So he only told himself to smile, and smile, and smile again...
And stepped back out to join Fox for dinner.
Chapter Fourteen
Summer’s palms were slimed with sweat.
He could do this. He knew he could do this, he just...
He was about to face down the very wealthy parents of six different boys—the only ones who had responded to the summons, out of a dozen. People who were annoyed at having to waste their Sunday traveling for this. People who felt they were too important for parent-teacher conferences; people who didn’t even bother coming to get their boys for holidays, from the things Summer had heard from the other teachers, even if he spent less time talking to the other faculty and staff than he should considering how completely wrapped up he often was in Fox.
Fuck.
Fox.
He should be so happy, right now.
But he felt like he was wearing a mask of a relationship, versus the real thing.
They’d fallen into the last two uneventful weeks so easily that it had felt almost mechanical, these comfortable days and nights together, evenings of passionate, heady sex that left him wrung out and sore, wordless and clinging to Fox and afraid to say anything into the silence in case he crossed some line that would make Fox just...
Not want to do this anymore.
But it felt like Fox had already checked out, and was going through the motions.
And it felt like Summer had forgotten how to be brave, because suddenly every time he thought to challenge Fox’s silence, the way he withdrew into himself, the way his very blandness just built those walls thicker around him when for just a moment, Summer had been allowed a glimpse inside...
The words crumbled on his tongue, and he couldn’t say anything.
But he was starting to wonder if sleeping with Fox had made things worse, somehow. That threshold had been a turning point, perhaps.
Yet the path it had turned them down only gave Summer access to Fox’s body and a physical facsimile of his affection.
While pushing him further away from Fox’s heart.
He just wanted to know if Fox felt something for him. Anything other than the tired affection one felt for an overly gregarious puppy.
But he was still so hard to read.
So hard to understand, and he always seemed to have a way of glossing over and retreating somewhere distant every time Summer looked at him with his heart in his eyes and kissed him with his love on his lips.
Fox looked almost bored now, though, as he leaned back in his desk chair and tapped a pen against his knee, watching Summer with arched brows.
“Do stop pacing,” he said. “They’re rich. They’re not gods.”
“I don’t care about their money,” Summer said, doing another circuit from side to side of the office, swallowing and yet he couldn’t loosen the clotting in his throat. “I just...what if they don’t care? What if they tell me I wasted their time? What if—”
As he pivoted on his heel for another stalk across the office, he stopped as he slammed right up against the wall of Fox’s chest.
And suddenly he couldn’t move at all, as Fox’s arms wrapped around him and stopped him in his tracks.
“Enough what if,” Fox said, a deep rumble that washed over Summer in soothing vibrations, while strong hands curled against his back. “They are here. It is done. This is what you wanted, so you have to follow through. If they don’t care, if they feel you wasted their time...you didn’t waste your own time, because you tried. And is that not what you said matters? That these boys know someone is trying for them.”
“That’s...that’s what I’m telling myself.” Summer curled his fingers in Fox’s crisply starched shirt-sleeves, resting his head to his shoulder, turning his face into his throat. “But I’m scared to just...jump into this with both feet, and fuck it up.”
“Ah.” Soft, warm, understanding, and Fox’s arms tightened around him. “I do know that feeling quite well.”
God, there it was.
Those ambiguous statements in that low, thrumming voice, that made Summer wish, hope, wonder...
Wonder if Fox really did feel something for him.
Deeper than just tolerant affection.
Deep enough to hold him like this, comfort him like this, because he mattered to Fox—and Summer clung just a little tighter, the question on his tongue.
The question, and the soft words he’d been holding inside, keeping them in his heart while they grew and grew and grew until they wouldn’t fit anymore and he was going to burst with them.
I love you.
He wanted to say it.
He wanted to say it so much, but if he did...
Fox might go completely cold on him, and then Summer wouldn’t have even the quiet moments of intimacy he stole with every touch, needing to feel Fox’s heartbeat against his own just so he knew that heart still ran hot somewhere behind that cold façade.
So instead of those words, he swallowed, whispered, “You’ll stay, right?”
“I will stay,” Fox promised softly. “This is your endeavor, but I will be here. You will not be alone.”
“Thank you.” Summer pushed himself up to kiss Fox’s chin, smiling weakly. “Seriously, thank you. I don’t think I could do this without you.”
“You could,” Fox said, something odd in his voice, in his gaze. “That is what makes you strong, Summer. Stronger than you realize.” He brushed his knuckles against Summer’s cheek, a rough graze of sensation—then lifted his head at an imperious knock on his office door, two silhouettes moving restlessly outside the clouded glass. “And you will need that strength. Here they are.”
“Oh, God.” Summer wet his lips, then breathed in deep, filling his chest so fast his head went dizzy and light. “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this,” he told himself, then strode forward to open the door with the best smile he could manage, squaring his shoulders and reminding himself...
If Fox believed he was strong, then he had to be.
He had to be.
So here we go.
Maybe this hadn’t been
