Just Like This (Albin Academy) by Cole McCade

Author:Cole McCade [McCade, Cole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-11-23T18:30:00+00:00

* * *

Damon didn’t know why he was surprised Rian slept like the dead.

His heart had nearly stopped, when he’d gently pried their bodies apart and touched his fingers to Rian’s cheek...and realized he was crying. Tears streaking down his face in wet glimmers, and Damon had felt like a complete and utter shithead, panic rising inside him...only for Rian to smile at him, sweet and sad, and kiss him—lingering, warm, his palm cupping to Damon’s cheek.

It’s okay, he’d whispered against Damon’s lips. I’m okay. Thank you.

Before Rian had been gone almost in an instant, snuggled trustingly into Damon’s chest and caged between Damon’s body and the wall, when it was pretty much the only way they could both fit on the narrow twin bed without one of them falling off in their sleep. And as his breaths had evened out and calmed, Rian had turned still and quiet, loose and lax against Damon, his hair a leviathan ensnaring Damon’s limbs and keeping him close.

Not that Damon would have gotten up if he could; he was still caught, wrapped up in that moment when a slow, soft, hurting kiss had turned into something more. More than comfort; more than a distraction; more than...anything Damon had ever felt with every man he’d dated or casual fuck he’d thrown himself into to let off steam for a night.

That sense of isolation had always been there, even when he told himself he was trying to fall in love or even just trip over a little lust for a night or two. That sense of being separate, of not belonging, but it was always his walls they murmured about when they regretfully shook their heads and said this wasn’t going to work.

His walls, instead of the ones he felt like he saw everywhere, shutting him out.

But there had been no walls between him and Rian, tonight. Nothing but shared pain, shared need, shared hope, shared warmth.

That hadn’t felt like just sex.

It had felt like...

Too much.

Not enough.

Everything.

Something that left Damon breathless, as he watched Rian sleep and wondered when he’d stopped seeing a skinny, pale, snotty, meddling pain in Damon’s ass.

And started seeing this beautiful fey thing who was just as lost as he was, so unsure of his place in the world, but goddammit... Rian was trying.

Trying until he wore himself out, and slept as deeply as an exhausted child, tangled so closely with Damon and trusting Damon to keep him safe while he escaped from their mutual troubles in sleep.

I will, Damon thought, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he was promising. He gathered Rian closer, resting his head atop that messy crown of rippling hair, and told himself even if this was just for tonight, even if it broke in the morning...

I’ll hold you close. I’ll keep you safe.

If you’ll let me...

I will.

God, his head was going all fucked—and maybe Damon had been wrong from the start, when his chest was a hollow drum reverberating with the echoes of these frustrating feelings he couldn’t name.

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