Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,108

get around iffy zoning laws, and Drew just ends up flipping his middle finger every time and walking off laughing.”

“What a...delightful person.”

Damon only scoffed softly, before falling silent, his half-lidded eyes trained forward, distant and thoughtful. Rian watched him for several moments in the stillness that fell between them—not quite strained, no, but in the silence Rian was painfully aware of Damon; of his quiet, even breaths and his warmth and the space he took up and the way the soft-shaded afternoon light seemed to define him in hues of bronze and copper and black. Rian’s thoughts were blank things, vague, but all circling around Damon, around...around...

Just wanting to stay near him.

But he could almost hear that dry tone, that hint of a smile, that You’re staring at me again, and after a few more stolen seconds to just look Rian made himself look away, leaning down to fish in his bag until his fingers brushed up against the soft edges of pages.

He pulled out A Princess in Theory; he’d not even managed to start it when he’d been too restless on sleepless nights, but if they were going to stake out the bar he might as well give it a shot to fill the passing hours.

But as he scrunched down in the seat, propping his knees up against the glove compartment and opening the book against his thighs, Damon glanced over at him with a half laugh, half snort.

“You were serious, huh?”

“I’m curious,” Rian said, chuckling and flipping open to the first page. “It’s something you like. So I want to know about it.”

Damon went still, his laughter fading to a bemused smile. “...yeah?”

Oh God, had Rian said that out loud? He cleared his throat, keeping his gaze trained on the page and a story that...apparently started with a series of emails that read like something from a Western Union scammer. “I, um...well, yeah. I guess you know, it’s...different, that a man likes romance novels.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Damon said simply, and Rian realized...

He was right.

And that was that.

So he settled in to read, and smiled slightly at Naledi’s exasperation...only to pause at the mention of foster care. “Oh,” he said softly.

“Hm?” Damon answered, absent, his gaze fixed on the windshield again.

“I...do you know why I picked this one?”

“Wondered a little.”

“...the cover’s more worn than all the others. Like you read it more.” Rian bit his lip. “The heroine... Naledi. She was in foster care.”

“...yeah.” Damon’s head angled toward him, brown eyes watching him sidelong, thoughtful. “Sometimes you see yourself and the life you lived, the things you want, in places you never expected. I saw me in her. Still do. Every time I read it.”

“Does it hurt...?”

“No.” Damon smiled, and it was a wondering, thoughtful, breathtaking thing. “Can’t think of many things that feel better. Just in seeing myself, and knowing I’m not alone.”

Rian lowered his eyes, tracing his fingertips along the letters but only half processing them. “... I feel that way around you.”

Again that stillness—charged, shivering, waiting. “Yeah?”

“When you talk about wanting to build something. Wanting to make something that’s yours, instead of taking from someone else.” Rian bit his lip. “I’ve...wanted that, too. I think that’s what I’ve wanted, all this time. To make something of my own, instead of what someone else gave me. It’s...it’s all I’ve been able to think about lately, when I’ve been painting. Wanting this thing I’m making to be mine.”

He didn’t know what he was trying to say. What he was trying to tell Damon, when even though he was painting for himself, trying to find his own heart in the washes of color on canvas...

Every stroke of heart-shade he slashed from the tip of his brush seemed to whisper Damon’s name.

Rian lifted his gaze to find Damon watching him—silently, intently, but there was something in it that drew Rian, that begged him to come closer, even as Damon leaned in subtly.

“You want to make something you can love,” Damon rumbled.

Rian could hardly feel the pages against his fingers, the weight of the book lowering into his lap. He could only feel Damon, the small space between them, and the...the...

The heaviness of wanting someone for himself.

Not something.

Wanting Damon simply for Damon’s sake, and not for anything Rian had to fix about him to make himself feel worthwhile.

When with Damon, Rian just...

Felt like enough.

His heart ran hot and fast and wild as he let the paperback fall to his thigh; as he met Damon’s heated, questioning eyes. Rian reached out tentatively, feathered