. He even revealed the lunch his mother had packed.

That left Mikhail to search for his own lunch.

His feet steered him to the café where he’d shared his first meal with Kamar.

He even sat at the same table, the place emptying out now that it was well past lunch. Mikhail ordered the same meal when Kamar breezed into his vision, dropping into the chair across from him like he had planned to do that all along.

Mikhail swallowed his thick, creamy mango down the wrong pipe. He spluttered, coughing loudly and reaching for a napkin at the same time as Kamar. Now that the rebel’s warm fingers were under his, Mikhail could be sure this was no vision. Kamar was sitting across from him, holding out the napkin once Mikhail retracted his fingers, and his younger lover appeared deeply troubled.

Heart in his throat, Mikhail hoarsely asked, “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Jibril,” Kamar said. He leaned in after glancing around the café. Now that Mikhail knew about the underground resistance to Prime Minister Mustafa’s governing, he understood the need for discretion.

“What happened?” Mikhail reached out and cupped Kamar’s hand. It was all instinct. He noticed the fearful shake in his lover’s fingers, and he wanted to hold him, show him that whatever he thought would hurt him would have to get through Mikhail first.

Kamar’s bottom lip quivered, and his dark brown eyes were stormy with his worry.

“The police took him.” Kamar then lowered his voice. “We don’t know where, but it has to do with you-know-what.”