Page 22 of From Beijing, With Love

When a second security line opened up, there was a sudden shift in the crowd. Everyone rushed toward the line in unison like a pack of wildebeests. Daniel—clearly unaccustomed to holding his ground—was shuffled forward, carried along by the movement of the crowd.

“Daniel!” Yang called after him. When Daniel looked back, his eyes were wide with an unmistakable panic that made Yang’s heart drop. Pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, Yang grabbed hold of Daniel’s arm. “I got you.” He pulled Daniel close. One look at Daniel’s face made him want to scrap the whole tour, but turning back in this sea of people was inconceivable. The only way was forward. “Stay close until we make it through the security gate.”

Daniel nodded, his breaths shallow. When the movements stalled once again, they were swallowed by a group of domestic tourists all donning matching white hats. Yang tugged Daniel closer as one of the tourists not-so-discreetly pointed his phone at Daniel, stealing a photo. The rest of the group was no better as they ogled Daniel like he was an alien.

The punishing heat and the swarm of bodies around them raised the temperature by what felt like twenty degrees, yet Yang could feel Daniel shaking. Something fiery surged inside of him.

“Please stop that,” Yang said through clenched teeth in Mandarin, his words more polite than his tone. The photo taker, a man in his fifties with a protruding belly and sweat stains under his armpits, simply ignored Yang. As if to show just how much of a big man he was, he hurled the word “Baigui” at Daniel’s confused face.

Yang had more than enough. He shoved himself between the man and Daniel. “Get lost, or I’ll make you.”

Though not as wide as the man, Yang more than made up for it in height. Standing his ground, he stared down the man, using every ounce of his willpower not to yank off the stupid white hat and smack him with it.

Luckily, the line started to move again. The man spat on the ground like a villain from an old-school Hong Kong gangster movie and moved on. Yang rolled his eyes. Bullies were all the same—loud thunder but little rain.

“Are you okay?” He turned to Daniel, fighting the urge to dab off the beads of sweat dotting Daniel’s forehead.

“Baigui … He called me the white devil?” Daniel asked, looking like he wanted to shrivel into himself, a complete one-eighty from earlier at the hotel.

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay once we get through the gates.” Yang gave Daniel a reassuring smile instead of what he really wanted to do—pull Daniel into a hug. He didn’t want to know how Daniel knew that word. He would turn around, hop the gate, do anything to wipe the worry off Daniel’s face right then. If only he could.

The crowd didn’t ease after the security gate, but at least they weren’t in line anymore. As Yang trudged forward, cutting through the crowd, Daniel lagged behind. As if on autopilot, he took Daniel’s hand. Surprisingly, Daniel let him.

Just for this busy stretch, Yang told himself. He knew he shouldn’t do this—get this close to Daniel in public. But he knew Daniel needed it. Daniel needed him. He squeezed Daniel’s hand then, pulling Daniel a little closer, and felt Daniel squeeze back.

Hand in hand, they walked through Tiananmen Square.

CHAPTER TENDaniel

Baigui. That was what the man had called him. Daniel knew the word because his paternal grandmother had once thrown it at his mother. When he asked his mother what it meant, she had brushed it off as “just a little ugly word.”

Being on the receiving end of that little ugly word in his dad’s city had rocketed Daniel’s anxiety into overdrive. It was compounded by the other tourists snapping photos of him while pretending they were taking selfies. Subtle.

Poppy had mentioned the endless crowd but not how they’d react to him. Daniel had lived his whole life as the wallflower, never the centerpiece. All this attention was new and unnerving. It accentuated the inescapable otherness he felt as a very white sore thumb sticking out in the unrelenting crowd.

White devil.

Every cell in his body had gone into flight mode, but there wasn’t anywhere for him to run. They were swallowed by the crowds. Short of hopping the security gate, he was stuck. And gate hopping in front of an army of policemen in a foreign country didn’t seem like a good idea.

Daniel had never felt quite so trapped. Too trapped to even digest the hurt of the little ugly word.

Then Yang happened. The way he’d inserted himself between Daniel and the heckler reminded Daniel a lot of Poppy—measured, controlled, yet entirely in command. It was impossible not to be a little bit (or a lot) in awe of how beautifully fierce Yang looked then, in his protector mode.

When Yang took his hand, Daniel held on to it like a lifeline and let Yang pull him through the crowd, trusting that Yang would lead him to safer grounds. Yang’s hand was cool and dry compared to his own clammy hand.

You always need to be rescued. Taylor’s words made an untimely appearance. They were true. Here Daniel was, in need of saving. He knew he was being a lot. Too much. Was that how Yang was feeling?

The congestion eased around them and Daniel loosened his grip, giving Yang implicit permission to let go.

Yang didn’t.

Daniel wasn’t an expert on Chinese culture, but based on snippets of what Poppy had told him after she moved here—the bits she let slip after one too many glasses of Cabernet—he’d gotten the impression that two men openly holding hands wasn’t exactly common in China. Yet here they were, hand in hand in Tiananmen Square, the metaphorical beating heart of the country.

They crossed the entirety of the square, arriving at a metal barricade, behind which stood a grand vermillion building with five arched gateways. Above the center archway hung a giant portrait of some historical figure Daniel couldn’t name with blocky Chinese characters on both sides.

Yang dropped Daniel’s hand then, a blush creeping onto his sharp features.

“This is Tiananmen, which translates to Gate of Heavenly Peace. It was built in the Ming dynasty and served as the entrance to the Imperial City, which encapsulates the Forbidden City. The square we just walked through is named after this gate. Over there, you can see the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, and the National Museum of China,” Yang said, all in one single breath, like he desperately needed to be in tour-guide mode.