Just Like This (Albin Academy #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,97

palette and a fresh tube of paint.

He hadn’t finished anything since he’d come to Albin Academy. He hadn’t been sure if he wanted to, when he wasn’t certain if he gave a damn about gallery exhibitions and doubted anyone back in New York was waiting with bated breath for his next showing. Should he want to do it for anyone else, anyway?

Or just for himself?

Like Damon—searching for his place in the world by making something for himself, instead of because of what someone else expected. Could Rian do that?

Did he even know what he would make for himself, if he wanted?

Maybe not.

But the reaching fingers of that tree felt like the reaching grasp of his thoughts, searching, seeking, begging for something to want.

Begging for something for his heart to hold on to...and so Rian gave those grasping fingers color, and texture, and life, as he painted long into the night.

Painted his heart into the burning heart of the tree.

And wondered if he would ever let that heart be seen by any eyes but his own.

* * *

Damon really wondered why the hell he had made his lock screen that image of Rian with his tongue sticking out.

Because now every time he got a text, a call, even an email notification, he had to look down at that ridiculously goofy face Falwell was making, and feel that odd little twitch in his chest as he tried really fucking hard not to think just how fucking cute he was.

And how much Damon missed him.

What the hell, Louis?

He lounged in the recliner in his suite, a stack of unfinished health education performance reports taking up half his tiny coffee table, the other half supporting a steaming plate of chicken carbonara he was just waiting to cool after he’d forgotten to even cook until well after midnight, phone held overhead as he pillowed his head on one arm and scrolled through their past text history, rereading that tentative conversation that had, somewhere along the way, turned familiar and gently curious. They hadn’t said anything to each other since that sleepless Tuesday night; there’d been no reason to, when it was still radio silence from the Northcotes and with the school’s formidable nursing staff on the job, there was no way in hell Chris was escaping the infirmary, and from Nurse Hadley’s terse emails he was healing up nicely but still refusing to talk about anything.

Damon just...he and Rian were fine apart from each other.

There was no fucking reason to miss him, was there?

Like, what the hell was even going on in his head right now?

It wasn’t even about missing the sex. Yeah, the sex had been good the one time it happened, and sometimes he caught himself remembering the way Rian had gone so soft and helpless when Damon kissed him, leaving Damon so flushed and distracted he got smacked in the face with a dodgeball in third-period gym yesterday...

But more often he caught himself thinking about how Rian had fallen asleep against him.

Proving what he’d said—How could I be afraid of you?—more than any words, when Rian had settled in Damon’s arms so trustingly, curled so warm against him and the small bed forcing them so close they’d woken up tangled in each other with Rian’s hair snaking everywhere in a mess and their legs practically hooked around each other.

Now, every time Damon woke up, he woke up feeling for that, only to find the bed empty, just himself sinking the stacked futons down into a pillowy heap.

It was absolutely ridiculous that he wanted it back that much.

But maybe...maybe.

Christ, if he was a drinking man, he’d fucking need one right now. Not that there was anywhere to go after midnight except that festering swillhole just across the Mystic—Hank’s Roadhouse. This time of night there’d be no one there except people who had nothing they wanted to go home to. Damon himself wouldn’t go there if he was dehydrated and the only thing left to drink in the world was a bottle of roadhouse whiskey.

He didn’t need a goddamned drink.

He needed Rian.

Fuck it.

With a frustrated sound, he scrolled down to the bottom of the text message history, and typed out a new message before he lost his nerve.

You make it hard to think. Hard to know which way is up, which way is down, he sent—but that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t enough, and fuck, he probably should have at least said hi first or something, but this was all he had and all that