Utterly transfixed, captured simply by the obsessive worship of every inch of Summer, devouring him with every look and so completely lost in taking him in that he hadn’t even realized what he was doing, hadn’t even thought to stop himself until he was already caught, frozen, going stiff.
Oh.
Well.
This was awkward.
He cleared his throat, gut tightening, tearing his gaze away from the way a single glistening runnel of water poured down Summer’s cheek to catch on the stark, graceful line of his jaw, hanging there like a captured tear...only to fall, glimmering, down to catch on the temptingly strong lines of his throat. Instead Fox stared somewhere over his head, fixing on one of the life preservers mounted on white tile walls that shimmered with the ever-shifting reflections off the surface of the water.
“My apologies for intruding,” he forced out, his jaw tight, refusing to unclench. “I had thought one of the students was breaking curfew, as well as the rules about pool hours.”
Summer let out a quiet, embarrassed laugh. “I think I’m probably still breaking the rules, but I was hoping I wouldn’t get caught and fired.”
“I think if I haven’t reported you for grossly inappropriate behavior yet, you’re safe from this minor infraction.”
“Or you just don’t want to admit you keep making exceptions for me,” Summer lilted softly. “You want to come in? It’s actually not too cold.”
Fox flinched.
He felt it inside as much as out in that instinctive recoiling of his body; the instinctive recoiling of his thoughts, a defensive barrier slamming down.
He was fine, usually, as long as he didn’t think about it—about the cold airless depths. He could be near water, could walk over bridges and along ponds without a second thought, so long as the water didn’t...
Didn’t touch him.
Didn’t wrap around him in its cold, sucking embrace and give him a taste of what it must have felt like.
Sometimes it came to him in his dreams.
Where he couldn’t escape, until his body woke him in a cold, terrible sweat.
He had no choice about his dreams.
He at least had a choice not to torture himself while awake.
He folded his arms over his chest, and told himself he wasn’t wrapping them around himself in a defensive wall.
“I don’t swim,” he said carefully. “I prefer to avoid immersion in water entirely, other than the necessities for a shower.”
Summer had started to unfold the towel—but now stopped with the pale terrycloth clasped between his fingers, watching Fox discerningly. His guilelessness was disarming, Fox had started to realize over the passing days; it was so easy to get distracted by the frank openness in his eyes that one didn’t realize that as much as Summer gave away his emotions...
He perceived a great deal, as well.
And had a way of looking at people as if he understood far too much about the aches inside them; the darkness and the pain, all the raw places that eventually hardened into sharp-edged armor keen enough to cut anyone who got too close.
Fox had grown accustomed to making himself unseen, in his own way.
And it was discomfiting to be looked at by someone who seemed to want to know every last agony that still haunted him, in those secret places where he could not let go.
He turned his face away, folding his arms over his chest, waiting for the unspoken thing that seemed to hover on Summer’s lips. Likely some platitude, some useless bit of comfort that had lost meaning years ago when one of the first things Fox had learned was...
Words did not change anything.
Not for him.
The words of reassurance, of useless sympathy, only gave comfort to those who had lost nothing.
They were empty, to those who had lost...had lost...
Everything.
So he wasn’t expecting when that low, quiet voice said, “You aren’t the one who drowned, you know. I’m not sure you know that.”
It struck with the precision of a sword-thrust, and the cruelty of a death blow—a sensation as though his heart had split in two, striking rough and deep as Fox whipped his head back to stare at Summer, at that seemingly innocent face that could utter such terrible and hateful barbs, poison disguised as sugar in soft words.
“Excuse you?” he threw back, and hated how for a moment his voice quivered—then halted, his throat closing sharply, unexpectedly, with a rush so hard and so wretched he thought he would scream. “You have no right—”
“You’re right,” Summer said. “I don’t. I don’t have any right because I have no idea how you feel, and I have no idea what it’s like to lose someone the way you did.” He stood, unfolding his body with feline grace, steps silent on the concrete rimming the pool as he rounded the edge to draw closer to Fox. “I just know this hurts. It hurts seeing you living like you’re already dead, when you’re not.” His mouth actually trembled, before firming as he stopped in front of Fox, looking up at him with something dark and determined sparking in nightshade eyes, in the set of his jaw. “I know she left you behind and it’s terrifying, Fox. I know you feel like...like you’re completely alone. But you’re not. So you don’t have to hold on to the loneliness, the fear...like if you let go of them, you’ll have nothing left.”
“I won’t!” Fox flared, and he didn’t know why it hurt to breathe but it was abysmal, this horrid pain inside his chest, this dull heavy thing like a pounding fist smashing against the tender meat of him with every cursed word. He glared at Summer, fingers clenching, digging hard into the fabric of his sleeves, the flesh of his elbows. “I wasn’t even there, Summer. I wasn’t there for her. She died alone, crushed under that water in the darkness, and I wasn’t even there so she wouldn’t have to be the only one.”
“But you can’t change that by giving up on living at all.”
For all Fox’s harshness, Summer was gentle, soft—and he rested one warm
