by Cole McCade
“Why did you sign up for that program in the first place?”
“...I thought I could help people,” Summer admitted, gentle and heartfelt. “I thought I could bring people some peace by helping them find out who killed the people they loved. And I enjoyed the psych part of it, but...” He shuddered, tension rippling through the tight planes of muscle under Fox’s palms. “Not the death. And I didn’t know what else to do, so I switched to education...and ended up back here.”
So bitter, Fox thought. As bitter as he had been warm when he spoke of wanting to help people with such a simple, honest desire.
“You didn’t want to come back here?” he asked carefully.
“Not like this.”
“Not like what?”
“...like me.” Choked, low. “Soft and weak and still scared of everything. Scared of me.”
Ah... Summer.
Fox couldn’t stop himself from tightening his hold, spreading his palms over Summer’s back, gathering him in until there was hardly breath or space between them, stroking his hands down Summer’s spine as if he could impress his words on him in touch, in warmth that he didn’t quite know how to express in words.
But he tried, murmuring, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being soft.”
“One of my professors said that, too. Before I left Baltimore.” Summer sighed. “Professor Khalaji. He quit teaching in the criminology program and went back to being a police detective, but...he remembered me, even though I dropped out. And he told me...” He stopped, turning his head to rest his cheek to Fox’s chest, his eyes slipping open, just hints of deep blue glimmering through his lashes. “He told me that ‘soft’ isn’t something many people are anymore, and that it’s not a bad thing to be soft. Not a bad thing to protect that. So maybe...”
He lifted his head, then, looking at Fox eye to eye.
There was so much fear swimming in those depths, Fox thought. So much hesitation, uncertainty, this bright shooting star of a young man with no idea where he was shooting off to.
Yet still... Summer smiled.
And there was something so very beautiful in that.
In the way Summer could crumple under the worst pain, the worst fear, and still smile.
“Maybe I want to protect being soft,” Summer whispered. “And I want to make it safe for other people to be soft, too.”
He said it the same way he said Fox’s name: quiet, pleading, entreating.
Asking, as he always asked...
For Fox to let him in, in so many subtle ways.
I don’t know how, Fox thought, but still...still he reached up to brush Summer’s messy tangle of hair back from his eyes, tracing his fingertips along one arching black brow.
“That feels like a loaded statement,” he said, and Summer lidded his eyes, leaning into the touch.
“Maybe.” He smiled sweetly. “You could be soft with me, if you wanted.”
Fox quirked his lips. “I don’t know if I have any softness left in me, Summer.”
“I think you do,” Summer said. “Or we wouldn’t be like this right now.”
Chapter Nine
Hope, Summer thought, was infinitely more painful than fear.
Fear was a dread certainty, most of the time, that whatever could go wrong...would. Fear was a consistent negative, a terrible dread, but at least something that could be relied on to persistently centralize around its source.
Hope, on the other hand...
Hope was sheer uncertainty, tossing him up and down and up and down as if his heart was on a trampoline and trailing his emotions behind it every time he went bounding high and then came crashing down low, each string of feelings dug into his heart with hooks that made every tiny thing pull too painfully hard.
And God, did everything about Fox pull at him so painfully hard.
The way the man looked every morning, so perfectly sharp and cool and elegant in his white shirts, slacks, suspenders, glasses, his hair bound up so neatly.
The way his voice had subtly changed in how he spoke to Summer, even when correcting his mistakes in reviewing lesson plans and assignments—the barb of disapproval vanishing to instead leave something almost like mocking affection, completely removing the sting from any errors Summer made and even turning gentle as Fox guided him, question by question, step by step, to find the right path and learn how teaching worked.
The subtle approval in silver eyes as they tracked Summer throughout the classroom, while Summer found his place working one-on-one with the boys to help with their assignments and answer their questions—and how Fox let him answer them his own way, finding common ground with the students by explaining in layman’s terms that he hoped would make more sense to them than the clinical terminology in the textbook or the more advanced concepts Fox never quite seemed to realize were above everyone’s head, when that inscrutable mind was often so far off into one theory or another.
The fact that when they were alone, he could even call him Fox at all, and watch the way every time Summer said his name, Fox subtly colored, paused for a half-breath, darted a flickering and meaningful glance at him before looking away.
And the way every day Fox’s kisses sank deeper, pushed Summer dizzyingly higher and higher still, left him electric with the thrill of wanting and the hope that...that...
That maybe this could be something more, when he didn’t think...
Didn’t think Fox would touch him so softly and comfort him so gently in those moments when he couldn’t breathe and the panic-rabbit thumped its feet inside his chest and he wanted to scream for no reason at all, just because some wire had tweaked wrong in his brain and he’d built himself up into a mess.
If only most of the things he built himself up over weren’t Fox himself, when he took every distracted, hard-eyed glance or preoccupied, annoyed twist of Fox’s lips to heart like an arrow struck so deep, even though Summer logically knew they weren’t for him.
And if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just Fox preying on his mind.
It was the way Jay and Eli wouldn’t talk to each other in the halls anymore.
The way he’d noticed Theodore strutting, and almost herding Eli away from Jay during lunch periods and free periods after classes.
He thought Jay might be sleeping in one of the other boys’ rooms, now.
And he couldn’t do anything about it, because Assistant Principal Walden had forbidden him from acting in any role other than teaching and tutoring.
It ate at him, especially when he’d been slowly getting Eli in particular to warm up to him, to trust him...
And now he felt like he was breaking his promises.
He couldn’t sleep, thinking about that—tossing, turning, staring at the walls, the windows, the ceiling, for once not lying awake thinking about Fox’s lips, his body...
Instead lying awake wondering if he’d just made a mess with promises he couldn’t keep, and left that boy feeling like maybe he couldn’t trust anyone to keep his word, now.
Couldn’t trust anyone to be on his side.
Summer exhaled heavily, flopping onto his back and slamming his head against the pillow, staring up at the arcs of moonlight moving across the ceiling.
He was never going to get to sleep like this.
Back at the university he’d at least been able to wear himself out with swimming, until he was so exhausted he had no choice but to sleep.
Now that he thought about it...
There was the pool used for swim club, here at the school—almost large enough for competitive sports, housed in its own attached building so it could be used year-round.
Technically no one was allowed in the pool after dinner hours.
...but technically that rule only applied to students.
It was just a tiny deviation.
And Sum
mer always tried to follow the rules, but...
Maybe just this one time, for the sake of being able to sleep, he’d break them.
Why not.
He smiled to himself, then slipped out of bed to change.
* * *
Fox did not like this newfound restless energy.
He preferred his thoughts calm. Quiet. Even if it came at the cost of a certain emotional deadness, at the very least it let him maintain his focus and a certain peace of mind.
Not this...this...
Constant agitation that had him feeling ready to snap at any moment, on a hair trigger, constantly needing to be moving and not even sure why save for that his body did not seem to want to hold still. He would find himself tapping pins, jittering his foot against his knee when he crossed his legs, restlessly drumming his fingers, standing from his chair and then sitting down again.
Or, as he was now, prowling the school grounds, hoping that a walk beneath the trees and the open moonlight would at least settle his thoughts.
And get them off Summer damned Hemlock.
That young man was starting to border on an intrusive thought.
With every moment Fox’s mind wasn’t on classwork, on keeping those unruly monsters in line, on planning the next week’s lessons and assignments...
It somehow drifted back to Summer.
And sometimes Fox found himself simply touching his lips, when they always seemed tender and sensitive lately with the pressure of daily kisses stolen between classes, against desks, against the wall in his office, in the secret crevice of a hallway with students passing by utterly oblivious beyond.
With staff meetings and so many other things to worry about, it always seemed every kiss was just a half-second’s stolen moment, over too soon when one thing or another always interrupted.
And it was rather quite annoying Fox that each time a student or a phone call or an authoritative rap on the office door cut them off...
Fox found himself left unsatisfied, and craving more.
He let his drifting steps take him through the overgrowth around Whitemist Lake, the little burrs growing among the grass and flowers catching on his slacks as if trying to drag him back from the edge, the scent of the night clear and damp and at least settling his agitation somewhat, even if it couldn’t calm his thoughts.
His reflection was a quiet murky thing in the depths, and he could only look at it for a moment before he had to turn away.
It made him think too much of drowning; of ghosts sinking away into the dark and the deep, like Isabella of the legend.
Like Michiko, dying alone and trapped in her vehicle, swallowed into the darkness of night, into the blackness of the river, deep down where the moon couldn’t even reach her to light her way.
He hadn’t even been there.
Not to save her, and not to die with her.
He’d failed her.
How, he couldn’t quantify. If he stepped out of himself objectively, he knew he wasn’t being even remotely rational.
But then feelings weren’t rational.
Grief wasn’t rational.
And neither was the struggling, floundering sense of drowning in his own attempts to find himself, when he realized he was ready to stop grieving but didn’t know how.
He tilted his head back, let the wind kiss his cheeks, looked up at the quiet sallow curve of a dim moon shrouded by clouds.
“Were you there with her, that night?” he whispered. “Can you tell me someone was with her, even when I wasn’t?”
The moon didn’t answer.
The moon would never answer, because it was only Fox projecting shallow, selfish needs to imagine that some quiet silver hand had reached down from the heavens and eased Michiko’s pain in those last silent, airless moments.
No matter how many times he told himself that, though...
It still comforted him in small, aching ways.
Maybe he hoped, one day, when he died a day or a thousand days or fifty years from now...
There would be someone to hold his hand, too.
Someone more tangible than fingers of pale moonlight.
“Is this really what I want?” he asked. “To pull myself so far out of reach that one day I’ll only know this empty coldness...where no one can take my hand at all?”
Just as the moon had not answered for Michiko...
It did not answer for him.
He’d known it wouldn’t.
But he smiled, nonetheless.
And bent to pluck a single little daisy from among the rioting wildflowers, before tossing it out onto the water and watching it sink.
Maybe he wasn’t quite ready to wish to Isabella for what he truly wanted, when he couldn’t define that just yet himself.
But one small offering, perhaps.
Just that he wouldn’t ruin whatever this strange bright feeling was, that he had every time Summer was near.
He turned away from the lake, heading up toward the main school building again—but paused as bright rectangles of light caught his attention, spilling across the grass from the swimming annex’s high, narrow rows of windows.
Fox frowned, knitting his brows together.
No one should be in there at this time of night.
He knew quite well that sometimes the students snuck in to skinny-dip despite all the safety warnings, but...
Whenever he caught them at it, he stuck them with grounds duty for months.
This time would be no exception.
Tightening his jaw, he changed his path to find the footstones buried in the grass and leading up to the annex. When he pushed the door open, though...
He didn’t expect to find not the students—
But Summer.
Summer cut through the glossy blue waters of the pool like a seal, sleek and strong and gleaming, the sheen of water pouring over him turning his tanned skin into burnished gold. He was tight and toned from head to toe, with long, graceful legs sculpted into smooth flexions of muscle that kicked powerfully, while hardened arms cut through the water smoothly and made his naked back bunch and coil with kinetic energy captured in sinew, transformed into propulsion, nearly writhing with naked sensuality. The water glided over him as if it loved him, and wanted to cling to him as closely as possible.
From the hot, almost furious yearning in the pit of his stomach, the tightening in his thighs, the pulling at his core...
Fox knew the feeling all too well.
Summer reached the end of his lap and stopped at the edge of the pool, settling to tread water with one hand gripping at the molded concrete rim and the other pushing his hair back out of his face; he wore swim trunks that were barely more than briefs, tiny shorts in a dark, satiny blue that clung obscenely to his hips and thighs, cupping his bottom and seeming to lick at his skin as he pulled himself out, water sheeting off him in caressing droplets and his entire body one perfect flux, a ripple of strength pouring from head to toe as he hauled himself out so effortlessly and twisted to sit on the edge with his feet dangling in the water.
He reached for the towel he’d left folded on the edge of the pool.
Then stopped, eyes widening as they locked on Fox.
“Oh,” Summer said faintly. “Hi.”
Fox realized he’d been staring.
Utterly transfixed, captured simply by the obsessive worship of every inch of Summer, devouring him with every look and so completely lost in taking him in that he hadn’t even realized what he was doing, hadn’t even thought to stop himself until he was already caught, frozen, going stiff.
Oh.
Well.
This was awkward.
He cleared his throat, gut tightening, tearing his gaze away from the way a single glistening runnel of water poured down Summer’s cheek to catch on the stark, graceful line
of his jaw, hanging there like a captured tear...only to fall, glimmering, down to catch on the temptingly strong lines of his throat. Instead Fox stared somewhere over his head, fixing on one of the life preservers mounted on white tile walls that shimmered with the ever-shifting reflections off the surface of the water.
“My apologies for intruding,” he forced out, his jaw tight, refusing to unclench. “I had thought one of the students was breaking curfew, as well as the rules about pool hours.”
Summer let out a quiet, embarrassed laugh. “I think I’m probably still breaking the rules, but I was hoping I wouldn’t get caught and fired.”
“I think if I haven’t reported you for grossly inappropriate behavior yet, you’re safe from this minor infraction.”
“Or you just don’t want to admit you keep making exceptions for me,” Summer lilted softly. “You want to come in? It’s actually not too cold.”
Fox flinched.
He felt it inside as much as out in that instinctive recoiling of his body; the instinctive recoiling of his thoughts, a defensive barrier slamming down.
He was fine, usually, as long as he didn’t think about it—about the cold airless depths. He could be near water, could walk over bridges and along ponds without a second thought, so long as the water didn’t...
Didn’t touch him.
Didn’t wrap around him in its cold, sucking embrace and give him a taste of what it must have felt like.
Sometimes it came to him in his dreams.
Where he couldn’t escape, until his body woke him in a cold, terrible sweat.
He had no choice about his dreams.
He at least had a choice not to torture himself while awake.
He folded his arms over his chest, and told himself he wasn’t wrapping them around himself in a defensive wall.
“I don’t swim,” he said carefully. “I prefer to avoid immersion in water entirely, other than the necessities for a shower.”
Summer had started to unfold the towel—but now stopped with the pale terrycloth clasped between his fingers, watching Fox discerningly. His guilelessness was disarming, Fox had started to realize over the passing days; it was so easy to get distracted by the frank openness in his eyes that one didn’t realize that as much as Summer gave away his emotions...