“Maybe.” He smiled sweetly. “You could be soft with me, if you wanted.”
Fox quirked his lips. “I don’t know if I have any softness left in me, Summer.”
“I think you do,” Summer said. “Or we wouldn’t be like this right now.”
Chapter Nine
Hope, Summer thought, was infinitely more painful than fear.
Fear was a dread certainty, most of the time, that whatever could go wrong...would. Fear was a consistent negative, a terrible dread, but at least something that could be relied on to persistently centralize around its source.
Hope, on the other hand...
Hope was sheer uncertainty, tossing him up and down and up and down as if his heart was on a trampoline and trailing his emotions behind it every time he went bounding high and then came crashing down low, each string of feelings dug into his heart with hooks that made every tiny thing pull too painfully hard.
And God, did everything about Fox pull at him so painfully hard.
The way the man looked every morning, so perfectly sharp and cool and elegant in his white shirts, slacks, suspenders, glasses, his hair bound up so neatly.
The way his voice had subtly changed in how he spoke to Summer, even when correcting his mistakes in reviewing lesson plans and assignments—the barb of disapproval vanishing to instead leave something almost like mocking affection, completely removing the sting from any errors Summer made and even turning gentle as Fox guided him, question by question, step by step, to find the right path and learn how teaching worked.
The subtle approval in silver eyes as they tracked Summer throughout the classroom, while Summer found his place working one-on-one with the boys to help with their assignments and answer their questions—and how Fox let him answer them his own way, finding common ground with the students by explaining in layman’s terms that he hoped would make more sense to them than the clinical terminology in the textbook or the more advanced concepts Fox never quite seemed to realize were above everyone’s head, when that inscrutable mind was often so far off into one theory or another.
The fact that when they were alone, he could even call him Fox at all, and watch the way every time Summer said his name, Fox subtly colored, paused for a half-breath, darted a flickering and meaningful glance at him before looking away.
And the way every day Fox’s kisses sank deeper, pushed Summer dizzyingly higher and higher still, left him electric with the thrill of wanting and the hope that...that...
That maybe this could be something more, when he didn’t think...
Didn’t think Fox would touch him so softly and comfort him so gently in those moments when he couldn’t breathe and the panic-rabbit thumped its feet inside his chest and he wanted to scream for no reason at all, just because some wire had tweaked wrong in his brain and he’d built himself up into a mess.
If only most of the things he built himself up over weren’t Fox himself, when he took every distracted, hard-eyed glance or preoccupied, annoyed twist of Fox’s lips to heart like an arrow struck so deep, even though Summer logically knew they weren’t for him.
And if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just Fox preying on his mind.
It was the way Jay and Eli wouldn’t talk to each other in the halls anymore.
The way he’d noticed Theodore strutting, and almost herding Eli away from Jay during lunch periods and free periods after classes.
He thought Jay might be sleeping in one of the other boys’ rooms, now.
And he couldn’t do anything about it, because Assistant Principal Walden had forbidden him from acting in any role other than teaching and tutoring.
It ate at him, especially when he’d been slowly getting Eli in particular to warm up to him, to trust him...
And now he felt like he was breaking his promises.
He couldn’t sleep, thinking about that—tossing, turning, staring at the walls, the windows, the ceiling, for once not lying awake thinking about Fox’s lips, his body...
Instead lying awake wondering if he’d just made a mess with promises he couldn’t keep, and left that boy feeling like maybe he couldn’t trust anyone to keep his word, now.
Couldn’t trust anyone to be on his side.
Summer exhaled heavily, flopping onto his back and slamming his head against the pillow, staring up at the arcs of moonlight moving across the ceiling.
He was never going to get to sleep like this.
Back at the university he’d at least been able to wear himself out with swimming, until he was so exhausted he had no choice but to sleep.
Now that he thought about it...
There was the pool used for swim club, here at the school—almost large enough for competitive sports, housed in its own attached building so it could be used year-round.
Technically no one was allowed in the pool after dinner hours.
...but technically that rule only applied to students.
It was just a tiny deviation.
And Summer always tried to follow the rules, but...
Maybe just this one time, for the sake of being able to sleep, he’d break them.
Why not.
He smiled to himself, then slipped out of bed to change.
Fox did not like this newfound restless energy.
He preferred his thoughts calm. Quiet. Even if it came at the cost of a certain emotional deadness, at the very least it let him maintain his focus and a certain peace of mind.
Not this...this...
Constant agitation that had him feeling ready to snap at any moment, on a hair trigger, constantly needing to be moving and not even sure why save for that his body did not seem to want to hold still. He would find himself tapping pins, jittering his foot against his knee when he crossed his legs, restlessly drumming his fingers, standing from his chair and then sitting down again.
Or, as he was now, prowling the school grounds, hoping that a walk beneath the trees and the open moonlight would at least settle his thoughts.
And get them off Summer damned Hemlock.
That young
