But Summer wouldn’t let him escape this feeling.
Not when that warmth drew closer, settling shoulder to shoulder...before Summer’s hand pressed hot to the small of his back, and Summer’s voice was a close and intimate thing in the dark space behind his eyelids.
“You don’t get it back, Fox,” he whispered. “What’s gone is gone...and instead of trying to get it back, you have to let it go and build something new. Every new thing is its own thing. You can’t...turn it into something else.”
Fox knew what he was really saying.
You can’t turn me into her.
And he didn’t think he wanted to.
Not when deep down, he was...he was angry at her, and he couldn’t even understand why.
Or why he’d been taking that anger out on Summer all this time.
Breathing in harshly, Fox lifted his head, glaring at Summer miserably through the wet sheen over his eyes. “I don’t know how to make something new,” he bit off. “I don’t know how to be anything other than cold and selfish and horrible. Do you know what I thought, when I realized you were about to ask Walden for the guidance counselor job?”
Summer watched him with those soft eyes. So soft, but soft things were so easily hurt by rough handling, and Fox didn’t know how to be delicate right now.
“Tell me,” Summer urged gently. “It’s okay, Fox.”
But it wasn’t. Fox smiled bitterly, a brittle and awful thing. “I thought, ‘You can’t. You can’t, because the school will need me to stay and if I stay, then you’ll need me,’ and I can’t stand that. You needing me.” He let out a harsh bark of laughter. “I don’t know how you can need me when I’m not... I’m not anything, I’m not anything anyone needs, I’m just awful when I know damned well that you would be the best guidance counselor this school has seen. Even more, I know you. I know it would make you happier than teaching, and yet...my first thought was of me.”
He expected that handsome, bright face to crumple with hurt.
With betrayal.
Yet instead, Summer only sighed patiently, shaking his head.
Before his arms came around Fox tightly, drawing him in. Drawing him in the way Fox usually drew Summer in with his anxiety attacks, only somehow now it was Summer wrapping around him and resting his chin to the top of Fox’s head; Summer enveloping him with the half-crushed flower crown between them, with its broken cloying scent rising up to fill the space around them.
“You know me,” Summer murmured, his voice a soft vibration between them, “because you pay attention to me. Because you care what makes me happy and unhappy. And caring that much scares you, because caring means you can be hurt. But I’m going to tell you what my mother told me.” Strong arms tightened, an encouraging, gentle squeeze, as if Summer could knead all his bright, effusive emotions into Fox. “You want what anyone wants. To never hurt again. But that’s not possible unless we shut ourselves off from feeling at all...and I think you’ve been shut off long enough, Fox. I think you know that, too...and it frightens you, but it’s okay to be scared.”
“Just because it’s acceptable doesn’t mean I want it,” Fox hissed—but he couldn’t pull away from Summer, couldn’t seem to break back from that gentle yet sheltering hold. “Something as old and broken as I am...you can’t fix, Summer. You can’t fix me just by caring enough. You’ll never make me someone whole enough to care for you the way you care for me.”
“What you don’t seem to understand is that I’m not trying to fix you.” Here, now, was Summer’s strength, his steadiness, how his anxiety seemed to vanish when Fox was the one to break down, leaving Summer the one speaking in calm, soothing tones, giving back that warmth and care he seemed to possess in infinite supply. “I love you just as you are, Fox. Broken bits and all. I don’t want to make you someone else. I want you, and for you to care for me as you would...not as anyone else.”
No three words should cut with such knifelike keenness.
The last person who had said them to him had said them idly, an afterthought, on the way out the door to an ordinary day that would turn into a shattering, life-changing night.
Fox jerked back, staring at Summer. Staring at him as if those words would crumble Summer into nothing before his very eyes, but there was only a solemn young man looking at him with his heart written on his face and...and...
Fox was shaking.
He was shaking, everything in him building up to a scream, his lips parting and—
And the sky crashing open in a cracking roar of thunder, as if it was calling out for him, as if it cried in his voice. Heart slamming, he stared up at the sky; so did Summer, as lightning slashed across the darkened clouds and the storm that had been building since morning finally broke.
The rain came down as if a bucket had been tipped over, sluicing down in icy slashes. Summer yelped, covering his head, then stumbled to his feet, reaching for Fox’s hand with a laugh, rain soaking his hair to his skull in a black cap, immediately darkening his shirt to a translucent layer of pale blue that let golden skin shine through.
“Come on!” he gasped, and before Fox could protest he found himself hauled up, dragged along, dropping the flower crown from lax fingers to send it flying into the lake, his dress shoes slipping on the wet grass but they were dashing, running, darting inside and he felt like those words were on his heels, chasing him, nipping at his ankles, even if he could never escape them when the one who had spoken them held him so fast.
As if Summer would never let him go.
They didn’t stop until they reached Fox’s suite, tumbled inside, dripping all over the floor. Summer shook himself
