Hush Read Online Free PDF Page B

together and admiring Adam’s body, as another athlete, had made sense to him. Adam had a sense of humor and a lightness to his personality that had drawn Cam to his friendship as soon as they’d met. Maybe it wasn’t as intense or confusing as what he’s been feeling for Wren, but from where he is now, Cam can see that it was attraction.
    Is it his nature, buried deep, or is it just Wren ? Nothing has ever felt like this connec­tion with Wren, the curiosity and longing these last months, then the explo­sive fervor between them when Wren kissed him. Cam recalls the moments just before, staring at his notes in the library base­ment, confused but unable to resist his body’s call toward Wren. He pictures Wren’s smug expectation, his lightning eyes.
    Cam rolls over; his phone tells him it’s past three a.m., and he’s nowhere close to sleep. The screen casts a too-bright light, piercing the dark. No matter though; Nate could sleep through anything. He’s snuffling lightly in his bed. Cam breathes steadily and tries not to relive the moment, the crash of energy and desire and light between his lips and Wren’s, their bodies and skin. He tries to ignore the way his skin still throbs and the unsettling desire flooding his limbs, so that he can sleep.
    It’s useless, resisting. It’s strange too, to feel pulled toward such a con­crete fantasy. His fantasies have always been vague, flashes of desire and thoughts of pleasure between nameless bodies. Cam has always wondered at his own lack of desire com­pared to what he’s observed in high school friends or liv­ing with Nate, who brings a casual stream of women through their door and has a well-developed libido and ease with sex that Cam doesn’t.
    This desire is definitely more specific. Uncomfortable, but sweet. Grounding, as if—for one of the rare times in his life—he is present in his own body and the space around it. He’s seldom noticed that he wasn’t grounded. Running feels almost the same; the high that comes after­ward matches the rush he felt kissing Wren.
    * * *
    Wren walks out of the library on autopilot, not really aware of what he’s doing until he’s getting off the bus in his neighborhood. It’s dark enough that he knows he has to be alert, but he’s still in enough shock that he has to actively work to try to sense his surroundings in any way.
    Nora is home, he knows. He left her there just a few hours ago, with a promise of a late night guilty pleasure Clueless screening. Fuck. He cannot even face her, or the sheer volume of internal I Told You So that will come pouring out of her. Wren grits his teeth, shoulders open the door and drops his bag. Nora’s already on the couch, hair in a half-fallen bun, wearing her kitten pj’s.
    “I can’t,” he says as soon as she looks at him.
    “Wha—?”
    “I just said, I can’t.”
    “You can’t…?” Nora says.
    “Talk about it? Deal with you being smug?”
    “Okay, so.” Nora tries to smile at him , her calm down it’s going to be okay Wren , smile. “We won’t do any of that. How about, because you seem to be in…distress,” she says delicately, “We can watch the movie quietly with no talking, or we can raincheck the whole thing?”
    Wren closes his eyes and flumps onto the sofa next to her. “It’s a lot easier to be mad at you when I prematurely assume what you’re going to do, you know,” he informs her.
    “Well, yes, I would think so,” Nora says with a laugh. “Why do you want to be mad at me though?”
    “Cause you love me and it’s easier,” Wren says, shuffling so he’s more comfortable and cuddled against her. She pushes him off and starts to help him with his boots.
    Clueless is a magical movie, because despite hundreds of view­ings, it still holds Wren’s attention and entertains him well enough to give him a small buffer of time between what hap­pened in the library and his need to process it. He doesn’t talk to Nora that night, but locks himself