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“I’m looking forward to revealing everything.”
Dryly, “I’m sure you are.”
Henry returned, flushed. “Sorry about that.”
“I’m confused,” Cameron said, smiling. “Am I invited or not?”
“Of course you are!” came Georgie’s distant voice.
Fondly, Henry shook his head. “If you can bear a night of tedious conquest retellings.”
“As long as they’re not yours.”
“I don’t have conquests.”
Cameron eyed his bed. “No scratches on one of these posts?”
“If there were, there’d only be two.”
Didn’t exactly sound like a serial wooer and breaker of hearts.
“Three, if you count Georgie.”
“Georgie?”
“Oh no, I didn’t sleep with my sister.”
Of course not. He meant a different Georgie.
“I just kissed her.”
“You kissed your sister?”
Henry looked baffled by Cameron’s high pitch. “I was very young.”
“Oh, my God, Henry,” Georgie called out. “You won’t need Fred to scare him off.”
Henry ran a hand through his curls with a sheepish wince.
Cameron buckled on a laugh. “It’s okay,” he called back to Georgie. “This made poking around a lot less frightening.” He met Henry’s eyes. “You know, by comparison.”
They spent more than an hour in the basement, sifting through old furniture, Henry teasing him with treasures that turned out to be nothing more sinister than old receipts and scrawled lemon and apple tart recipes. A heart-pounding anticipation thickened between them, but every time they shared a magical look, a chair toppled off a table, or a phone rang, or a spider sent Henry leaping toward the door.
Laughing and groaning, Cameron followed him up the stairs and into a narrow hallway behind a door in the wall paneling.
Floorboards creaked underfoot and Henry grew quiet, face alight with mischief and feigned fear. Knuckles bumped against the back of Cameron’s hand, a frisson of electricity to add to his nerves.
He wanted it again.
Crammed together, they climbed a narrow set of stairs, and another. So close, they could accidentally . . .
Cameron slid his pinkie along Henry’s, letting it catch for a half second before dropping it. Henry’s gaze heated Cameron’s neck, cheek, temple.
“I’d like to hold hands,” Henry said in a low, rumbling voice.
Cameron shut his eyes at Henry’s fingers dragging over his palm and slotting between his, far more intimate than they’d ever held hands before. The way their fingers warmly interlocked . . .
Cameron’s mind conjured different images of them interlocking, and blood rushed to his groin.
At the end of a dark hall lit by a lone, unadorned bulb, Henry pulled a rope from the ceiling and stairs began to materialize. He paused to kiss Cameron’s hand and let him go; with tingling skin, Cameron helped him secure the staircase. “Are you ready?”
Cameron followed, sticking so close he tasted Henry with every breath.
“Ta da,” Henry fanned a hand for him to take in the room. “The forbidden attic.”
The unreasonably large room was achingly bare—only a chaise, an old desk with a broken leg, some shelving holding old books, and a large chest. The walls were dark wood—much like the floor—and light stretched in from a single window in the gable wall.
What might they find in here?
“We should start looking,” Cameron said.
Henry hummed. “Or we could sit for a bit?”
He passed the chaise and opened the window. Creeping white roses shrouded the frame. “‘I’m terribly afraid of falling . . . but I suppose there is nothing to do but to try it.’”
Cameron swallowed. Henry’s gaze seemed to ask if he was invited into Baum’s language as well as Austen’s and Shakespeare’s; Cameron’s voice crackled. “The Cowardly Lion.”
Smiling, Henry sat on the wide ledge and patted the space next to him.
Sweet breezes rushed over them and Cameron took in the stunning view of the property. A wild rose garden, pine trees, the roof of a small chapel in the distance, and beyond that, the town belt.
The graveyard lay between, unseen. Cameron shuddered.
Henry studied him quizzically. “What was that for?”
“You won’t believe me.”
“Do tell.”
Cameron shook his head and shot toward the large chest. “There must be a reason you weren’t allowed up here. Let’s figure it out.”
Henry watched him, framed by roses. The sight of him couldn’t get more radiant. “Why aren’t you telling me?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“What if I promise not to?”
Cameron stopped before the trunk. “It might seem superstitious, but if I tell you the story, bad things might happen.”
Henry leaped off the sill. “Now I need to know.”
The trunk had worn silver handles and a big old lock that was tricky to open. “Help me?”
“I don’t know,” Henry mused. “What will I get for it?”
“My gratitude.”
“I want your story.”
“I think I can manage after all.” The lock knicked and Cameron heaved it open.
Henry caught the edge of the lid and helped steady it against the wall.
They stared inside, and the fantasy that they might discover old journals or letters fizzed. Nothing here but musty blankets and pillows and a broken gramophone that got Henry tinkering. Not a single page hidden inside the folds, nor any suspicious dark stains. God, he probably shouldn’t have read so much Daphne du Maurier.
