Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
It only left him that much more cold when Fox withdrew once more behind a wall of quiet melancholy more stubborn and impenetrable than the harshest rejections, so determined to believe he was nothing else.
Summer wanted to shake him, wanted to beg...
But he couldn’t.
His heart was too sore and heavy, right now.
He was too raw with all the emotions that Fox had touched, stroking the exposed nerves of his heart to leave them too quivering and sensitive.
He couldn’t take this tonight.
But he wouldn’t give up, he told himself, even as he turned his hand to press palm to palm with Fox’s, lacing their fingers together, blinking back the blurring in his vision and forcing himself to smile.
“If that’s what you want,” he said thickly. “A few months is more than I ever thought would happen.”
Fox’s gaze flickered back and forth over Summer’s face, searching—before he tugged on their clasped hands, drawing Summer in.
“Come here, you ridiculous boy,” he sighed. “Just...come here.”
Then Fox’s arms were around him, enfolding him like an apology, drawing him in close against Fox’s chest, his warmth, the strength of him.
Summer told himself he wouldn’t break.
Wouldn’t cry.
But he clutched tight at Fox, buried his face in his chest, and breathed in deep wet gasps until that feeling of desperation passed, until he no longer felt like...like...
Like he was losing something before he even had a chance to grasp it tight.
Fox’s heat and bulk curled around him, fingers stroking against his back—before one hand pulled away.
And a moment later, something cool fell over Summer like rain, lashing and licking against his skin in silken washes.
He opened his eyes, sucking in a soft breath, watching as the spill of Fox’s hair cascaded down in threads of black diamond, fine and wispy and floating like feathers in looping arcs to spill over Fox, over the bed, over Summer. It was longer than he’d ever imagined, pouring in a river over the dark gray sheets, shining like thin threads of starlight shooting through a black night sky, liquid as water and silken-fine and wreathing Fox in a cloak that made him look ethereal, unreal, almost inhuman.
Summer’s heart thumped harder still, as he looked up into gray eyes that seemed to whisper a sorrow older than even Fox himself, older than the sky, older than the moon.
“Sleep, Summer,” Fox breathed, and bent over him, pressing his lips to Summer’s brow like a blessing. “Sleep...and this will all look different in the morning.”
* * *
Fox felt as though he had committed a crime.
A desecration. A sin. A defilement against everything he held dear.
A betrayal.
Not against Michiko; not against the memory that still perched on his shoulder like a silent thing, whispering in his ear endlessly in a constant stream of sounds he couldn’t understand but that would never give him peace.
Against Summer.
Fox curled on his side with his head pillowed on one arm, his other arm draped around Summer, gathering him close against his chest. Summer slept tucked tight into him, resting in the crook of Fox’s arm and burrowing his face into his shoulder, the mess of his hair spilling in black arcs over Fox’s chest and mixing with his own until they were just a sea of ink together, and all that tanned, taut skin pressed up against his in dark contrast, Summer’s body heat as tangled with him as the young man’s long, agile legs.
He looked so peaceful, in his sleep. So relaxed.
So young.
But even this, right now...
This was hurting him, and Fox was only making it worse by letting Summer’s attachment grow deeper.
That moment of impulse, that burst of passion, of desire, had been wrong—so wrong. No matter how good it had felt, no matter that for a few minutes he had no longer been a grieving widower or a frozen shadow locked away with his ghosts, but simply a man entwined with another man and completely lost in the rapture of him, the passion of him, the wildness and so much dizzying, spinning emotion and pleasure building up into a thing of crashing, interlocked beauty...
In the end, he could only hurt Summer.
And he’d just...just callously made certain that when it came, that hurt would be ten times worse.
All because he was selfish.
He was selfish, and wanted to hold on to this for a few months longer before he...
Before he gave up, he thought.
He didn’t know what he would do once he left Albin Academy.
He just knew that he was tired, and had no reason to stay...and he thought, perhaps, once he left he would give up on trying to be a man at all, and simply find somewhere to be until time finally did its work and ended this haunting when he’d been a ghost for so very long already.
His body just hadn’t figured that out yet.
Summer shifted against him, letting out a soft sigh in his sleep, a murmur, one that blended into a tired call of “...Fox...”