Chapter One
Senior Year of High School
“Stop!” Elliot laughed. “No, I hate it. Stop!” Elliot giggled like a little girl, which only encouraged Damon to continue tickling him.
“No! I’m not going to stop until you admit that I’m right,” Damon said.
“Fuck you, Montré.” Elliot pushed his shoulders, but Damon’s quick hands found his ticklish sides again.
“Come on, Croft,” Damon said, dodging Elliot’s knee as it attempted to kick him in the nose. “Admit it. Say it!”
“No! Never!”
Damon made a weird growling noise in the back of his throat and launched himself on top of Elliot, flattening him to the carpet in Damon’s bedroom. He pinned Elliot’s arms over his head, straddling him. Damon’s chest expanded and contracted in heavy pants.
Damon’s brown eyes glittered with a bright animation that Elliot knew he’d never be able to conjure for himself.
“Admit it,” Damon huffed, his breath falling over Elliot’s face. It should have helped diffuse the predicament Elliot was currently in that Damon’s breath smelled like nacho cheese and soda.
And yet, it didn’t.
Elliot screwed his eyes shut as the parts of his body that were rubbing on his best friend started to perk up.
He jerked around, twisting his body left and right in an attempt to wiggle out of Damon’s hold, but Damon was stronger.
He was the baseball team’s star hitter. With his beefy biceps and wide shoulders, Damon could overpower Elliot whenever he wanted.
Elliot groaned inwardly. He shouldn’t have liked that as much as he did. He turned his face toward the carpet to give himself enough time to mumble a spell under his breath.
By the power of Eros, hide my lust, conceal the truth before I bust.
Not the prettiest spell, but it came in handy when needing to a hide a boner from your best friend.
The spell redirected the blood from his lower body, not entirely, but it bought Elliot a little more time.
As a healing witch, he could manipulate the biomechanical functions of the body. Not very well, mind you. His grandmama could heal people who were in fatal car wrecks and have them walk away without a scrape.
Not Elliot. He usually choked when the people who were counting on him needed him the most.
He didn’t have control over his secret powers, so he used spells to align his intentions. If he’d been better at magic, maybe he could’ve found an anti-boner spell, so he didn’t have to ever worry about this particular situation.
Alas, he had not.
“Say it!” Damon demanded, and since he couldn’t tickle Elliot while also pinning his arms over his head, he leaned down and pressed his face into Elliot’s sides, tickling him with his nose.
Yeah, the spell was definitely not going to be enough. Not with Damon’s mouth so close to his junk.
“Fine!” Elliot said. “I’ll say it, if you get off me.”
Damon grinned and rolled off.
Elliot took his time sitting up and fixing his shirt. He flipped his head to flick his long blonde hair out of his eyes. He felt Damon watching him with rapt anticipation. With a heavy sigh, Elliot said, “I’m just as good looking as you, and girls would like me if I actually talked to them.”
Damon pushed his shoulder. “That’s fucking right, Croft.”
Elliot rolled his eyes. “Are you happy now?”
“Ecstatic, Elliot. I’m ecstatic.” Damon threw an arm around his shoulders and leaned in, his mouth against Elliot’s ear. “But if you really wanna make me happy, you’d believe it.”
Elliot’s breath stuttered, and he tried to shove Damon away, but Damon only tightened his arm and put him in a headlock, ruffling his hair.
“Ugh! You said you’d stop, dude!” Elliot said.
“Sorry,” Damon said and resumed sitting beside him. “I just hate seeing you all upset. Need to snap you out of it.”
Elliot picked up the game controller. “I’m not upset.”
Yes, he was.
Damon was going to prom with Chelsea, who was undeniably the prettiest girl in school, and since it took Elliot by surprise, he’d been unable to muster the proper level of fake enthusiasm for his best friend.
Damon’s ex-girlfriend Rochelle broke up with him a few weeks ago, so Elliot assumed neither he nor Damon were going to senior prom. He assumed that he wouldn’t have to fake his smile while some girl danced with Damon, touched him, pressed up on him all night.
But when Damon asked Elliot why he was upset, Elliot couldn’t very well tell him the truth, so he made a grumbling remark about how it was hard to be friends with someone who was at least three levels hotter than him.
Which prompted Damon’s demand for Elliot to admit he was just as attractive as him and the only reason Elliot didn’t get attention from girls was simply because he was shy.
It was true. He was shy.
And with his acne scars on pasty-white skin, too-long hair, and clothes that were always somehow too big or too short for his gangly limbs, it was also true that he was most definitely three or more levels below Damon in the looks department.
What with Damon’s perfect brown skin, twice-a-month barbershop appointments, and body that filled out his baseball uniform in ways that made Elliot’s mouth go dry.
But despite the shyness and his unremarkable appearance, Elliot knew his lack of female attention probably had more to do with the fact that he was extremely gay.
Elliot was pretty sure the rest of the school knew, or at least sensed, he wasn’t into girls, but since Elliot couldn’t deny Damon anything, he agreed to ask out Damon’s prom date’s best friend just because Damon wanted them all to go to prom together as a group.
“Yeah, you’re totally upset,” Damon said. “I know you, Elliot. It’s okay to be shy, but you gotta take a risk every once in a while.” He grabbed the other controller and sat close enough to Elliot that their shoulders pressed together.
It wasn’t because Damon wanted to touch him. He just had no boundaries. None whatsoever. That was never more obvious than after the thing that happened on spring break.
The thing Elliot tried really hard to never think about.
They were just best friends. They’d been like this since the day Damon broke his arm jumping off the swing and Elliot accidentally healed it, thereby cementing their friendship for eternity.
“Yeah, I guess I’m a little jealous,” Elliot said. “But I’ll get over it.”
Jealous of Chelsea for getting to go to prom with you.
Damon snorted and proceeded to obliterate Elliot’s character on the screen. Just like he obliterated Elliot’s heart.
Every. Single. Day.