Just Like That - Cole McCade Page 0,72

strong hands curled against his back. “They are here. It is done. This is what you wanted, so you have to follow through. If they don’t care, if they feel you wasted their time...you didn’t waste your own time, because you tried. And is that not what you said matters? That these boys know someone is trying for them.”

“That’s...that’s what I’m telling myself.” Summer curled his fingers in Fox’s crisply starched shirt-sleeves, resting his head to his shoulder, turning his face into his throat. “But I’m scared to just...jump into this with both feet, and fuck it up.”

“Ah.” Soft, warm, understanding, and Fox’s arms tightened around him. “I do know that feeling quite well.”

God, there it was.

Those ambiguous statements in that low, thrumming voice, that made Summer wish, hope, wonder...

Wonder if Fox really did feel something for him.

Deeper than just tolerant affection.

Deep enough to hold him like this, comfort him like this, because he mattered to Fox—and Summer clung just a little tighter, the question on his tongue.

The question, and the soft words he’d been holding inside, keeping them in his heart while they grew and grew and grew until they wouldn’t fit anymore and he was going to burst with them.

I love you.

He wanted to say it.

He wanted to say it so much, but if he did...

Fox might go completely cold on him, and then Summer wouldn’t have even the quiet moments of intimacy he stole with every touch, needing to feel Fox’s heartbeat against his own just so he knew that heart still ran hot somewhere behind that cold façade.

So instead of those words, he swallowed, whispered, “You’ll stay, right?”

“I will stay,” Fox promised softly. “This is your endeavor, but I will be here. You will not be alone.”

“Thank you.” Summer pushed himself up to kiss Fox’s chin, smiling weakly. “Seriously, thank you. I don’t think I could do this without you.”

“You could,” Fox said, something odd in his voice, in his gaze. “That is what makes you strong, Summer. Stronger than you realize.” He brushed his knuckles against Summer’s cheek, a rough graze of sensation—then lifted his head at an imperious knock on his office door, two silhouettes moving restlessly outside the clouded glass. “And you will need that strength. Here they are.”

“Oh, God.” Summer wet his lips, then breathed in deep, filling his chest so fast his head went dizzy and light. “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this,” he told himself, then strode forward to open the door with the best smile he could manage, squaring his shoulders and reminding himself...

If Fox believed he was strong, then he had to be.

He had to be.

So here we go.

* * *

Maybe this hadn’t been the most miserable Sunday of Summer’s life.

But it had come close.

And the only reason he hadn’t broken down completely and utterly in front of these boys’ parents was out of sheer disgust, overwhelming his nervousness as he realized everything he was saying was falling on deaf ears.

If Jay’s grades were slipping, it was a failure of the school, and not anything his parents could do to support him while he tried to survive ostracization and bullying; not anything they even cared to discuss as far as giving Summer permission to step in as a secondary parental figure beyond the strictures allowed by the school and the boarding arrangement. They didn’t want to be bothered, things were fine as they were.

Eli’s parents were even worse, haughtily annoyed that this wasn’t a real problem, but just some adjunct who seemed to think he had any say in who Eli chose to be friends with.

The same for the parents of three other boys whose grades in all subjects had been slipping for months, and who had been showing signs of social isolation and victimization to some of the more aggressive boys in the student body.

Summer had kept his backbone stiff, had been firm about the necessity of parental intervention when supporting the boys through a difficult developmental period, but even with Fox a watchful and almost menacing presence at his back, they just...

Hadn’t wanted to listen.

He had one more pair to get through.

Theodore Rothfuss’s parents.

And considering that Theodore was the heart of the problem...

He had a feeling they wouldn’t want to hear it, either.

They’d just be interested in getting in and out as fast as possible, before they got caught in the building storm threatening outside, leaving the day as gray and cloudy and ominously dark as Summer’s mood.

He leaned against