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Authors: Suki Fleet

Wild Summer (4 page)

BOOK: Wild Summer
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In this they were exactly alike.

By the time Crash came back inside, Julian had gone. So he blew out the few candles still alight in the kitchen and went back to bed.

Chapter 5

 

Before….

 

W
ARMED
BY
the sunshine, the surf washed around their ankles as they stepped onto the sandy beach of the cove. Cliffs rose up sheer and solid to hide the town beyond them from view, and it was easy to imagine they were out here alone, miles from anywhere, beneath the painfully bright blue sky.

“Hey.” Summer laid his hand on Christopher’s bare arm, the light touch making his heartbeat quicken. “Want to come swimming?” Summer asked, and proceeded to pull his T-shirt off, ball it up, and throw it onto the damp sand with his shoes.

Lithe and beautiful, his skin as dark gold as the sand, Summer could not be unaware of the effect he was having. With his jeans slung low on his hips, nipple rings that glinted as they caught the sun, he was every manner of perfect in Christopher’s mind—he couldn’t have imagined a boy more so—and longing seemed to pull at his core with the force the moon exerts on the sea.

But self-consciousness made him awkward. He didn’t know where to look and forced his gaze down to stare at the paleness of his large feet in the water.

Although nearly sixteen, he had no framework for this sort of experience, for what he was supposed to do when someone he was incredibly attracted to stripped off in front of him.

When he looked up again, Summer’s hands were working at unbuttoning his jeans. Without pausing he shoved them down—he was wearing no underwear—stepped out of them, and carelessly threw them onto the beach somewhere near his T-shirt and shoes, his cock bouncing against his thigh with the movement.

All the things Christopher was certain he shouldn’t notice he noticed—Summer’s pubic hair was the same dark gold color as his skin, his cock hooded, the just-visible tip pierced, the weight and length of him perfectly proportioned, his stomach and thighs lean but nicely defined.

With no small jolt of desire, Christopher realized he wanted more than anything to swim with Summer—to tumble him into the water, to be naked with him—yet at the same time he knew he couldn’t. If he took off his clothes, Summer would see the way he had stiffened like a randy bull, it was not something he could control, and Summer obviously didn’t feel the same way.

“Come on.” Summer beckoned him with a crooked finger, a cocked eyebrow, and a smile. “Don’t be shy.”

Christopher didn’t want to think he was imagining the heat in Summer’s gaze, but flirting was not something he’d had much experience with either, so he just didn’t
know
.

A massive gust of wind came in from the sea, rocketing around the cove, blasting up sea spray and sand in painful gusts. Christopher covered his eyes until it whirled off. When he opened them again, Summer was meters away, submerged shoulder-deep in the water. He covered his eyes and pointed at Christopher, the gesture implying he wouldn’t look.

Fuck it,
Christopher thought, depositing all his worldly belongings down on the beach and divesting himself of his clothes. Facing the cliff, he looked down at his naked, traitorous body, giving away far too much truth about how he felt. He couldn’t lose his hard-on, however much boring, ridiculous stuff he thought about, because his hormones were switched on by Summer’s presence, and he had no idea how to turn them off again. Girls had it so much easier.

Both hands covering his genitals, he turned around and waded into the cooling sea, every footstep taking him into colder, deeper waters. Despite his gesture promising to cover his eyes, Summer watched him every step of the way, an unreadable look on his elfin face.

Without warning, the shelf of the beach dropped away, and Christopher sank up to his neck with a whoosh of breath.

“You can swim, right?” Summer mouthed, slightly panicked as Christopher scrabbled backward until his feet touched the edge of the shelf of land.

There was perhaps only a meter of water between them, but Christopher felt his naked skin tingling electrically, as though their bodies were about to touch.

Feeling almost unbearably awkward, Christopher nodded. Summer had to know he liked him now. His erection might as well have borne a banner with Summer’s name on it. All of a sudden, he felt so small out here and far too exposed.

“Are you a strong swimmer?” Summer mouthed.

Christopher shrugged. Physical activities were what he excelled at. Swimming was just strength, and he had strength.

“You look strong.” Summer’s hand came out of nowhere to trace his bicep, his darkly lashed gaze flicking up to Christopher’s face and then down to the water. “I like strong,” he added and smiled again, before closing his eyes and vanishing beneath the waves like some sort of water nymph.

Chapter 6

 

Now… (four years later)

 

C
RASH
COULDN

T
remember the last time he’d been awake before seven in the morning, never mind out of bed.

Julian had left half an hour ago to landscape the garden of a large country house, and Romeo was still sleeping, so Crash made a cup of tea and took it out into the garden where he could stare up at the white clouds as they drifted across the sky and feel the wet grassy earth, so cool beneath his bare feet. The scent of the sea mingled with the scent of the thick green woods surrounding the cottage, the herbs and heavy-headed flowers Julian had planted in the garden. As scents went, this place was heavenly.

Perplexingly, for the first time in days the ache in his chest had lessened a little, though that could be due to the nature of his awakening, he thought wryly. When he’d awoken, heart thudding, it had been at the intense peak of an orgasm, his cock pulsing hard as he came. He’d held in a breath, scared he would unintentionally cry out. Crash guessed there were worse ways to wake up, but maybe not many more embarrassing ones, especially at someone else’s house. Luckily he’d still had on the shorts he’d worn the night before and so hadn’t had to come up with some excuse as to why he needed to wash the sheets after only three nights’ use.

But the fragile web of his dream had been blown apart with his orgasm, and he was left with fragments of feeling and color and flickers—bright and painful as lightning—of Summer.

For the first time since it had happened, he let himself think back to last week, to when he’d seen Summer again. Crash needed to think about it. He needed to try and work out why seeing him had thrown everything out of sync….

 

 

One week earlier….

 

I
T
WAS
an exam day, and not unpredictably Crash had overslept.

Grabbing the nearest item of clothing off the floor and shoving it on his naked body, swearing in his head at his cash card not being where it should be, Crash managed to get himself together in about three minutes flat. He scrawled a two-word explanatory message—
Exam! Late!!!
—on the chalkboard Kay, his foster mum, had installed in the hallway for exactly this purpose and was out the door and running to the bus stop.

Taking the bus to the nearest tube station, rather than all the way into London as he normally did, was the only way to make up some time. Only problem was, going on the tube held its own special sort of terror. He wasn’t an anxious person; mostly he was rational and collected, but the tube did something to those calm, levelheaded areas of his brain and left him an emotional wreck. The sensory overload of the London Underground, the way the trains sped along the platform without warning, so fast and close, people pushing and shoving as though every train was the last train out of hell—it got to him in a way nothing else did.

The one thing that helped was trying to connect with people, smiling, being acknowledged.

Crash breathed deep to hide the shaking and looked around the packed tube carriage, nodding hello to the people squashed in the too-small space next to him.

He didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t afraid of small places, crowds weren’t his favorite, but he never had this sort of reaction anywhere but on the tube. At this rate he was going to turn up for his exam in a puddle of sweat and adrenaline. If he made it that far at all!

Glancing around, he tried to take his mind off his surroundings, smiling hopelessly at the few people who made eye contact, reading the same adverts for holidays, life insurance, and musicals they always had slotted above the windows. It was perplexing that the trains had windows at all down here—these trains never reached the surface, the lines too deep. Crash supposed it was for giving people a sense of not being so enclosed in the coffin-like dark.

Wishing he were anywhere but a hundred meters underground, Crash stared into the well of blackness beyond the window at the occasional spark of light or the thick, dirty cables that became visible running along the wall.

If Crash hadn’t been looking at the way all the people in the carriage were reflected in the window, his gaze would never have wandered so far, and the flash of blue would never have caught his eye.

Lots of people had blue hair nowadays—the color was everywhere—but this shade was different. Familiar. Crash swallowed.
Just look away,
he told himself. It wasn’t the first time he thought he’d seen Summer, and strangely—or perhaps not—the last time had also been on the tube. But that time it hadn’t been Summer. He wondered if anxiety was beginning to make him hallucinate.

The train jerked and slowed as it reached the next stop, and the figure with the blue hair closed the book in his hands and stood up to get off.

Blue hair, skin smooth and dark like amber honey. The figure’s head was turned away, hiding his face, but still Crash’s reaction was so visceral his heart almost stopped.

It was Summer. Crash knew. He could feel it somehow, as if there were a bright thread that still connected them after all this time.

When the doors of the train opened, Crash pushed his way toward them, his eyes desperate not to lose the young man with the electric shock of hair as he was swallowed by the crowd tumbling off the train. They were so close. Crash just wanted to reach out to him, just once, just to say hello, to see if he had changed, if whatever had been between them had changed—if there was something… anything.

Every guilt-ridden thought about the exam he was now surely going to miss was shoved toward some dark corner of his mind as Crash got off the train and headed toward the exit, certain Summer would do the same. The pull to follow him was irresistible.

They were at Baker Street, and the escalators were a mile high, packed with commuters. Crash was sure he caught a glimpse of blue at the top and ran, jumping on the steep metal slope between the escalators to avoid the queues of people moving too slowly up it. His shoes slipped and slid, but there was just enough friction to help him climb to the top.

Ignoring the waving arms and unheard yell of a guard, he jumped one of the barriers in the crowded foyer and ran out into the street, scanning both directions, scanning the crowd, the taxis, the buses….

Nothing.

He spun on his heel, running his hands through his hair.

The blue-haired boy was gone.

Summer was gone.

Only… he wasn’t.

There. Standing on the other side of the busy street.

Crash froze. His heart stuttered, and his chest grew tight, galvanized by Summer’s gaze even though they were so far apart and a torrent of London traffic separated them. He wanted to shoot across the road, leap a few car bonnets to stand in front of him. He wanted Summer to see him strong and tall and true. But most of all, he wanted the swollen, blackly bruised skin that distorted one half of Summer’s face to be just a trick of the light. He wanted the fear he could sense from Summer’s stance and body language to be all in his head.

A double-decker bus cut the thread between them, coming to a halt right in front of Crash. Finally he snapped out of the paralysis that had taken over his limbs and incautiously darted into the road and around the bus, nearly getting flattened by a crazy black-cab driver on the other side. But he was too late—he was always too late. Summer had fled, vanished like a shadow in sunlight.

His heart shrank sickly in the emptiness and began to ache.

Chapter 7

 

Now….

 

C
RASH
LOOKED
up at Romeo. They sat opposite each other on either side of the flagstone path that wound its way across the tiny front garden, all the way from the crooked gate to the equally crooked front door. Their bare knees were touching.

When Romeo had gotten up, Crash had told him everything. His heart cracked open like a split-apart fruit, the ruin displayed for all to see. Well, not exactly all, but that’s what it felt like. Crash wasn’t a secretive person, but he’d carried this with him for so long it felt like a deep and painful part of him.

You told me once you lost someone…. I thought at the time you meant someone had died, but it was him, wasn’t it?
Romeo signed.

Pressing his fingers into the hard earth beneath the grass, Crash nodded.

If it was me, the worry would only get worse until I saw him again, made sure he was okay,
Romeo carried on.

Crash had told Romeo what he hadn’t told Julian

about the bruises he’d seen on Summer’s face and the fear he hoped wasn’t real. He’d wanted so much to be imagining it.

How can I see him again?
Crash signed. So much time had passed. Summer could be living anywhere now.

With strong, slender fingers, Romeo cupped the back of his head, drew him forward until their foreheads rested against each other, and fixed his beautiful dark eyes on Crash’s.
I love you, Crash. You and Julian are the most important people in the world to me. I cannot stand to see you unhappy, especially when you’re beating yourself up about something that happened when you were just a kid. I don’t know how. But you could start at the last place you knew he lived,
he mouthed.

BOOK: Wild Summer
11.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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