Archer was younger, he had so much life ahead of him, and yet he looked at Julian with so much abject want in his eyes, Julian couldn’t bring himself to talk him out of at least considering more. He pressed their foreheads together, breathing him in, then finally pulled back with a small peck just below his eye.
“I should shower.”
“I’m going to wander out and find something to eat. Are we…” His eyes darted to the little digital clock beside the bed. “Are we late?”
Julian realized they were, and he also realized he didn’t give a single shit. “I already have to sit through that joke of a ceremony tomorrow, I don’t need the preview.”
“We can skip it if you want,” Archer offered. “You did promise to take me to dinner somewhere else.”
Julian’s mouth opened to argue—to say that if they did, his mother would make him sorry for it. But then he realized, she wouldn’t, because she couldn’t. His father had severed that last hold she had over them both, and the freedom was suddenly dizzying. He gripped Archer by the waist more firmly and tugged him in so they were pressed from hips to chest. “Yes, I did. Go on a date with me.”
Archer blinked at him. “Now?”
“Yes. Now. Tonight. Fuck the rehearsal, fuck the dinner. Fuck them all.”
Archer threw his head back and laughed, then surged up and kissed Julian again. “Okay. Yes.”
Julian beamed at him, and he thought right then that maybe, for the first time ever, he could get used to smiling again.
Chapter 23
It felt thrilling to turn his phone on silent, to tuck it in his pocket and refuse to look at it for the rest of the night. Julian had never been particularly spontaneous, but when he got in the car and pulled out onto the road, he found himself craving something different—something outside of his normal routine which, in that moment, brought him no comfort.
“Where are we going?” Archer’s voice startled him out of his thoughts, and he offered up a sheepish half-smile.
“I didn’t really have a plan.” He licked his lips, then shrugged. “St. Augustine?”
Archer blinked at him, then laughed. “Lead on, Macduff. That’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?”
Julian’s smile widened. “Almost. Lay on—but…they’re Hamlet’s last words before he’s killed, and I only want the little deaths tonight.”
“Fuck,” Archer whispered, then laughed. He bit his lip, his eyes flickering out toward the scenery before daring to look at Julian again. “Thanks for doing this tonight. It’s nice to get away from your family.”
Julian’s brow dipped into a frown. “Have they been giving you a hard time? Because I have no problem…”
“No,” Archer interrupted in a rush. “I mean, Bryce seems fixated on me a little, but we both expected that. It was kind of the plan, right?”
“Right,” Julian said with a sigh, but he felt suddenly tired by it all. The entire reason Archer was even there was because Julian had suddenly acted like a petulant, rebellious teenager who was incapable of handling criticism. And it was hard to regret it now, but he felt a little bit foolish.
He jolted slightly when he felt a warm hand touch the side of his neck, and Archer drew a line along his warm skin with a curled knuckle. “I don’t care what they say about me. It makes me feel good to see you taking away their power to hurt you. And it makes me feel good that you want to spend time with me.”
Julian bit his top lip as he glanced over, then carefully navigated through a small throng of people as he searched for a parking lot with empty spaces. The Spanish Quarter was one of his favorite spots to get lost and immersed in old history. The cobbled streets held hundreds of years’ worth of stories—lives, deaths, and everything in between. And part of him ached to see so much of it commercialized—and so much of it carefully painted with a broad, pale brush erasing the uglier, more violent history. But he had spent a lot of his youth trying to educate himself on the reality rather than the romanticized stories, and for that, he appreciated the richness of the land.
Some days he swore he could feel the ghosts as he waded through muggy air, and he wondered what it would be like to hear them.
With the holidays near, and the sun setting, hundreds of fairy lights glowed in a brilliant display, and it was the