94. Summer #2
“Holy shit, really?”
Max nods and pulls out his phone. He opens EverydayEmrys, which now has more updates than it has all year. There are multiple photos from different angles of the headmaster handling the situation at the party. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look so angry. Or so delicious.
“Yikes,” Alice says, rubbernecking over Max’s shoulder to look.
“He was expelling and suspending people left and right,” Max says.
“Well, you made it out unscathed.”
Max snorts. “I wasn’t involved. Only heard about the fallout.” It doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve always suspected that Max is here on some kind of scholarship, and he’s smart enough not to risk that.
I pull my legs up and sit back, sipping my drink as I watch Max and Alice scroll through the photos and comments of the party.
Max takes a swig of his beer and casually drapes his arm along the back of the sofa behind me.
Rafe gets caught up in the game on TV, and Alice’s attention goes back to her phone.
Max looks down at me and smiles. “You look brighter,” he says, his voice low, almost intimate.
“I do?” I shift toward him and accidentally move closer, falling into the dip of the couch.
“Your eyes,” Max says with a nod.
“My eyes?” I ask, tipping my head.
“They’re less dead.” He winces at the last word as it leaves his lips.
My lips twitch, but my stomach also twists a little. Are they less dead because I’m healing? Are they less dead because of the stranger? I have a feeling it is both and that they are intrinsically connected.
“You look different.”
“I feel the same.”
“Try that on someone who doesn’t know you as I do,” Max says, shaking his head.
I smile and tuck my hair back. “I’m just healing, Max.” Though that feels wrong when I say it.
Max leans into me a little, his arm shifting to rest a little weight against my shoulders, and then he relaxes, and we just sit there for a while in comfortable silence, watching the game.
When I see Alice and Rafe glancing at us, I straighten a little, but the movement shifts me more into the couch, and more into Max.
I glance up at Max, and my gaze collides with his.
The urge to kiss him is nearly overwhelming, to seek the safety of our friendship.
Max clears his throat and looks back at the television.
I blush, feeling embarrassed that I ever had that impulse, but desperation claws at me to prove to myself that I don’t belong to the stranger.
With the stranger, the line is always so completely blurred, but not with Max.
The line is clear with Max. My feelings for him are strictly friendship.
Once the game ends, Max stands up and stretches. “I should head back to the gym.”
I tell him goodnight and hurry upstairs to my room as Rafe sees him out, not wanting to deal with the interrogation from Alice and Rafe. I know it’s coming, but if I thought I would have a reprieve, I couldn’t have been more wrong .
The stranger is in my room, pacing like a caged lion, and I watch him for a moment before slowly closing the door behind me. His gaze swings to me, and I can feel the anger radiating from him. I press my back against the door.
“What happened to being alone?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Alone? I didn’t ask to be left alone?”
“You said nothing sexual,” he says, the muscles in his jaw feathering with how tightly he is clenching it.
“Yes.”
“Yet you’re cuddling up with that boy,” he growls, his body thrumming with anger.
“What?” I ask, blinking again. Were we cuddling? Not technically.
“Does your no sex boundary apply to everyone or just me?” he hisses.
“You know the answer to that,” I hiss back.
“Didn’t appear that way,” he snarls, moving closer.
“Did I fuck him?”
“You almost kissed him.”
Shit, he saw? I feel the heat of a blush warm my cheeks, and I struggle not to drop my gaze.
“Or am I misinterpreting?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me. The spell plays over his shoulder, and I see Max and me in the kitchen leaning into each other.
I don’t look at him, watching it play over and over. “And if I had kissed him?” I ask. “You and I aren’t together.”
“So your request is only for me?”
“No, it isn’t. You refuse to kiss me, and kissing isn’t sex.”
He slams his hand against the door just beside my head, leaning close to crowd me. “Or is it even more intimate? The taste of each other, the vulnerability?.?.?.”
I watch him for a long moment, and I surprise myself by agreeing with him. It’s the reason I didn’t want to kiss him with his glamoured lips.
“Fine. No kissing either. With anyone.”
He scans my eyes, and some of his anger dissipates. “Why?”
I exhale heavily. “To make it fair. Because I?.?.?.” He watches me as I try to find the words.
“Because I need to stand on my own before I can stand with someone else.” I keep my eyes on him.
I want the ground to swallow me, to hide from what I’m about to say, but I can’t hold it in. “And I like you. ”
He watches me for a long moment, and then he leans in, burying his face in my neck.
I hesitate for just a moment before I tilt my head for him, opening to him.
His arms snake around my waist, and he pulls me to him.
I twine my arms around his neck, and he wastes no time in picking me up and pulling me close. He nuzzles my throat, inhaling deeply.
“You can’t smell me,” I say, barely above a whisper.
He inhales again. “I remember it as well as if I were smelling you now.” He brushes his nose along my throat.
“Peonies. The sweet-smelling black ones that grow on the banks of?.?.?.” His words trail off, and I shiver when he bites my neck.
“It’s addicting to inhale. Perfectly alluring. Perfectly poisonous.”
“Stranger?.?.?.” I moan softly. He always leaves me peonies, reminiscent of them.
“There were these flowers that grew in Faerie once, fragile at first look, but a single inhale would fell the strongest of beings. Some would pay for a lethal kiss of those petals. I know I’d pay the same, if not more.”
I close my eyes. “I . . .”
“I know,” he says, pulling back. I pant, watching him, that bone-deep need an aching throb in my core.
“You can’t look at me like that.”