Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
What the fuck?
What the fuck had he been doing?
Still breathing hard, he jerked his gaze back to Rian. A flushed, disheveled Rian, looking up at him with dazed eyes turned smoky-hot, his lips still parted but their pale color now painted with the pressure of Damon’s lips, pink and so very swollen.
Damon had done that.
Damon had completely forgotten what he’d come here for, and just...just...
He tore his eyes from Rian for a moment, caught by the canvas behind him, a work in progress that looked like a white tree on a black backdrop, but it had been split down its main fork and fire smoldered inside, embers glowing deep at its heart.
Damon felt like that tree.
Split open, his heart burning.
He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t do this.
Not with him.
And even as Rian stepped closer, reaching out a hand, drawing in a breath to speak...
Damon shook his head.
Turned away.
And walked away from Rian Falwell, before Damon ended up doing something he would only regret.
Chapter Eight
Rian had never slept so terribly in his life.
He couldn’t believe Damon had just—and Rian had—and then the janitor had interrupted and before Rian could even ask what the hell was that?
Damon had just been...gone.
And Rian hadn’t had the courage to chase him, when his hands were shaking and he was full of too many questions he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers to.
Questions that had played through his mind all night as he’d tossed and turned in his bed, staring up at the stucco ceiling and counting the bumps like counting stars and counting sheep, trying to count himself to sleep.
As if he could sleep when he’d kept touching his slightly sore lips, and tasting the raw, deep flavor of Damon on his tongue.
How.
Why?
He’d...he’d caught himself noticing now and then just how arrestingly attractive Damon was, from that handsome face with its blunt-edged elegance to the way his body showed the work he put in to hone himself to a pillar of strength, refining every line of his frame into a perfect aesthetic only enhanced by the scars that marked every pain he had survived.
But that was just an artist’s eye for physical beauty, he’d told himself over and over again.
As if that could explain why Damon frustrated him so much.
Made him so angry.
And was never far from the forefront of his mind.
That kiss had felt like a short fuse burning down to the final explosion, fire crackling hotter and hotter until it hit a burst point. And if Rian would stop sticking his head in the sand and playing coy, playing pretend...he had to admit.
He was attracted to Damon Louis.
And he had no idea what to do with that, when they couldn’t go five minutes without nearly ripping each other’s heads off.
Not to mention it just...didn’t make sense.
Rian wanting Damon, perhaps.
But Damon...wanting him? With how coldly he looked at Rian, and the way he stared at Rian as if the two of them were utterly alien to each other, unable to even comprehend the same concept of reality?
But...you’re not the only one looking for somewhere to belong.
By the time morning came, the first faint gray light creeping through the windows and the narrow branches of the trees, Rian had barely caught an hour of sleep. And his restless energy wouldn’t let him lie abed any longer, chasing him from his bedroom and out into the living room—where he caught Lachlan Walden at the kitchen island, settled on a stool and lifting a cup of coffee to his lips, eyes fixed on an unfolded newspaper, distant behind his glasses.
Lachlan froze with his coffee cup halfway to his lips.
Rian halted mid-stride, blinking at him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you up before seven before,” Lachlan said, his normally stern, cool voice slightly roughened with sleep, his normally precisely swept-back platinum hair lightly mussed, a few strands falling into his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you without a suit coat before,” Rian countered, staring; Lachlan actually looked vaguely casual, as much as he could when he was still in a crisply ironed pale blue button-down with dark blue pinstripes, paired with a matching dark blue tie.
“You have no reason to,” Lachlan retorted tonelessly. “Why are you up so early?”
Rian shrugged, hefting his gym bag to his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. Going to work off some energy before first period.”
“Ah.”
Neutral, disinterested, reminding Rian without a single word that they didn’t really cohabitate; they just happened to awkwardly share a space. He fidgeted for a moment, then mumbled, “Morning, then,” and turned away, toward the door.
Only to stop with his hand on the knob as Walden’s voice drifted after him. “How goes your knotty little problem?”
Which one?
Rian glanced back. “We haven’t pinpointed anything. No one knows anything about what he’s doing after school, not that we can ask directly.” He couldn’t help the simmering snap of resentment there, that Lachlan thought it was so much more important to keep from inconveniencing the parents than it was to just...be certain, with the boys. “But Chris doesn’t look good. He looks sick. Like he’s losing weight, too.”