Chapter 8
My mind is a frantic blank. I’m pinned, trapped between his solid body and the cold wall.
My friends are probably walking right past the door this very second.
“Nothing,” I manage to choke out. “Nothing is going on, can’t you see for yourself?”
His eyes narrow, a flicker of irritation crossing his face. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Patton? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, you drag me in here, and now you want to go upstairs.”
“Exactly,” I say, the word tumbling out before I can stop it, driven by sheer panic. “My room is on the second floor.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I see it in his expression. The slight shift in his gaze, the way the corner of his mouth ticks up. My words sound like an invitation. Very ambiguous. Damn it.
If I hesitate any longer, my friends will come inside to investigate the noise and see a scene a hundred times worse than the one outside—me, the guy who supposedly told Raiden Blackwell to back off, currently plastered against the lobby wall by the man himself.
“We need to go upstairs,” I say, my voice dropping to an urgent whisper. I grab both sleeves of his heavy coat, ignoring the jolt of electricity that shoots up my arms. I pull, trying to dislodge his six-foot-three frame. “Raiden, I swear I have something to tell you, and I can’t say it here.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to refuse.
But then his expression hardens with a different kind of intensity, and he allows me to pull him toward the stairs. We take them two at a time.
I practically sprint down the short hallway to my door, fumbling with the key until the lock clicks open. I shove the door inward, pull him inside after me, and slam it shut, twisting the deadbolt with a decisive thump.
I lean against the door and exhale, a long, shuddering breath. Relief washes over me in a dizzying wave.
I close my eyes, just for a second, savoring the feeling of safety.
When I open them, the relief evaporates.
Raiden is standing in the middle of my small room. He’s motionless, a dark, hulking presence surrounded by my art supplies, my half-finished canvases, my books.
He dominates the space, makes it feel impossibly small. And he’s staring at me, his gaze unblinking and intense. He looks like a predator who has just followed its prey into a trap.
Trying to regain some composure, I start to unwind his scarf from my neck. My fingers are clumsy. I shrug off my jacket, avoiding his eyes, letting the clothes drop onto a chair.
“Right,” I say to the floor. “So. I wanted to say… that I’ll talk to Professor Whitmore. I’ll tell her you’ve been helping out with the party preparations this whole time. That way… you won’t get into any trouble for ditching.”
It’s the lamest, most pathetic excuse I’ve ever come up with.
A deep sound rumbles in his chest. “I don’t give a fucking shit about that,” he says, his voice flat. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”
My throat feels tight. “Y-yes. I didn’t want anyone to overhear that, um. That I’m going to deceive the professor… for your sake.” I swallow nervously.
“For my sake,” he repeats slowly, the words dripping with disbelief. “What else is your delicate artistic nature willing to do for me, Patton?”
“Wh-what?” I ask, a tremor of fear running through me. His tone is soft, but there’s a dangerous undercurrent to it.
I back away as he takes a slow step toward me. Then another.
“You haven’t been to the beginner skating sessions anymore,” he says, his voice a low murmur. “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve been quite busy,” I say automatically, my back bumping into my drafting table. “How do you know that, I should ask?”
“I looked at the attendance list. One of the team’s assistant coaches is running it now.” He takes another step, closing the distance between us. “Or did you really think I was going to come to every single practice just on the off-chance I could watch you fail to bend your knees properly?”
The implication hangs heavy in the air. He was coming to watch me. “No,” I say quietly. “I don’t think that.”
“And I don’t think you were that busy,” he counters, his voice dropping even lower, becoming a rough, intimate whisper. “You’re just avoiding me like the plague after you came in my hands without me even touching your cock.”
Heat explodes across my face, a blush so hot it feels like my skin is burning. He says it so bluntly, so crudely, reducing that overwhelming, terrifying moment to a fact.
I lash out, desperate to deflect. “Well, you never came back to the party prep, so you’re in no position to talk about avoidance.”
“I have been trying to have one single, real conversation with you every bloody week for six months,” he snarls, and the sudden raw emotion in his voice makes my head snap up.
The sheer frustration in his tone, is staggering.
“I wouldn’t advise you to provoke me with accusations that I’m not chasing you enough. ”
I stare at him, shocked into silence. My mind scrambles to process his words. Chasing me? Chasing me? This whole time—the shoulder checks, the mocking comments, the constant, unnerving presence—that was him… chasing me?
“Chasing… me?” I echo, my voice barely a whisper. “What are you talking about? That’s… not true.”
“Oh, yeah?” He lets out a harsh, bitter laugh.
“Right. I should have just walked up to the new shy sheltered art student sketching in the corner and asked you out on a date. That would have worked out great. You didn’t exactly seem interested in guys, so I figured I did everything right to at least get your attention. ”
A tidal wave of conflicting emotions crashes over me. He’s saying… he wanted to ask me out. The insults, the almost mocking… that was his twisted, idiotic version of flirting? Of trying to win me over?
“I… am actually interested in guys,” I say, the words feeling weak.
“Like hell you are,” he spits, his frustration boiling over. He gestures around my room, at me. “You mean you’re really gay?”
The way he says it isn’t even a question.
And a knot of anger and panic tightens in my chest because he’s right.
Not about me not being gay, but about my own denial.
I’ve never felt an attraction this powerful, this physical, before him.
Before he touched me in that locker room.
No. That’s a lie too. I’ve felt it all along, from the first time his blue eyes pinned me in the cafeteria. I just refused to acknowledge it.
“I’m gay,” I say, forcing my voice to be firm, meeting his blazing gaze. “And I still don’t understand your behavior. So just don’t pretend you weren’t messing with me.”
“Oh yes, I was,” he says, his voice turning into an aggressive whisper. “Just don’t you pretend you didn’t notice I couldn’t stop looking at you from the first day you walked into this damn school.”
“Are you gay yourself, Blackwell?” I fire back.
“Yeah,” he says without a second of hesitation. The certainty in his voice rocks me. “One hundred percent. Never been hard for a girl, never wanted to be. Always guys.”
My heart stutters. Then it starts to beat a frantic, hopeful rhythm.
“Then nothing was stopping you from just asking me on a date,” I say, clinging to the last shreds of my righteous anger.
“Nothing?” He laughs again, that same harsh, humorless sound.
“What about your reaction right now? The way you look at me like I’m a grenade that’s about to go off?
Or how you ran out of that locker room like your ass was on fire?
Or how you just dragged me in here and hid me because your friends might see us together?
Yeah, I fucking noticed them. You don’t have a clue what you want, Artie. ”
His words, and the terrible truth in them, gut me. I do run. I do hide. I am terrified. But he’s wrong about one thing.
“I k-know what I want,” I stammer, a storm of emotions making my body tremble. In a jerky, unthinking motion, I pull my jumper up and off over my head, needing to get it off, needing to do something. “I’m gay.”
“You don’t have to lie, and you don’t have to—”
“I’m not lying!”
A surge of adrenaline, of panicked desperation to prove him wrong, to prove myself right, floods through me.
I surge forward, shoving him hard in the chest. He’s so solid he barely moves, but the unexpected force of it makes him stumble back a step, his legs hitting the edge of my bed.
He catches my wrists, his grip like steel, stopping my flailing assault. He holds me there, his eyes boring into mine, filled with a look of such raw, agonizing desire that my legs threaten to give out from under me.
And in that moment, I decide.
My knees buckle, and I drop.
I land on the worn rug in front of him, my hand still caught in his. He doesn’t let go. I look down at his jeans, at the noticeable bulge straining against the denim, and my breath hitches.
With trembling fingers on my free hand, I reach for the button of his fly.
“What the hell are you doing, Artie?” Raiden whispers. His voice is broken. Wrecked.
I keep my eyes fixed on my shaking hand as I work the metal button free. My own confession spills out in a mortified, breathless rush.
“I just… want to try it,” I whisper, fumbling with the zipper pull.
“I’ve n-never done this before, and I… I must be gay because I…
w-want to do this. With you.” I finally manage to get the zipper down, the rasping sound loud in the silent room.
I risk a glance up at his face. He looks shattered.
“D-do you want to do this?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“Y-you can say if you don’t want to. It’s okay. ”