“Oh gods, stop.” August’s voice was too loud in the empty pub. “I have to go.” He spun around, tripping on the leg of a chair, nearly losing his balance.
“Wait! August, please.”
August forced himself to stop. He drew in a sharp breath, but couldn’t gather the nerve to turn.
Felix rounded him, head dipping to meet his dropped gaze. “I’m really sorry.”
August shrugged, aiming for casual, even as his insides liquefied with embarrassment.
“It’s fine,” he said, his voice an octave too high. “Because I don’t.”Just stop talking.“Can we just pretend none of this happened?”
“I think we should talk about this. If you—”
August threw up his hands. “No, absolutely not.” He shouldn’t be feeling any of this.
“You don’t have feelings for me, then?”
“I didn’t . . . I just . . . ” His heart stuttered as he tried to think of something to say. Feelings weren’t meant to be shared; they were meant to be pushed down until they went away. Especially ones this intense.
The space around Felix was charged like the air before a thunderstorm, a silent thrumming that wrapped around them both.
“Stop doing that,” August said.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re being distracting. I can’t think.”
“Why?” Felix grinned broadly. “Because you think I’m pretty?”
August rolled his eyes. “You’re a terrible person, you know that?”
“I do yeah. And yet, you like me.” Before August could snap a response, Felix laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, I’m done. I swear it. If you don’t want to talk about this, you don’t have to.”
August bit his bottom lip, on the verge of a reply, but when Felix’s eyes flicked briefly to his mouth, whatever he hadplanned to say crumbled like parchment held to flame, the ashes drifting away before he could grasp them.
Felix hummed thoughtfully, his smile dimming. “However, that does present a rather unfortunate problem for me.”
August frowned. “Why?”
“Because I think I’d like to kiss you,” Felix said blithely, as if it were nothing more than a passing thought.
As if he hadn’t just shattered August’s reality and left him utterly off balance.
“I . . . ” August faltered. The heat spread from his face to every inch of his body. “Why is that a problem?”
“Because you don’t want to talk about it, and I have a strict rule about consent.”
He gave Felix a questioning look, to which Felix responded with a shrug.
“When you can bend people’s will, you never want to question if you pushed someone into something they didn’t truly choose. There are plenty of things I’d love to use compulsion for, but not this. Never this.”
August’s nerves were fluttering insects in his stomach. This moment felt like standing on a cliff over the rocky coast of the Aere Sea. This felt perilous. The tipping point of something big.
But it also felt real. And for August, who had been hiding and pretending for so long, Felix was the only thing in his life that had ever felt truly honest.
“Ask me.”
The corner of Felix’s mouth tilted. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
