Summer choked, inhaled, wheezed, then stared at her, the tips of his ears going vividly hot. “Mom!”
Lily only smiled that innocent smile of hers. “Well. I hadn’t been one hundred percent certain, but that reaction certainly confirmed it. I do hope you’re being safe, darling. And using plenty of lubricant.”
“I—you—I cannot have this conversation with you!” he garbled out, every word twisting and tripping over his tongue horribly; he just stared at her in horror, fingers rigid in hers. “You—you knew?”
“I do now.” With a pleased smile, Lily pulled her hand from his and patted his knuckles, then rose to her feet, briskly dusting her dress off. “Eat your pancakes, dear. I’ll get you some milk.”
Summer just...stared after his mother, as she bustled to the fridge.
And Fox wondered why sometimes, Summer just bit the bullet and dove in, no matter what outrageous things were in his head.
Summer had learned from the best.
But even on his worst day...
He’d never be as incorrigible and wonderful as Lily Hemlock.
The fact that Summer wasn’t back yet shouldn’t make Fox so restless.
Fox shouldn’t be so...so needy.
Shouldn’t want to be around Summer so much.
He was the one who had set the time limit on this.
Even if he was greedy to want to make the most of it, to enjoy what he could while they had something...
If he wanted too much?
He wouldn’t want to leave, when the time came.
But he still didn’t think he could stand to stay.
Nor could he stand to sit still. He’d been staring at the stack of homework assignments in his lap for nearly an hour, since Summer had texted and said he was staying late at Lily’s to do some work on the house, and to eat without him.
No—more, he’d been staring at the coffee table, fixed on a spot just past the tip of his pen.
Hellfire.
What was this agitation eating at him?
With a frustrated sound, Fox tossed his pen onto the coffee table with a clatter, sending it spinning against the dark lacquer, then dropped the stack of pages next to it, stood, and stalked into the kitchen. His fingers fumbled clumsily with the apron strings as he strapped it on over his shirt and slacks, before ducking into the refrigerator to see what was left when he had been too wrapped up in work, in life, in Summer to remember the grocery store this week.
Except rather than empty shelves...
He found the refrigerator nearly overflowing.
Summer must have gone shopping while Fox was visiting Lily to stock his herb cabinet, this morning.
Fresh mushroom caps in a little plastic-wrapped foam bin—Fox hated the stems. A crisper full of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots; real baby carrots, instead of adult carrots shaved down to nubs, something Fox fussed over because the taste was different and he was something of a picky eater. Even bell peppers...but the yellow ones.
Fox liked the yellow ones.
He didn’t care that they were the same vegetables as the green ones, the red ones; he’d swear they tasted different.
Two percent milk, instead of one percent or skim. Cups of Greek yogurt in every flavor Fox liked. Eggs, but the brown ones, because that, too, was another thing Fox fussed about with food.
Summer had paid attention to every little thing over these short days, and remembered.
Something so small shouldn’t hit Fox so hard, but it made him realize exactly why he was so restless.
He was lonely.
And rather than cooking dinner alone as he had for twenty years before Summer had come tearing into his life like a summer storm...
He wanted to be where Summer was.
Helping him fix up Lily’s tidy little house. Laughing with him over how his mother did so enjoy embarrassing him. Staying to help them make dinner. Creating something not just with his hands, but with other people that he cared about. Being part of something, with both his old friend and the man he was starting to think of not as a casual, temporary fling, but as...but as...
As his lover.
How long had they been doing this?
A week? More?
Time had no meaning, not when he drifted in a haze of Summer from waking until sleeping, until even those moments in class when they had to separate as Professor Iseya and Mr. Hemlock were only a bristling haze of tension waiting until they were alone again, slamming each other against the desk, devouring each other in kisses that were beginning to feel as if they could never sate the hungry void inside Fox.
A void that had only seemed to grow larger, since he’d opened himself to this.
He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the icy freezer door.
Was he trying to make up for so many lost years all at once?
He couldn’t do this.
Couldn’t fall so fast, so hard.
He wouldn’t let himself.
And he forced all thoughts of Summer from his mind, as he pulled the bell peppers out and dragged a cutting board off its wall hook, before turning the sink on and beginning to scrub one of the firm yellow peppers under the warm spray. He’d make a simple stir-fry, he thought; peppers, onions, mushrooms, perhaps the beef tips he’d glimpsed in one of the cooler compartments. He—
Fox almost hated himself for the delicious, horrible, sweet, painful shock that went through his heart at the sound of the front latch clicking.
He told himself not to look up, but he couldn’t stop himself.
As Summer stepped inside—a dirty mess, his T-shirt stained with grass and dirt and rust and who knew what else, his hair sweaty and raked back from his face in a tangle of black fluff, smudges on his cheeks, his arms grimed with sweat and dirt that outlined the hardened shapes of toned musculature. His shirt clung to him in a film of sweat, and his old, ragged jeans hung temptingly low on his hips,
