Just Like That - Cole McCade Page 0,20
spreading against white.
Summer just stared at him.
“You’re acting like you are,” he murmured, and bit his lip. “I’m...sorry. I’m sorry if you’re still...hurting so much that it feels like I’m playing some kind of game with you. Just...forget I ever asked. I didn’t... I didn’t mean to be disrespectful of...”
“Of what?” Brittle, sharp, Iseya’s eyes flashing—heat slashing through that ice like a stab of lightning. “What do you think you know about me?”
Right now, looking at Iseya felt like...
Felt like pleading.
Pleading with him to just...stop, when Summer didn’t have to be an expert to know that this...
This was the pain talking.
Not Iseya himself.
“I know that twenty years is a long time to grieve,” Summer whispered, heart in his throat.
This wasn’t how he’d wanted this to go. A simple wish, a silly game, an ache in the pit of his stomach, but somehow it had gone all wrong and he’d upset Iseya—but now that he’d started it, he had to finish it and say what had to be said to see this through.
He always said all the wrong things anyway.
He guessed that wasn’t going to change.
“And a long time to define yourself as if that grief is all you are,” he finished, the words driving through his tongue like iron nails.
Iseya faltered, physically recoiling as if Summer had slapped him. His gaze flickered strangely, before he looked away—and when he spoke his voice was softer, that lashing edge gone.
“If you think you will find anything else underneath that,” he murmured, “you will be sorely disappointed.”
Summer half-smiled, even though it hurt like someone had pulled his rib cage open and plucked one curving bone out to fit it to the shape of his mouth. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That you’ll disappoint me?”
“What makes you think I’m afraid of you in any way, Mr. Hemlock?”
“The fact that you won’t look at me directly unless you’re angry with me,” Summer pointed out. “Because I won’t look at people, either...because then I’m afraid they’ll see too much about how I feel.”
Iseya made a soft tch sound under his breath, lifting his chin a touch haughtily—and yet still those silver eyes remained on the bookshelf, not on Summer. “Is that why you avoid eye contact? A mystery solved, I suppose.”
“It’s why I do. I’m wondering if it’s why you do, too.”
“It’s considered rude to stare at people with prolonged eye contact in Japanese culture.” Iseya thinned his lips. “Granted, I was not raised in Japanese culture outside my family home after my adolescent years, but I believe the common phrase is ‘that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.’”
That startled a laugh out of Summer, quick but still enough to ease some of the tight feeling in his chest. “It’s not like you to be that indirect.”
“My father always told me I was too blunt. Perhaps I’m attempting to rectify that now.” But with a sigh, Iseya closed his eyes, lightly adjusting his glasses with his middle finger pressed against the bridge. “We should be discussing today’s lesson plan. Not being inappropriately confrontational with each other.”
“Kissing is already a pretty inappropriate conversation topic, so throwing in confrontation isn’t really that much worse.”
Iseya’s jaw twitched.
His finger slipped on his glasses.
And slid underneath one lens, nearly poking him in the eye with one gracefully squared, neatly manicured fingertip.
Iseya swore softly, squinting his eye up and pulling his glasses off, shaking them free from the loose tendrils of hair drifting into his face and glowering at the lens. “Why do you keep returning the subject to kissing?”
“Because I’m not sure what you meant,” Summer admitted. “You sent me that note, didn’t you? ‘Challenge accepted.’ This.”
He fumbled in his pocket, finding the folded slip of paper, setting it on the desk and unfolding it, smoothing his fingers over the crease. Some part of him wanted to touch Iseya so painfully bad...but when he couldn’t, he touched that note, paper that had been handled by Iseya’s fingers, as if the indirect contact could transfer.
And he looked up at Iseya once more, while Iseya stared down at the note with his eyes hard and haunted, as if it was some terrible ghost.
Summer swallowed against the lump in his throat. “But now you’re angry that I’m challenging you at all, even if it’s something for both of us. A reason for both of us to be brave. So I guess...” He took a shaky breath “I guess I’m asking if we’re doing this. If you agree. If you want to kiss