Chapter 7
CIARAN
Something’s up. That much is clear.
The Reach reception is coming up fast, and everyone in my family is losing their minds in their own special way. Dad has been buried in guest confirmations for days. Mom keeps changing her mind about what she’s playing for the opening concert. Half the city seems determined to invite itself.
And somehow I’m still thinking about Rowan, a fact I’m finding increasingly annoying.
I glance at my multi-slate and find exactly what I expected: nothing. Not that I expected anything different.
The little musician disappeared into the library before dawn and came back looking half-haunted. What the fuck was he doing in there?
Lucan is sprawled across the couch when I walk in, holo screen balanced on one knee. “You know your little musician isn’t the only suspicious one, right?”
I glance at him. “What are you talking about?”
“His friend. Guy gambles like a man running out of options.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Since when are you tracking his finances?”
“Since he started throwing money onto my tables.”
That gets an unwilling snort out of me. “Sounds like you’ve adopted him.”
Lucan answers by lifting a single finger without looking up from the holo.
Tossing my empty can into the bin, I head for the door.
“Where are you going, dude?” he calls after me.
“For a swim.”
“For a swim?” I can practically feel his eyeballs rolling. “It’s like eleven at night. The pool’s closed, man.”
But there’s one little duck still playing out there.
“Whatever,” he grumbles when I ignore him.
I don’t want to tell him what I’m about to do, don’t want him to sabotage my plans with his idiot energy. The guy lives on testosterone, which is fine. As long as he doesn’t aim all that energy at Rowan.
By the time I reach the corridor, I’m already grinning. I can practically picture those green eyes widening when he sees me in the water.
Fucking yes. Shouldn’t have ignored me.
Normally the pool would be the last place I’d go looking for Rowan, but then Halvern’s atypical request came to my attention.
His student is allowed to use the pool after closing hours, because of his heart condition.
The only Noctis scholar in an institute of more than two thousand students.
The first scholarship Caervast has awarded in years.
Which is interesting.
No, fuck that. It’s exactly the kind of thing I should be paying attention to.
I tell myself it’s because Dad wants me to look out for him, because Rowan has been doing some weird as fuck things lately, but my body knows better.
Look out for him. Right. Just the thought of walking in on him swimming alone is enough to make my pulse kick.
All that pale skin. Those freckles. The flush I know will creep in the second he catches me watching.
I groan as I push through the locker-room doors, stripping out of my clothes and leaving them in a careless pile while keeping my eyes fixed on my prize.
There, under the moonlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling glass, I can’t help but stop and stare. Because there’s something fucked up and intimate about watching someone who doesn’t know you’re there.
Rowan’s a good swimmer, is my first thought. He cuts through the water in clean, even strokes, long through the reach and economical through the pull, turning at the wall without any need to show off.
His hair is soaked flat against his head, plastered in uneven strands across his forehead and temples.
It makes the sharpness of his face stand out even more in the low golden light.
Wet, he looks stripped down in a way his clothes never allow.
The clean line of his jaw. The shadows beneath his cheekbones.
The serious set of his mouth every time he turns to breathe.
He looks younger in the water, moving in a steady rhythm that should probably calm me down and somehow does the exact opposite.
A fault reveals itself eventually, small enough that most people wouldn’t notice.
I only catch it because I’m already watching too closely, and the second I spot the first compensation, I can’t stop tracking it.
His left side lags a fraction behind the right on the extension.
It’s not much, but just enough to tell me something old is still living there.
Most likely his shoulder. He protects it before he needs to, bracing for pain that isn’t landing yet. And the fact that I can see it at all does something strange to me. As though I’ve stumbled across something private. I shouldn’t want to know what put it there. I do.
My gaze drops to the dark band at his wrist when he surfaces on the next turn. The sleek line of it catches the pool light before his arm cuts back under again.
By the time he reaches the far wall, I know two things for certain. The first is that Rowan Ashford comes here when he needs to get himself under control. The second is that he is never going to have this hour entirely to himself again.
I watch him hit the wall, his hand striking the tile with a blunt crack that echoes beneath the glass ceiling.
When he surfaces, pale hair slicked dark against his face, he drags in a breath that catches in his chest before wiping the water from his eyes.
And then he looks up. When he sees me, he freezes. The exhaustion vanishes so fast it’s almost funny, leaving nothing but raw, wide-eyed shock pinning him to the water.
I stand at the very edge of the tile, towering over him in nothing but my trunks. I let the light inventory every inch of me. I want him to look. I want him to fucking feel the weight of what’s standing over him. Because if I lose my damn mind, I want him to be my partner in crime.
When his gaze drops, I can’t tell whether he means to stop it. His eyes trail down my throat, over my chest, catching on the dark ink that bleeds over my ribs. He stays there, staring at the hard planes of my stomach, his throat working as he swallows.
Fuck, yes. His pupils are blown wide enough to swallow me whole.
“See something you like, Rowan? Or are you just checking to see if I’m still dangerous like this?”
He startles, hands splashing the water as he tries to find his footing on the submerged ledge. A dark flush stains his neck and face.
"What are you doing here?" He catches himself against the ledge. "This is a private block."
Tilting my head, I glance at the medical band on his wrist, flashing frantic amber beneath the surface. A slow smile pulls at my mouth. The water leaves him nowhere to go, and fuck if I don’t like that.
“What does it look like?” I step closer until my toes are inches from his face. “I’m here to swim.”
And then I dive in, cutting through the surface as the water closes over me, the cold rush hitting my skin and going straight to my head.
It feels wrong in exactly the way I want it to.
I like getting a rise out of Rowan. I like the way he flushes.
I like the way he growls when he realizes I’m doing it on purpose.
Staying under as I move past him, I leave him alone in the wake of the ripples I’ve made, surfacing again only when I’m inches from him. Water sheets off my shoulders as I rise, and he looks mortified when I box him in against the tile.
He’s fucking shaking. The flush has climbed all the way to his ears now, bright against wet skin. He looks down at my chest, close to his, then away again, breath catching in short, uneven pulls.
And yet, he doesn’t move.
Tilting my head, I move closer until my chest brushes his arm. “You’re still here. I thought you’d be halfway to the lockers by now.”
“I’m not staying in here with you.” He tries to shove past me, but his hands slip on my wet skin. That causes a frustrated sound to tear out of him, low and rough enough to hit me somewhere dirty. “Move. You’re being ridiculous.”
A laugh slips out of me and I cock my head. “Me? Ridiculous? I just came for a swim.”
His face goes even redder. “You know I booked this hour.”
“So?” I slide one hand over his where it’s braced against the railing. Pin it there. Let my fingers loosen just enough to feel the tremor in his. I lean in, close enough that he has to tip his head back to look at me. “Can’t we swim together? Spend some time together?”
Rowan makes a strangled sound, somewhere between outrage and panic, and jerks against the rail. “Go away,” he snaps, breath catching on the words. Then louder, flustered enough that it almost sounds as though he hates himself for it, “Go away from me.”
Fuck me, but I like this version of him too. Shy, flushed, trying to fight anyway. He looks like a cornered animal trying to bite.
I’d like to see him try.
Bracing my hands on the ledge on either side of him, I lean in until my forehead is almost touching his. “You know, you’ve made me very sad. You haven’t replied to my message, Rowan. My phone has been very quiet.”
He huffs, a small, defiant sound that does nothing to mask the way his chest is heaving. “I don’t want to have contact with you,” he snaps. He finally meets my eyes, his pupils blown wide. “I’m here to study. I’m not here for… for whatever this is.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say, my voice dropping lower as I crowd him harder against the stone. “You can pretend this doesn’t affect you all you like, but your body is doing a terrible job of backing you up. Don’t lie to me, Rowan. Not when I can see exactly what I do to you.”
I feel a flicker of real annoyance. He’s still trying to act as though this is nothing, as though the truth of it weren’t written all over him.
Reaching up, I brush a stray soaked strand of hair away from his forehead.
His skin is burning. The flush has spread all the way down to his collarbone, a deep, beautiful pink that tells me exactly how much of a liar he is.
Grinning, I lean in and flick my tongue against the shell of his ear. The sound he makes goes straight through me, and it takes everything I have to keep my hands where they are. Why I bother holding back for him, I don’t want to look at too closely.