Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,13

up.

Just a little.

Anything to make up for how he’d kicked him down.

But he held himself in place, and only murmured, “You don’t have to tell me this. Not if it hurts. You don’t owe me shit. Not even explanations.”

“Maybe not,” Rian said, barely a sigh. “But maybe, if we’re going to deal with each other until Chris’s issues are resolved, I’d like to be understood anyway.”

Ah, Damon thought.

That, he could empathize with a little too damned much.

“So I’m guessing nobody you dated ever tried to get you, huh?”

A mirthless laugh, dark hair rippling. “No.”

“Sounds like you’ve dated some shitty men.”

“Maybe.” Rian’s thin shoulders moved restlessly as he folded his arms over his chest; the flared sleeves of his outermost tunic spilled down from his sides like a luna moth’s trailing tails. He tilted his head back, looking up at the glass-paneled ceiling, and Damon caught the barest hint of his profile; the delicacy of his upturned nose, the faint hints of freckles that almost seemed to glow in the dark, the way his eyelashes spread out in such distinct, fanning arcs until each black curve stood independent of each other. “They never seem shitty,” he said softly. “They just...seem like they need help. And I always think if I love them enough, I can help them. I can fix them. But it never seems to work, and then they need more and more, and then they resent me for it not being enough...and then I start to feel suffocated.” His voice broke. “And then I run, because I’m too insubstantial to carry that kind of weight.”

Damon didn’t know what to do.

He felt like he was watching a heart break in real time, and he didn’t know how to handle that when five minutes ago they’d nearly been at each other’s throats, and three hours ago they hadn’t even been on a first-name basis.

When Rian was right:

Damon didn’t know him at all.

Didn’t know him well enough to have any right to hear these things, or to offer the comfort someone intimately closer might be able to give Rian Falwell freely.

All he knew was that Rian was hurting.

That meeting him had felt like a goddamned car crash.

And that Damon couldn’t shake the realization that Rian dated men, and that seemed to draw into stark clarity that the haughty, impudent, entirely annoying man...

Was also hauntingly, arrestingly beautiful, until he seemed like one of his own delicate, whimsical creations, spun from hands whose fingers were made for ethereal magic.

Damon’s throat tightened, and he forced himself to look away from Rian, standing there beneath showers of golden light like some strange fae creature. Forced himself to speak, too; to fill the silence with words, where he couldn’t offer comfort, but he couldn’t disrespect that moment of honest pain by letting it go ignored.

“Listen,” he said, spreading his hands helplessly, then letting them drop. He started to step toward Rian, then stopped. “If someone wants to fix themselves...they gotta do it for them. Not someone else. If they won’t do it for them, they’re not gonna do it for you, either. That’s on them. But it’s on you to let go of the idea that you can fix people, period. Let go of thinking you’re responsible for other people’s problems. Hell...you may not even understand what they’re going through. Some people...they got different lives. They may be going through things you can’t even see.”

Rian turned his head just enough for one eye to fix on Damon through the tangled curtain of his hair. In the speckled light, his eyes were pure, deep honey, moving slow.

“So you’re telling me to let go of responsibility for Chris, too?”

“No,” Damon said. “No. I’m just saying we’ve got to handle this right, or we could do more harm than good.”

“And how would you suggest we do that, Mr. Louis?”

Damon, he corrected silently. Hearing Mr. Louis in that hurting, strangely empty voice...

It hit him hard, in all the dark, deep places inside him.

And he needed to get out of here, and away from this confusing mess of furious, raging, completely inexplicable emotions that stormed to life around Rian Falwell.

“I don’t know,” Damon said, his throat heavy and tight. “But we’ll have to figure something out.”

Chapter Three

By the following day, Damon still hadn’t figured anything out.

Not what to do about Chris.

Not what the hell that entire mess with Rian had been yesterday.

Or why he couldn’t stop fucking thinking about that aggravating, lofty jackass, with his shallow smiles and that one real,