Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
It had to be a wholly new thing, when he was seeing Iseya with wholly new eyes.
He idly ran his fingertips over his stomach, touched the fingers of his other hand to his lips, remembered...
Professor Iseya’s mouth.
That hand on his throat.
But more...
The way Iseya’s breath had caught, wild and warm and quick, when Summer had captured just a few strands of that tumbling wispy black hair he’d always wanted to touch, to bury his fingers in, to tease down from its clip and wrap himself up in until he and Iseya were tangled together inextricably.
That moment.
That moment had told him he was very much interested in the man Iseya was now, rather than the legend he’d been back then.
Summer wasn’t yet sure what to do with that.
But as he rolled over and buried his face in the pillows and hugged one close to his chest, he hoped...
He hoped tomorrow he would have the chance to find out.
* * *
Fox had never been on friendly terms with sleep.
Not when sleep brought memories.
Not when sleep brought dreams, horrible things of a lightless dark where there was no air and only the choking, frigid sensation of water pouring endlessly down his throat and into his lungs while he fought for eternities for breaths that would never come.
Not when sleep somehow never let him escape from the awareness that his bed was painfully empty, when he rolled over in the middle of the night to drape his arms against a warm body.
And there was no warm body there.
He stared out the window of his bedroom, in his private family suite that he should have given up long ago and yet the school administrators had allowed him to keep out of something too close to pity for his pride to accept. Hour by hour, inch by inch, the shafts of moonlight pouring through the window slid across his bed, marking minutes in cutouts of light and shadow, time moving forward while Fox himself didn’t move at all.
His hand stretched across the bed, splayed against the sheets, resting in that empty space.
He didn’t remember the shape that was supposed to fill it anymore, when he’d thought he always would.
When he’d thought that hole in his life would always be the same, an outline so precise, so perfect, it would always hold the imprint of her.
But that imprint was fuzzy around the edges, now. Time had eroded away the shape of that hole until it was less precise and somehow more just an impression, an idea, a vague concept without specifics, and he thought...
He thought he was betraying something, somehow.
Thought he was betraying himself.
His memories, the love he’d thought would be forever.
Simply by letting that empty space inside him go vague.
And simply by remembering the taste of another on his lips, a startling and new thing that wouldn’t leave him over a day after Summer had caught Fox’s chin in his hand and made him remember what it was like to breathe in tandem with someone else.
It should hurt more, he thought dimly.
It should hurt, should cut so deep he bled.
But it didn’t.
It only left him frustrated, and wondering.
If he was more upset that he missed her...
Or more upset at the realization that he didn’t.
But he didn’t know what should take the place of that feeling, now.
Or who he was without it.
When he felt as though his entire self was just papier-mâché painted in a thin and crumbling layer over that empty hollow of grief.
Strip that away...
And what was left?
He didn’t know.
And he was almost angry with that bright and beautiful blue-eyed boy...
...for forcing him to ask.
Chapter Four
Summer was up before his alarm.
And changed clothes six times before he headed out to meet Iseya for morning planning.
With the psych class as an elective, it only ran in three blocks after the lunch period; the mornings, per the rather tersely written schedule he’d been emailed a week or so back, were for lesson planning, grading papers, and discussion. Summer supposed they were also his own informal class periods—where he’d ask Iseya what he needed to know, learn what he needed to ask.
As if he had any idea what to ask.
Any idea what to even say, as he stood outside Iseya’s office and tried to calm the flutters and the twists in his chest, his stomach, even in his legs. Swallowing, his mouth like nettles and sand, he scrubbed his hands against his thighs. He’d settled on simple black slacks, dress shoes, a white dress shirt, though he couldn’t breathe and he pulled the top two buttons loose until the collar no longer felt like it was choking him to death.
Just...go in.
He was supposed to be here.
Iseya wasn’t going to tell him to get out.
He wasn’t.
And that note in Summer’s pocket...
He slipped his fingers into the pocket of his slacks and just touched the paper, feeling its somewhat brittle, strange texture against his fingertips.