Page 19 of Good Boys Don’t Bite

Elliot's eyes narrowed. Ronan stepped closer. There was nobody here to misinterpret the distance between them. No students crossing Hawthorne Quad. No professors. No friends. No parents looking through the windows. Just them. The difference always hit quickly. Outside this house, Ronan monitored himself around Elliot without thinking about it anymore. How long he looked at him. Where his hands went. How close he stood. The thousand tiny calculations required to make something unnatural look ordinary. Here, those calculations disappeared. Elliot lifted his chin.

“You think this is funny.”

“A little.”

“Would it still be funny if I let someone hang all over me?”

“No.”

The answer came immediately. Elliot's mouth twitched. Ronan saw it.

“That was fast.”

“I don't pretend I'm not jealous.”

“You pretend plenty.”

“Not about you.”

Something warm and dangerous moved between them. Elliot's gaze dropped. Ronan knew exactly where.

“Eyes up.”

Elliot looked at him again. Ronan's pulse accelerated. It always did. That annoyed him. After everything, after all the arguments with himself, after every promise that whatever existed between them was temporary or stupid or something they could eventually outgrow, Elliot could still look at him and make Ronan's entire nervous system behave like it had never encountered him before. Their parents had married four years ago. Elliot had been seventeen. Ronan had been twenty. Nothing had happened then. Nothing had happened for a long time. Ronan reminded himself of that whenever guilt tried crawling somewhere it no longer belonged. They hadn't grown up together. They didn't share blood. They hadn't shared childhood bedrooms or Christmas mornings or family vacations.

They'd been two nearly grown men shoved into the same newly assembled family because their parents fell in love. That explanation had once mattered enormously to Ronan. It mattered considerably less now. Elliot reached up and caught the zipper of Ronan's jacket between two fingers.

“You going Friday?”

Ronan looked down at his hand.

“Maybe.”

“With Dylan?”

“It's a party.”

“That wasn't the question.”

“No.”

“No, you're not going?”

“No, I'm not going with Dylan.”

Elliot considered that. His fingers remained on Ronan's zipper.

“Did you sleep with him?”

Ronan's eyes returned to his. Elliot's expression was perfectly calm. Too calm.

“Why?”

“Curious.”

“Bullshit.”

“Answer me.”