Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Or something else.
Like the irritation sparking in that dark gaze, embers scorching against that ice to make them smolder. “Don’t fuck with me. Chris hasn’t been to practice in almost a week. Says he’s staying after class to work on your projects. Looks goddamned miserable, too. So what the hell’s going on? He failing, and you’re making him do extra credit?”
“Failing? He’s the top student in the class, he—wait. Stop. Back up.” Rian eyed Damon warily. “Mr. Louis, he’s not staying in my class after school. I’m not keeping him. I thought he was with you. So if he’s not with me, and not at practice...”
Damon went still—an odd quiet falling over him, a certain arresting motionlessness that made him seem like a living statue, a thing of strange-sculpted art in tones of bronze and copper and gold and deepest iron black.
Before he groaned, tilting his head back, baring the strong lines of his throat. He swiped a hand back through his hair, pushing it back from his face and shaking a few droplets of sweat free to patter down on his shoulders like raindrops falling from tree branches after a storm.
“Mother fuck,” he said. “I think Northcote’s been lying to us fucking both.”
* * *
Damon Louis couldn’t quite believe Rian Falwell had just thrown a fucking balled-up paper towel at his head, like they were in grade school trading spitballs.
But then he couldn’t believe Falwell was staring at him like he’d happily gut Damon, too, his imperious little pale mouth twisted in a knot and his previously bone-white cheeks flushed with anger that reflected in glittering hazel eyes.
People didn’t glare at Damon.
They didn’t even make eye contact.
But Falwell didn’t have the slightest qualms about glaring at him, standing there like the lord of his five by five domain, slender presence bristling fit to fill the tiny cubicle he’d commandeered as his... Damon didn’t even know what to call it. Studio. Workroom. Junk closet. Dumpster. Especially when Falwell had cluttered it wall to wall with kitsch, this kind of...whirlwind of clay and paint and pictures and delicate bits of papercraft that fit together in a bizarre aesthetic chaos, where it all coalesced in an esoteric pattern like some strange art installation in and of itself.
While Rian himself was part of it, lit in white and amber by the single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and the golden sunlight falling like pale whiskey through the narrow, long bank of windows bumping up against the ceiling on one wall.
The whole room was too warm, as if it had marinated in that sunlight and Rian’s body heat until Damon couldn’t even tell it was autumn, despite the fact that the drafty halls of the ancient wood-slat building were always chilly.
And it smelled like earthy, cool clay in here.
Clay, and something else.
Something rich, sweet, soft.
Candied, like molasses.
For a moment, he wondered if that scent came from Rian himself.
Damon had never really paid much attention to Rian Falwell over the last few years. He vaguely remembered the day he’d noticed a new hire at the table in faculty meetings, mostly caught by the startling fountain of rippling black hair that fell over the man’s body like a shawl and trailed to his hips—but he couldn’t say if that had been Falwell’s first day there, or if he’d been there for weeks before Damon had finally glanced up to notice the way he smiled like a store mannequin, frozen and fake and empty. Shallow. Distant. That had been Damon’s first thought, before he’d stopped thinking about the new art teacher at all and only absently noted his presence in subsequent meetings.
They were technically in the same department for athletics and recreation, since Falwell taught a dance class for the teenaged monsters who didn’t want to take mandatory P.E. credits, but that was about the closest they’d ever come to overlapping. Rian was the art teacher. Damon was the football coach. Something something something, never the twain shall meet.
Except they were meeting right now.
Because Damon’s star quarterback hadn’t been to practice in nearly a week.
Until about thirty seconds ago, Damon had thought the slim wisp of a man in front of him was the cause.
And now—now, well, he really didn’t know what to think.
Because if Chris Northcote had been lying to both of them, assuming they wouldn’t talk...
Well, that was a problem.
Especially when Damon didn’t think Chris would lie without cause. He was a good kid. Almost too good. Straight A student, nice to every damned body. Honest to a fault. Thought he was everyone’s meat shield.
So if he was lying, it had to be for a pretty fucking good reason.
Which meant, in every mind except that of a desperate sixteen-year-old, it was probably a pretty fucking bad reason.
While Damon turned that over, Rian worked his mouth, wrinkling his thin, straight nose, before letting out a rather dramatic sigh and slumping his narrow shoulders. He was almost as tall as Damon, maybe an inch or two below Damon’s six foot four, but he looked like he weighed maybe half as much soaking wet—although the airy voluminous flow of his layered, taper-sleeved linen tunics in deepening shades of ivory, sand, and gold paired with wide-legged linen trousers obscured all but the vaguest outlines of his shape. With his skinny, bangle-draped wrists and delicate movements, he made Damon think of a butterfly, the drape and fall of his crinkle-edged tunics like the subtle twitch of a butterfly’s wings at rest. He carried himself with a certain elegance that reflected in even his smallest of motions, and it just made Damon grit his teeth.