Page 50 of Silver Sweet
His words flow deep through me, and for the first time, I hear the songwriter in him. His eyes redden the longer our gazes grip and fist. Neither of us look away. I’m staring at someone who’s come out of my worst fear.
The implosion of a dream. Feeling the end to what you wanted to last forever.
Standing inside the lifeless wasteland of your hopes and determination and thinking all the hard work led to a place where nothing grows. Where there’s no tree to climb toward the sky you so desperately want to kiss.
You are in the cold.
On the ground.
And I don’t want to be there any more than I want him there.
“You’re going to need a name for The Carraways,” I remind him. He can’t be referred to as Phoenix if everyone knows that’s the drummer for Nothing Personal.
“You want to name me?” he asks less hostilely.
I frown. “Are you offering?”
“Sure.” His eyes dart down me again. “You pick.”
“How do you feel about your middle name?”
“Indifferent.” He squints at me. “What’s your obsession with middle names?”
“Makes a person more unique, Wolfgang St. Pierre.” I swear his lips tic up just slightly. “Made you smile.” I grin.
“It’s not an achievement, nepo baby. I smile all the time.”
“That is a flat-out exaggeration. Youbarelysmile, dude.”
“Maybe I just don’t smile around you.”Ouch.He tilts his head at me, and I do my best to exhale the tension in my chest. He catches my gaze. “Did that one puncture?”
“Not at all. I’m a Cobalt. I’m invulnerable,” I say seriously. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I could definitely hurt you.”
Why is my heart still racing?
He tears his headphones off his neck. “But I’m not going to maim and murder my singer.”
His singer.That should not stroke any part of me. It feels like you could fry an egg on my body. I comb my fingers through my hair. “Your bullets for eyes say otherwise.”
Phoenix lets out a sudden laugh.
My lungs feel full of helium. His slow-rising smile on me isn’t overly bright, but the dark edges of him are entrancing.
My lips curve upward. Until I remember our earlier conversation about me being gay, and I dig out my Zippo lighter. “Okay, let’s backtrack.”
He’s not excited.
“We’re doing that a lot. You like reversing?” he asks. I blame Eliot for that sounding sexual in my head.
“Hate it.” I ignore the heat against my neck. I open and close my lighter with aclick, click, click. “I like climbing. Ladders. Obstacles. Mountains.”
“Men?” he taunts.
I’m a furnace. “Straddling. I excel at it all.”
“I didn’t ask if you were good at it, nepo baby.” He watches me turn the doorknob. “And I’m gay,” he says so fucking casually that it steals oxygen. What. The. Fuck.
