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)
“Breakfast,” he said listlessly. “Don’t forget to eat. Sometimes I think you wouldn’t if I didn’t feed you.”
It was a shallow attempt at his usual barbed tone, but an attempt nonetheless. Summer smiled, though he felt like crumbling inside. Something was wrong.
Something was deeply wrong, and he didn’t want to leave Fox like this, but...
Maybe space was what they both needed.
Yesterday had been strange and painful, even if they’d fallen into bed together and Fox had kissed him, loved him with such intensity, held him tight deep into the night...
They’d stabbed each other rather deep, before that.
So maybe if Summer just...took care of work this morning, let Fox have space to settle himself, then they could talk things through tonight once they’d gotten through classes and didn’t have anything else to worry about.
So he only smiled, and leaned down to press his lips to Fox’s brow. “I won’t forget,” he said, before pulling away to roll out of bed. “And this time, it’s my turn to leave something in the oven for you. Get some rest, Fox. I’ll check in on you during lunch.”
Fox’s only answer was another muted sound.
Summer lingered, watching him, but Fox only turned his face away, closing his eyes, pulling the covers up around his shoulders.
Fuck.
Eyes stinging, nostrils flaring, Summer made himself turn away and made himself walk out of the bedroom.
Even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.
* * *
Fox lay in bed for nearly an hour after Summer left, wishing he...wishing he...
Wishing he had had the courage to at least kiss him goodbye.
He wasn’t sure when he’d decided, concretely. When he’d realized what he meant to do. Some time in the middle of a long, sleepless night, listening to the rain fall.
She’d died on a night like this day, rain-washed and dreary, as if the world was already dead.
Perhaps it was fitting that he should leave on a day like this, too.
He needed to start over.
And he couldn’t do it here.
Couldn’t do it where all he would do was drag Summer down.
The school didn’t need him. They’d find someone else, or abolish the psychology elective. He’d been lying to himself that he was needed at all, as if that could somehow give him an excuse to stay and enjoy this short stolen season of summer in his heart before winter came, gray and terrible, once more.
Excuses.
Always the excuses.
Excuses to stay. Excuses to leave.
No—it was best that he go.
Maybe one day, one year, he might come back as someone better, someone brighter, someone who still knew how to live, someone who knew how to be with a man as lovely as Summer. And maybe Summer would still be here, holding that vulnerable heart, and if he hadn’t given it to someone else...
Yes.
Maybe then.
But for now... Fox was no good for anyone.
And, his body feeling heavy as stone...
He dragged himself up to pack, flinging the walk-in closet doors open and stepping inside.
* * *
Summer couldn’t concentrate.
He tried. Words on the page blurred together into marching ants; he couldn’t even keep half a thought focused in his mind, forgetting whose paper he was reading halfway down the page and having to start over at the name, let alone processing the content.
He sat in Fox’s office, surrounded by the sound of rain on the windows and the dripping of honeysuckle scent, and just...
Wished he was back in that room.
Back in that bed with Fox, kissing him and touching him and begging him to talk to Summer until they sorted everything out and made this better.
Fuck.
He couldn’t think, like this.
And he couldn’t leave things open-ended this way with Fox, everything festering in silence until class was over. He shouldn’t have walked away this morning at all.
Summer marked off a few more things, then stood, locked up Fox’s office, and headed back to their floor.
But he stopped the moment he crested the stairs.
Fox’s door was just down from the stairwell, the first thing Summer saw every time he came up or down the steps and spilled into the hallway.
And his door stood open, right now.
Just by a marginal inch, but still unlatched.
Summer hadn’t left it that way.
Sick fear lodged in his throat. A million nightmare scenarios ran through his mind. Fox more sick than he let on, struggling to get to the door and almost collapsing. Someone breaking into the room to hurt him for some obscure reason. Fox getting an emergency call and dashing out carelessly. A million other thoughts about why that door could be open, none of them good.
Summer didn’t want to look.
But he had to, when...when...
What if Fox was inside, hurt?
What if Fox needed him?
He forced himself across the hallway, his heartbeat timing his steps in thunderous roars, his head spinning as his anxiety tried to steal his breath and weave terrible things from it out of whole cloth. Tentatively, he pushed the door open with just his fingertips, sending it swinging easily inward.