Caio reached the car and couldn't open the door.
His hands were shaking. Not the kind of shaking you could control with a deep breath and a rational thought—it was the kind that came from inside, from the place where he'd buried everything he felt and covered it with concrete and discipline and five years of silence. The kind of shaking that said: you're a liar, and your body knows it.
He pressed his forehead against the car window. Closed his eyes. The parking lot was empty, the streetlamp already on, and the world kept turning as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened.
He had seen Beto.
The scent was still on him. Not the cedar and coffee that belonged to him—the other one. The scent of wet earth, fresh petals, something green and alive that had always made Caio think of Sunday mornings and rumpled sheets and a low laugh against his neck. Beto's scent. Clinging to his skin as if that half-second of contact between their fingers had been enough for the bond to rewrite five years of distance.
He opened the door. Sat down. Didn't start the car.
He stared at the steering wheel as if it had answers.
It didn't.
Caio knew exactly what would happen when he walked into that flower shop. He knew the bond would wake up, his body would betray the mask, every cell would scream what his mouth refused to say. He knew—and he went anyway.
What he hadn't known was that Beto would be like that.
The smile. That smile.
Caio knew every one of Beto's smiles. The broad, toothy one that appeared when he found something genuinely funny. The shy, crooked one that came when someone complimented his flowers. The lazy one, eyes half-closed, that existed only on mornings when they woke up together.
That smile in the shop was none of those.
It was a constructed smile. Assembled piece by piece, rehearsed until it looked real. The kind of smile broken people learned to use as a bandage—not to heal, but to hide the fact that they were still bleeding.
And Beto was bleeding.
Caio saw it. Saw it in those clear eyes that didn't shine like they used to. Saw it in the carefully concealed dark circles. Saw it in the way his shoulders curved when he thought no one was looking—that half-second between getting up from the floor and putting his posture back together. Saw the weight Beto carried, and it wasn't just exhaustion.
“I'm great.”
The lie hurt worse than a punch.
Because Caio knew—knew with the irrational, absolute certainty the bond gave him—that Beto wasn't great. That maybe he hadn't been great for a long time. And that it was his fault.
He gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white.
He'd gone to the flower shop for a reason. Not the arrangement—that was an excuse, and a terrible one. He'd gone because three weeks ago, the bond had changed. After years of being a dull, constant ache, like a scar that throbbed in the cold, it had suddenly become sharp. Urgent. As if something was wrong with Beto, truly wrong, and the bond was screaming at Caio to pay attention.
And Caio had tried to ignore it. He'd tried for three weeks. Worked until two in the morning, ran six miles a day, took suppressants that cost a fortune and made no difference at all. The bond wouldn't quiet down. It grew louder, more insistent, more desperate.
Until Caio couldn't take it anymore.
And now he was here, in a dark parking lot, his hands shaking and his chest laid bare, and the only thing he could think about was the way Beto had said, “There are other flower shops in the city,” his voice faltering on the last syllable.
There were. There were other flower shops.
But there wasn't another Beto.
His phone rang. Caio looked at the screen. The name glowed against the dark background: Renata Oliveira.
He didn't answer.
He let it ring until it stopped. Then it rang again. And again.
The fourth time, he answered.
—Caio. —Renata's voice was cold, precise, without a single unnecessary inflection. —You were seen going into a flower shop in Jardim das Acácias. I need you to tell me it's not the flower shop I'm thinking of.
Silence.
—Caio.
—It was just an arrangement, he said, and the lie came out so smoothly he almost believed it.
—Don't treat me like an idiot. —Her voice dropped half a tone, and that was worse than if she'd shouted. —We had an agreement. Five years ago. You know exactly what happens if you break that agreement.
Caio's blood ran cold.
Not for himself. Never for himself.
For Beto.
—I know, he said. His voice came out flat. Dead. —It won't happen again.
—Good. Because next time, I won't call first.
The call ended.
Caio stayed still. The phone slipped from his hand and fell onto the passenger seat. The silence inside the car was deafening.
He rested his head against the seat. Looked at the ceiling. Breathed.
Once. Twice. Three times.
On the fourth breath, something inside him gave way—not with a crash, but with the low, exhausted sound of something that could no longer bear its own weight. His eyes burned. His throat closed. And Caio, who hadn't cried in five years, felt a tear slide from the corner of his eye and disappear into his shirt collar.
Just one.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand. Started the car. Pulled out of the parking lot.
He drove to the apartment in silence. Rode twenty-three floors up in silence. Opened the door to the empty, immaculate apartment, without a single flower, without any scent except cleaning product.
He dropped his briefcase on the couch. Loosened his tie. Went to the window.
The city glittered below, indifferent.
And somewhere out there, among those lights, Beto was alone in a flower shop full of flowers that weren't for him, pretending it didn't hurt.
And Caio was here, in an empty apartment that had never been a home, knowing that the only person who could make that pain stop was him—and that if he got close, he would destroy everything.
He pressed his forehead against the cold window glass.
The bond pulsed. Low, steady, hungry.
Like a heart beating in the wrong place.