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“I used to come down here with my dad when I was little.” There was a tremor to his voice, but I didn’t call him out on it, accepting the subject change for what it was. I hadn’t wanted to make him feel uncomfortable or too emotional, and I’d somehow managed to with my words.
Casually leaning back against the wall, I gave a short nod. “Me too. Imagine—we could’ve passed each other hundreds of times and never even known it.”
“We probably did.” His voice was steadier, and I exhaled, relieved, as he continued. “Where else did you go?”
I turned to face the same direction as him, our arms almost touching. “My favourite place was Camden Lock. Did you ever go there?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Sometimes we used to get the waterbus from Little Venice to Camden. When we got to the part of the canal that goes through London Zoo, I used to imagine that the animals were escaping and I could escape with them.”
Oh, Huxley.
“Do you still want to escape?”
He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke again, he turned his head to mine, his gaze soft. “Not really. Not anymore.”
22
Something had changed. Cole was…paying more attention to me than he ever had before. Things like constantly checking up on me, little touches out of sight of anyone else, making quiet comments when he thought our parents couldn’t hear. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking loved having his attention, but he needed to dial it back before our parents got suspicious.
I pushed those concerns out of my mind for now. Our parents weren’t at home, and I was enjoying this uninterrupted time to be with him. Neither of us had anywhere else to be.
Sprawled out on his back on my bed, head and shoulders propped up against the headboard, he was switching between smoking one of my joints and demolishing a bowl of strawberries. I would’ve personally had one or the other, but he didn’t seem to care. His fingers tapped against the ceramic side of the bowl as I strummed my guitar from my position on the floor with my back resting against the side of the bed. I was going over the chords for one of the songs the band was going to perform tomorrow. We’d been invited back to the same pub where we’d done our test gig, and this time, we were getting paid for it. By the time we split the funds between the four of us, there wouldn’t be much of it, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that someone liked us enough to pay us to play. We were going to stick with covers at our gigs for now and gradually add our own songs to our social media before eventually performing them live.
“Your nails,” Cole suddenly said, his fingers coming out to slide through my hair.
“Huh?” My hand paused on the strings, my plectrum slipping from my grip as I shivered at his touch.
“The polish stuff is all chipped on your thumb. Can I have a go?”
Straightening up, I twisted around to stare up at him. “Have a go?”
“Yeah. Can I try painting your nails?” He grinned down at me, all happy and relaxed from the weed, his eyes wide and slightly unfocused as he blinked at me from behind his long lashes. Who was I to say no to him when he looked so cute?
Cute. With a mental shudder, I reminded myself that I didn’t think of people as “cute.”
“If you want.” Placing my guitar carefully on the floor, I shifted onto my knees, opening the drawer where I kept the small bottle of nail polish.
“I didn’t mean now. I didn’t want to interrupt your playing.” His smile disappeared, and we couldn’t have that. With a sigh, I closed the drawer again and climbed to my feet. I reached for the joint, inhaling deeply before crawling onto the bed, straddling his thighs. Lowering my head to his, I sealed my mouth over his, exhaling. His hands came up to settle on my thighs, his palms sliding up my legs, under the hem of my shorts.
When I raised my head again, I stared down at him, happy that the smile had returned to his face. I stroked my fingers through his soft hair as I took another hit of the joint. “You didn’t interrupt me. I was mostly messing around, anyway. I know all the chords.” Placing the joint back in the ashtray, I leaned over to my drawer again, trusting him to hold me in place while I pulled it open and felt around for the polish bottle and remover pads. “You can paint my nails now if you want.”
“Really?” His eyes lit up as he moved into a seated position, somehow managing to keep me balanced on his thighs, and it made something inside me grow warm. It was fucking crazy that this guy had so much of an effect on me. “I might not be very good. I’ve never done it before.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. Look at me. You know I don’t care about looking perfect or any of that shit.”
“But you still look fucking hot, even when you put in zero effort.” He shook his head, pretending to be annoyed. “Some people have all the luck.”
“Is this your sneaky way of trying to get me to compliment you?” Handing him the bottle, I opened the pot of remover pads and began to remove my chipped polish. I was looking down at my hands, concentrating on what I was doing, when I felt a soft kiss being placed on the tip of my nose. My eyes flew up to see Cole studying me intently.
“I wouldn’t coerce you into complimenting me. It wouldn’t be genuine. But I know you like the way I look.”
“Arrogant,” I muttered, not even slightly annoyed, climbing off him to go and wash my hands in my en-suite bathroom. When I returned, the bastard had taken his fucking top off and was relaxing on my bed in just a pair of red football shorts, all his golden, tanned skin on display. He wasn’t playing fair.
Accepting the inevitable, I lifted my own T-shirt, tugging it over my head, enjoying the way his eyes darkened as he stared at me. I knew I wasn’t anywhere near as defined as he was, and I’d never achieve a tan like his—not that I wanted to or cared about getting ultra-ripped muscles, for that matter. But I knew that Cole thought I was hot, and that was the biggest ego boost I could ask for.
“See something you like?” His lips kicked up, his gaze sweeping over me. I dragged my bottom lip between my teeth before releasing it, prowling closer to him, watching the way he spread his legs a little, just enough for me to get a good view of the tent he had going on in his shorts.
“See somethingyoulike?” I climbed onto the bed again, taking my place back on his thighs. My dick was in a similar state to his, but I kind of liked the thought of torturing us both by holding off, and I was fairly certain he did too. “Are you gonna paint my nails, then?”
