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)
And Summer didn’t have the heart to push him about it.
Not right now.
Not when pushing might mean losing what little time he had.
Having something was better than having nothing at all, wasn’t it?
...wasn’t it?
He asked himself that again and again, as he slid into his shirt and worked his fingers up the row of buttons.
But he didn’t have an answer.
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.