Hush Read Free

really dynamic gold—”
    “Nora,” he warns.
    “Okay, okay, I get it,” she says, holding up her hands in a pla­cating gesture. “We’ll ignore the incredibly gigantic, sensual, hap­py aura in the room and do something fun.”
    Wren rolls his eyes and lets her hip bump him. He feels too good to be annoyed right now. He’s surprised that his aura isn’t palpably sending waves through everyone within a hundred-foot radius. It’s been so long since he’s felt something like this connection to that boy; hot, sharp and immediate, and god is he looking forward to the game.
    * * *
    “Damn, Cam, you were gone for a while,” Nate says when Cam stumbles into their room on half-dead legs. “How far did you run?”
    “Really, really far,” Cam wheezes. Nate glances at him for anoth­er second before going back to the tangled mass of laundry strewn over his bed. He folds with a haphazard carelessness that makes Cam cringe.
    “Feeling the need for speed?” Nate says. Cam can hear the smile in his voice even though his back is turned.
    “No. Maybe.” Cam strips off his soaked shirt. “Something.” His stomach growls faintly through the cramping clench of muscles that—like the rest of his body—feel tremendously over­worked. He’d skipped his dinner and run far longer than usual, try­ing to pound the buzzing, shaking electricity under his skin out through his feet and into the pave­ment. His statistics classes had been… weird. Unsettling. His attention has been scattered—which wouldn’t be unusual in itself, considering how much he antici­pated hating this class. But it’s the draw, the way his focus is con­stantly pulled toward that boy. It’s as if, for the two hours they are in that room , gravity shifts; Cam’s body wakes up, his senses sharpen and his thoughts move helplessly, helplessly.
    “Cam,” Nate says the next day, setting his tray down on the table, “this is Mic, he’s in my comp class.”
    “Hey.” Cam looks up and half waves before looking back down.
    “Hi.” Mic begins to organize his tray of food. “So, Nate tells me you aren’t from Chicago.”
    “Not even a little,” Cam has to joke.
    “You like it here though?”
    “Love it,” Cam says.
    Nate grunts; Cam thinks it’s an affirmative sound, but doesn’t ask. Nate is devouring his lunch as though it’s going out of style.
    Cam continues, “Different. It’s a bit of an adjustment…” Maybe too big . He squirms his shoulders against that niggling itch that’s been plaguing him since yesterday.
    “Have you been out much? The Teke’s are having a party to­night; the first party of the semester is always wild ,” Mic says.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Cam says, then picks up his fork. Puts it down. Clears his throat. “I’m not much of a partier.”
    “Somehow Cam has managed to come to us the best-behaved boy in all of the Midwest,” Nate says. From anyone else that would sound cutting, but from Nate it’s clearly affectionate. “He’s not totally hopeless though,” he winks at Cam. “Last semester Julianne and I got him hammered right before Christmas break. It was amazing, he was actually singing carols. God, I wish I had film.”
    “Oh my god, shut up,” Cam says, covering his face and laughing. “I had forgotten about that!”
    “Yeah. I’m pretty sure you were sporting a three-day hangover, and we put you on a plane back home with it,” Nate says.
    “Uhh no,” Cam says. “That was just a natural reaction to going home.”
    “That bad, huh?” Mic butts in.
    Cam shakes himself a little mentally and closes off a bit. Nate’s cool; he knows Cam well enough not to press and he’s okay with waiting for Cam to confide in him. “Maybe it was just the hangover after all,” he says, picking his fork back up.
    Another kid from their hall, a transfer student whose name Cam doesn’t know, walks past. He’s slim and dark haired and reminiscent of that boy in Cam’s stats class who keeps looking