by Ally Blue
The easy smile vanished from Sean’s face. He leaned forward on his elbows, staring at Adrian with an intense determination that had become all too familiar over the years. “I know they do. But everybody would like you too, if you gave them the chance. You’re a great guy, Adrian. You just have to open up enough to let other people see that.”
Yeah, because everyone loves a guy who can move things with his mind.
Adrian shoved the bitter thought to the back of his brain and pretended keen interest in his keyboard so he wouldn’t have to meet Sean’s painfully sincere gaze. He hated being discussed, analyzed and advised, even by his beloved brother. Fortunately, he knew just how to make Sean stop.
Straightening his shoulders, Adrian forced himself to look into Sean’s eyes. “Actually, I kind of met someone today.”
Sean lit up like a spotlight. “Well why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place? What’s his name? How’d you meet him?”
“His name’s Greg Woodhall. We met today at Groome Castle. He’s a theater major. He’s playing the ghost of Lyndon Groome at that haunted house I told you about.” Adrian felt an uncharacteristically goofy smile spread over his face. “He was coming on to me like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Wow. Sounds promising.” Sean leaned closer, grinning. “Is he cute?”
Adrian couldn’t help mirroring his brother’s smile. Sean’s eagerness on his behalf was infectious. “Yeah, he’s cute.”
“You gonna ask him out?”
A sudden tension drew Adrian’s shoulders upward. If he could only bring himself to lie, Sean would go away happy, and Adrian would be left in peace. But he couldn’t do it. Lying just wasn’t in his nature. “I doubt it.”
Sean wrinkled his nose. “Why not?”
“It wouldn’t work, that’s all.”
“Again I say, why not?”
Yes, Adrian. Why not?
He tuned out the inner voice which prodded him now and then to expand his scope of experience. It rarely worked out for the best. Sometimes, yes. Like when he’d finally gone to bed with Christian and discovered sex for the first time. But the tempting whispers had hurt him more often than not, and he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t listen anymore.
“We’re too different,” Adrian answered, though he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Sean or himself. “We wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”
Sean made a rude noise. “Bad excuse.”
Sighing, Adrian rested his head in his hands. “Sean, come on—”
“No, dammit.”
Adrian looked up, surprised at the heat in Sean’s voice. The spark in Sean’s eyes matched the expression on his face. It made Adrian feel unaccountably ashamed. “Sean—”
“Look, you’re always like this. Always so damn careful.” Sean jabbed a finger at the computer screen. “Let me tell you something. If you don’t loosen up a little bit, you’re gonna careful yourself into dying alone.”
Anger swelled in Adrian’s gut. Years of hard-won control kicked in before the unwelcome emotion could even raise his heart rate. He arched a cool eyebrow. “I’m only twenty-one, Sean. It’s a little early to be condemning me to a lifetime of loneliness, isn’t it?”
Sean shook his head. “Just ask the guy out, Adrian. What’s the worst that could happen?”
The memory of Adrian’s last date, just over five months ago, flashed into his mind. The boy had called him a frigid, self-loathing emo fag before stalking out and leaving him alone at a club in Raleigh with no ride back to school and not enough cash for a thirty-mile cab fare. He hadn’t even known about Adrian’s abilities. That particular rejection was based purely on Adrian’s sparkling personality.
Adrian elected not to mention the incident, since Sean would only point out that he’d managed to get a ride to the bus station and catch a late bus back, and anyway such a thing wasn’t likely to happen again. “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Adrian heaved an exaggerated sigh. “You’re worse than Mom.”
Sean snickered. Their mother pestered Adrian for details of his nonexistent love life every time she talked to him. It irritated him on one level, because he wasn’t looking for a relationship and wished everyone would just leave him alone and let him concentrate on his studies. Deep inside, however, a part of him loved that his mother accepted his sexuality so completely.
When he’d first come out to his family in ninth grade, it hadn’t been that way. His announcement had torn open wounds everyone had believed healed. His mom had blamed his dad and Sam for Adrian’s “problem”, and Adrian had blamed himself for the renewed rift between his parents. The psychokinesis he’d worked so hard to gain control over had begun to leak through again. He’d lost sleep to endless nightmares and watched his family fall apart right before his eyes.
He still remembered the moment of crystal clarity which changed everything. At three in the morning one rainy Sunday in April, he’d woken his mother and told her that he was himself, that no one made him who and what he was, and that she could either accept him as he was or not, but he would no longer listen to her or anyone else—including himself—assign blame where there was none. He’d turned away from her stunned expression, gone back to his room and fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep. The next day, his mother had called his father and Sam to talk. There had been no more blame, no more nightmares, and now Adrian’s mother nagged him about his love life just like everyone else’s mom did. It was nice to have a bit of normality in his life.
He flexed his well-honed psychokinetic muscle to pull a Carolina mug across the room into his hand, just to remind himself how far from normal he really was.
“Hey. Okay there, bro?”
Shaking himself, Adrian nodded. “Fine. Just thinking.”
“Thinking about asking out Mr. Cute Theater Major?”
Adrian laughed at the hopeful gleam in Sean’s eyes. “Good grief, you’re relentless.”
“That’s what Coach Rodriguez says too.” Behind Sean, someone called something Adrian couldn’t hear through the dorm room door. Sean turned and yelled for whoever it was to wait just a minute, then faced Adrian with an apologetic expression. “Some of the guys want me to go to another party with them.”
“So go on. You should be out having fun tonight, not sitting in your room videochatting with your stick-in-the-mud older brother.” Adrian grinned to show he was only kidding about the stick-in-the-mud part, even if he really wasn’t.
Sean narrowed his eyes, but didn’t argue. “Okay. Well, next time I talk to you I’d better hear about your date with Theater Guy.”
“Greg. We’ll see.” Adrian waved at his brother. “Night, Sean. Have fun.”
“Night.” Sean stood and leaned down into the field of view with his usual sunny smile. “Love you, bro.”
“Love you too.”
Sean’s image stilled on a fuzzy capture of him in motion, turning off the chat function as he straightened up. Adrian studied the blurred outline of Sean’s face, thinking about the things he’d said. As usually happened when Adrian thought about it, Sean’s words made sense. Would it really be so terrible to ask Greg out? Sure, it would hurt if Greg rejected him up front or said hateful things to him later. But he’d survived before. He could survive again, and come out the other side stronger for the experience.
It all sounded suspiciously like something the voice in Adrian’s head—his demon, he called it in his darker moods—would whisper to him. Maybe it was Sean’s evil twin.
Chuckling, Adrian switched off the videochat and clicked back to his paper. He could decide what to do about Greg later. Right now, he had work to do.
Chapter Two
When Adrian arrived at Groome Castle the next morning, only one car sat in the circular gravel drive outside. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything. Many of the students working on the haunted house, including himself, preferred to walk. Freshmen weren’t allowed cars on campus in any case, and at least a third of the haunted house staff were freshmen
. Still, the place seemed much more quiet than it had the day before.
Frowning, Adrian tromped through the piles of crisp brown leaves and up to the wide front steps of the house. Maybe he’d misunderstood the time they were supposed to start work today. He’d thought Marisa, the project manager—or the director, as she preferred to be called—had said ten a.m., but he could be wrong. The high arched ceiling and stone walls of the castle’s tremendous downstairs hall magnified any sound above a normal conversational tone into an echoing boom. Having thirty-something people in the room all trying to talk over each other at once created enough noise to drown out even the loudest single voice, and Marisa had been on the other side of the room from him when she’d told them when to be back the next day.
He found the heavy wooden double doors unlocked. They creaked as they swung open. “Hello?” he called, walking into the foyer. “Anyone here?”
“In the main hall,” a very familiar voice answered. “C’mon in.”
“Be right there.” Adrian shut the door and leaned his forehead against it until his hammering heart slowed down. Didn’t it just figure that the one person already here was the one person he didn’t want to be alone with?
You don’t know he’s the only one here. There might be a whole room full of people in there. Being very, very quiet.
“Bullshit,” Adrian muttered, pushing away from the door. He and Greg were here alone, no doubt about it. He’d just have to deal with it somehow.
Gathering his courage, Adrian turned and strode across the foyer toward the arched entry into the main hall before he could change his mind. His sneakers barely made a sound on the oak plank floor. It wasn’t a real advantage, when Greg knew he was there, but it felt like one anyway. Especially when his silent entrance into the huge room earned him the sight of Greg’s pale skin between the top of his low-slung jeans and the ragged hem of his black Cats T-shirt as he stretched on tiptoe in a vain attempt to reach a sagging cloth on the wall.
Adrian swallowed. God, it really had been too long since he’d gotten laid if the mere glimpse of a strip of smooth bare back could make his mouth go bone dry and his armpits prickle with sweat.
He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
Greg twisted enough to grin over his shoulder. “Adrian. Am I ever glad to see you. Can you help me out here?”
“Um. Sure.” Adrian edged closer, trying to act as if his heart wasn’t attempting to pummel its way through the center of his sternum. “What do you need me to do?”
“See if you can get this cloth back over the hook there.” Stepping back, Greg pointed toward one of the adhesive-backed plastic hooks attached to the stone wall. A loop of dark gray gauze had come loose and sagged just below the white peg. “I can’t reach the stupid thing.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay.”
Adrian walked forward, thinking surely Greg would move out of the way. He didn’t.
God.
Trying to ignore Greg’s nearness, Adrian planted one palm on the wall to brace himself, grasped the cloth in his other hand and reached upward to replace it on the hook. He only had a couple of inches over Greg, but it was enough. Barely. By standing on his toes and straightening his fingers, he managed to get the thin material looped over its hook.
“Okay, that’s got it.” Adrian dropped his arms. “Who hung this, anyway? I know for a fact we didn’t have a ladder down here yesterday.”
“Linda Torino. You know her, right? Redhead, killer body, ’bout nine and a half feet tall?”
Adrian laughed. “Yeah, she used to date my roommate in sophomore year. Nice girl. Though she got very tired of being asked to hang things up where other people couldn’t reach.”
“Speaking of which, thanks for helping me out here. I just couldn’t get it up.” Greg moved closer, a playful smile curving his lips. “The cloth on the hook, that is. For you? I could get other things up just fine.”
Half the blood in Adrian’s body rushed into his face. The other half siphoned southward to his crotch. His head whirled. He put a hand on the wall to keep himself upright, trying to act casual. Maybe Greg wouldn’t notice.
Of course he couldn’t be so lucky. Grin widening, Greg sidled so close Adrian could feel the heat of his body. “Hm. Something tells me you could, um…get up more than a piece of gauze for me too. Am I right?”
Oh God. Adrian shut his eyes. Only mortification and vertigo kept an erection at bay, and the faint, spicy scent of Greg’s skin threatened to erode those two fragile barriers any second now. “Uhhh…”
Greg let out a low chuckle that sent gooseflesh racing up Adrian’s arms. “Oh, man. You do. You want me.”
An arm slid around Adrian’s waist. He yelped, eyes flying open again. “What?”
“It’s okay.” Greg pressed close and nuzzled Adrian’s throat. “I want you too, in case that wasn’t totally obvious.”
“Greg, no.” Adrian’s voice sounded weak, breathless and unconvincing, even to himself. He laid both palms on Greg’s shoulders, though his hands shook too hard to push Greg away. “Stop.”
“Do you really want me to?” Warm, soft lips followed the line of Adrian’s jaw, making him shiver. “Please don’t make me stop. We could leave, right now. We could go to my dorm.” The tip of Greg’s tongue traced the shell of Adrian’s ear, sending electric jolts up his spine. “I want you to fuck me, Adrian.”
Sheer panic at the bald declaration galvanized Adrian into action. He grasped Greg’s arms and shoved hard enough to send Greg stumbling backward. Greg stared, mouth open and eyes wide. “What the hell, man?”
Adrian hunched his shoulders, face flaming. “I’m sorry, I just…I don’t…” Frustrated, Adrian ran a hand through his hair and tried to marshal his thoughts. “I can’t pretend I’m not attracted to you. But I don’t do casual sex. So if that’s all you’re after, you can forget it.”
Greg’s expression turned hard. He drew a breath, as if to speak, but the sound of several people entering the house at once interrupted him. He cut a swift glance toward the din of footsteps and conversation from the foyer, then pinned Adrian with a cold look. “Fine.”
Before Adrian could say anything else—though what exactly he would have said, he had no idea—Greg strode across the hall to greet the cluster of six students who’d just come into the room. Adrian pretended to inspect the nearby framework he and his team had built the day before, while watching Greg from beneath his lashes. If he hadn’t seen those gray eyes bright with lust only moments before, he wouldn’t believe it had ever happened. He wondered if all actors hid their true faces that well.
As well as you hide yours? Hypocrite.
Adrian scowled. Keeping his psychokinesis to himself was different. No one would consider it lying, or being two-faced. What reasonable person would reveal such a thing to someone they barely knew? And who would believe it anyway?
You never told Christian.
He was saved from having to deal with that particular truth when two girls he had worked with the day before broke from the group and walked toward him. He drew a couple of slow, deep breaths. By the time the girls reached him, he had his roiling emotions under control.
He managed a smile that didn’t even feel forced. “Hello, Erin. Chelsea.”
“Hey, Adrian.” Erin stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and flashed a flirtatious grin. “What’re we doing today?”
Deliberately turning his back on Greg and the knot of boys and girls gathered around him, Adrian rubbed his chin in an effort to channel his thoughts where they needed to go. “More building. We got a lot done yesterday on the false walls, but there’s a lot more to go.”
Chelsea wrinkled her nose. “Building frames isn’t very exciting.”
Adrian laughed in spite of the tight, sick feeling in his gut. “No, it isn’t. But you know they’re necessary if we’re going to turn this giant room into smaller areas that people can walk through and still leave spaces in between for the cast and crew to operate.”
“Yeah, I know.” With an exaggerated sigh, Chelsea gathered her shoulder-length black curls in one hand and secured them into a ponytail with a red band she took from her pocket. “All right, let’s do this thing.”
“I’ll get the tool kit,” Erin offered. “We should be all set to go when the rest of our team gets here.”
Adrian nodded. “Good thinking.”
Erin’s pallid cheeks flushed pink. Beaming, she brushed past him and practically floated to the alcove across the room where they’d stored their tools. Adrian turned away and busied himself with inspecting the heavy black cloth they’d stapled to the frames the previous day. He’d never had a straight girl crush on him before. It was a very strange feeling. He had no idea how to handle it.
“You realize why she’s fixated on you, right?”
Startled, Adrian blinked at Chelsea. “What?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dense, you know what I’m talking about.”
He shot a glance at Erin, who knelt at the alcove entrance digging through the pile of various implements. “Yes.” He looked at Chelsea again, curious. “So why is she fixated on me, then?”
“Because you’re safe. You’re gay, and she knows it. She can moon over you all she wants, but there’s no way you’ll ever return her interest so she won’t have to put any effort into a relationship.”
Adrian frowned. “How do you know that?”
“What? That you’re gay, or what her motivation is?”
“Both, really.”
“Word gets around. You used to date one of my suitemate’s older brother’s roommate’s best friend, Christian. As far as Erin’s motivation?” Chelsea flashed a wide, evil grin. “She and I have known each other since middle school. And I’m a psych major.”
Something unpleasantly familiar squirmed in the pit of Adrian’s stomach. “What if I wasn’t gay? What if I was to show interest in her?”
“She’d push you away with both hands. Find some reason why you weren’t compatible, pick fights. Anything to keep from having to work at a relationship.” She gave him a narrow look. “Why?”