Damien
EIGHTEEN
THEN
Christmas had come and gone and I hadn’t managed to get Callum alone again.
January slipped by, icy and miserable. February brought a couple of snowstorms and the school’s Valentine’s Day dance, which I was relieved Callum wasn’t attending.
Sam tried to get me to go, but there was no way I was going to a Valentine’s dance and letting some poor girl get her hopes up about us.
Did I still like girls? Yes. Absolutely.
But I was hung up on Callum still. He was all I thought about.
Him and that fucking kiss. Nothing had been as good as kissing him.
It felt right in a way that I couldn’t describe, and that’s what sucked the most about it.
I wanted Callum so fucking much, and there was no way Sam would ever be cool with it.
I’d hoped that the kiss would be a dud, a complete failure to launch.
Instead, it catapulted my crush into obsession territory.
Sam tried one more time on his way out the door to get me to go to the dance, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. There was no way I was going to a Valentine’s Day dance alone.
When Sam was gone, I waited another half an hour, pacing in his room, staring at the clock.
Finally I couldn’t wait anymore and crept silently out of Sam’s room and over to Callum’s door.
It was shut and I tapped on it quietly. John and Milly were downstairs watching TV.
Callum and I weren’t really alone, but it was the closest I’d gotten since Christmas.
His door opened a little, then a little more. His gaze met mine and, for a second, neither one of us moved or breathed or spoke.
“Can I come in?” I asked him. My hands were stuffed in my pockets, and I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet. Anything to keep myself looking halfway normal instead of the tangled mess that I was.
Liking Callum as much as I did felt like a betrayal to Sam, who didn’t like Callum at all.
Half the time he pretended that Callum didn’t exist. He’d stopped being openly hostile to him when I was around because he could tell that it made me uncomfortable.
He assumed I was uncomfortable because I didn’t have siblings and wasn’t used to how siblings treated each other.
In reality, it was because I detested watching Sam lash out at Callum for no reason.
Callum could have said no and shut the door in my face, but he opened it wider and stepped aside to let me in. I’d never spent a lot of time in Callum’s room, but it showcased how he and Sam were different.
Sam’s room always looked like a tornado went through it.
It was the room of a teen who cared more about looks and parties and their social life than anything else.
Sam’s room always had a load of dirty laundry draped on various surfaces or just tossed on the floor.
Were it not for the fact that I practically lived with him, he would have drowned in his dirty clothes by now.
Callum’s room was far cleaner. He had some trophies on a shelf and a few ribbons that he’d won for different things over the years. Callum was nearly as popular as Sam was at school, but he wore it differently than Sam did.
Sam wore his social standing like a shield and a weapon.
He moved easily through nearly every social clique at school with the exception of Callum’s friends, whom he stayed away from.
Everyone loved Sam because he made it easy for them to love him.
He was good at telling people what they wanted to hear.
Callum, on the other hand, stuck to his circle of friends. They were tight and loyal, and if anyone tried to be a dick to one of the group, Callum never let them. And in a few months, none of this would matter to them. They’d be done with school and off to college or whatever their plans were.
And I’d still be here.
The door clicked shut and I flinched at the sound as it pulled me out of my head and back into reality.
I turned to face Callum, who leaned against the door and silently stared at me. He didn’t have to ask what I was doing here, why I’d knocked on his door. We both knew.
“This can’t happen,” Callum told me, but he made no move to let me leave.
My heart ricocheted around my chest, wild and desperate. At some point, my hands left the safety of my pockets and twitched at my sides like they couldn’t help but answer the pull I felt.
Ever since the summer, there’d been this energy between us.
An invisible pull, like a string connecting us.
When Callum walked into a room, I felt him before I saw him.
When he was near, I wanted to be closer.
Most of the time I was good at hiding it.
Pretending that he meant nothing, was nothing, was invisible to me, was fucking torture.
Callum was all I saw.
“We’re not doing anything,” I said. It was both the truth and a lie. We weren’t doing anything. We were two people in a room watching their resolve crumble. Watching all the reasons we gave ourselves fall away because they were flimsy at best. Meaningless at worst.
The naked truth was that I didn’t want to stay away from Callum, but my friendship with Sam would suffer if he found out. And Sam was all I had. Without Sam’s friendship, I didn’t even have Callum or their parents. The warmth of their house, their family. None of it existed without Sam’s blessing.
And yet, I was risking it all. Standing in the room of a guy I had no business even looking at, unable to do anything but stare and wish for the courage to close the distance.
It was Callum who moved first. He stepped away from the door but not toward me. He sort of slid to the side and folded his arms over his chest. The silence that hung between us was thick and heavy. Callum’s gaze dropped to the floor, then it lifted again.
“You kissed me.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Why?”
The laugh that escaped surprised even me and I cut it off. “Are you serious?”
He nodded his head before I was even done asking the question.
“Because I wanted to. I’ve wanted to for a while. I still want to.”
“Are you…” he looked away, then back at me. “Are you gay?”
I shook my head. “No. Definitely bi, though.” It was weird to say it out loud. Weird in a good way. Kind of scary too, because there was still the small chance that I’d misread Callum completely and he was just straight and shy.
Some of the tension left Callum and his arms relaxed a little, loosening the hold he had on himself. “I am. Gay, I mean. I’m gay.” He exhaled a breath, his shoulders slumping.
“I’d hoped so,” I told him, laying my soul bare. It was easy to admit that when I’d already kissed him. When I’d already learned, albeit briefly, what his body felt like, pressed against mine. “I’d hate to be crushing on a straight guy.”
He choked on a laugh. “Yeah, it sucks.” He blanched and clamped his mouth shut.
Oh.
Oh, holy shit.
“You thought I was straight? And you… you had a crush on me?”
Callum rolled his eyes. “Please don’t pretend to not know how you looked all summer, half naked in my pool every single day.”
No air would enter or leave my lungs. I’d never been so thrilled or terrified to find out that a crush I had was reciprocated. This was… massive. Life-changing.
Forbidden.
Sam was my best friend, and I’d never give up on him, but he was unusually possessive about certain things. And he had this unexplained animosity toward Callum. He explained it away as sibling rivalry, standard-issue shit, nothing to worry about. But I worried. Now more than ever.
But not enough to stop myself from gravitating toward Callum like he was the sun pulling me in.
I was powerless to stop myself. Honestly, I was tired of trying.
Tired of not looking at him. Of not noticing him on purpose.
I’d told myself that the interruption back at Christmas had been a sign that this was a bad idea.
No good would come of this. But Callum’s hazel eyes burned into me.
The memory of his mouth taunted me, and I stepped closer.
He dropped his arms as the last of his defenses faded.
“Sam will never be okay with this.” Callum said, like he was trying to defuse the situation, but it was like throwing a bucket of water on a wildfire.
I wanted him too much to stop. Too much to say no. Unless he said it first. Unless he asked me to stop or to go away. I was going to kiss him again.
“Sam doesn’t have to know,” I offered, now just inches from Callum. We were so close I could feel the heat radiate off his skin and sense the way his body trembled. Anticipation? Fear? Excitement? All of the above?
Those five words were a comfortable lie.
If this happened, if it happened once and then again, and again, and again, Sam would eventually find out.
But I was desperate to feel that connection again.
I needed to know if it was something I’d imagined, something I’d dreamed up.
Or if the frisson of excitement that zapped through me had been real.
Kissing Callum was the best thing I’d ever felt.
Callum in my arms. Callum against my body. I’d die to feel that way again.
He didn’t make me wait for death.
He barely made me wait for another breath, another heartbeat, before the space between us disappeared.
He threw his arms around my neck and pulled me down to him.
I’d grown taller than him, only a little, but I liked how it felt to have him pressed against me.
Slightly shorter. A little smaller. But wiry and strong.
The kiss was explosive. A bomb went off in my chest and obliterated any misconception that I’d imagined the way I’d felt back at Christmas when we kissed or over the summer when I was still figuring out what those new feelings churning around inside me were.
It was painfully obvious now that I had a real problem.
I was deeply, deeply, deeply hooked on Callum Weeks.
And if his brother ever found out, he’d kill us both.
But even that couldn’t make me stop. Not now. Not yet. Not when I finally felt seen for the first time in months. Maybe for the first time in my whole life.
People at school knew me as Sam’s friend.
The loyal sidekick. Here, I was Sam’s friend—the emotional charity case his parents welcomed into their home.
But to Callum, I was Damien, who couldn’t swim until he taught me.
I was Damien, who loved to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol and drink hot chocolate.
I was Damien, and I was crazy about him and he kissed me like he just might be crazy about me too.