Catch My Breath (13 page)

Danny reached out and swatted Elliot’s leg as he walked by. “Just don’t want to whip your butt. You have, like, zero poker face. I know all your tells.”

“Sure you do.” Elliot grinned and sat across from Danny on Danny’s bed. “Are we betting?”

“On speed? I wouldn’t want to take all your money, little man.”

“I’m taller than you.”

Danny snorted. “That’s not what I was talking about.”

“Hey! You don’t even know—” Elliot caught himself getting outraged and snorted. “Maybe we should get anaconda Reece in here to judge.”

“Deal the cards, youngling.” Danny liked to tease Elliot about how he was six months younger, making him the baby of the group. Webb and Reece were twenty, Tate at the tail end of nineteen. It was only he and Elliot who had just gotten out of high school.

“Yes, Yoda.”

Elliot laid the cards out to begin a game of speed. Danny got lost for a moment watching his hands, long fingered and elegant, probably the only thing about Elliot that wasn’t adorably dorky and uncoordinated. Danny loved how those fingers felt entwined with his, around his neck, in his hair, cupped on his hip.

“Ready?” Danny shook himself out of his momentary daze.

“Yep.” Elliot grabbed his first five cards. “Let’s do this.”

Danny and Elliot started slamming cards down, laughing and trying to knock each other out of the way. As with pretty much everything Static did, speed soon devolved into more horseplay than actual game playing. Elliot grabbed cards from the wrong piles, shoving them down where Danny’s cards had been. Danny grabbed the same cards and tossed them aside, putting his back where they belonged. They both started to laugh and couldn’t stop until they were out of breath and rolling around on top of the cards. Danny finally got Elliot pinned underneath him, ready to tickle the hell out of him. After all, it was Elliot who’d started the second game, the one that had nothing to do with cards.

But his eyes, huge and golden-brown and laughing, they must’ve done something funny to Danny, made him lose his sanity there for a second, because the next thing he knew, he was leaning forward and brushing their lips together and it felt so damn
right
. Elliot’s eyes went wide for a moment, but then he closed them and lifted his face into the kiss like it felt right to him too. The next step for them. Danny shivered. He wanted to do so much more—drop down onto his elbows, dig his fingers into Elliot’s hair, sink his tongue into Elliot’s mouth, nibble, taste, never
ever
stop….

He
had
to stop.

E
LLIOT
couldn’t believe it. He figured he must be hallucinating. Danny was kissing him.
Kissing
. He felt like he’d been waiting forever for a kiss like this. Since the first second he saw Danny if not even longer. Elliot’s head spun. The kiss was perfect, gentle and questioning, a question Elliot said yes to in every way his body knew how.
Yes, yes, yes….

Danny started to lift his head, and Elliot reached up, desperate to keep contact.
No, don’t stop.
He was finally getting what he’d been so afraid to want, and he couldn’t stand for it to end. But Danny’s lips lifted from his, and his eyes opened, staring down, scared, worried… silent. The quiet in the room spread, deafening and full of things Elliot needed to say. He couldn’t stand to let go. He let his fingers drift out of Danny’s hair and across his cheek slowly. So slowly. It barely felt real.

“El—” Danny looked away.

Elliot’s chest crushed, the fragile hope that he and Danny were really going to happen drained away in a painful rush.

“I, uh, I forgot I was going to meet Reece downstairs to play pool,” Elliot mumbled. He had to get out of there before he did something stupid like tell Danny every one of his pathetic fucked-up feelings. He scrambled out from underneath Danny, nearly falling out of the bed and tripping as he tried to get his flip-flops on and get out.

“Elliot.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just going to go downstairs with Reece and do that thing and, yeah, I’ll be back later. Have fun—just. Yeah.”

Elliot wanted to die. His face was hot pink, he was sure, and every drop of dorky awkward in him flew out all at once. Just for a moment in his life he wanted to be cool. Just once.

He slid out of their room without another word and nearly sprinted downstairs. Elliot hadn’t ever been more grateful that Reece was still up and in the main area, picking at his guitar and hanging out with the guys from OCD.

“Hey, bro,” he said casually when Elliot slipped into one of the easy chairs.

“Hey.” Elliot hoped his face looked as casual as Reece’s voice had sounded. From the look Reece shot him, he doubted it.

“You okay?” Reece asked.

“Yeah.” Elliot tried to grin. “Just ran down the stairs a little too fast. I almost wiped out at the bottom.

Reece chuckled, one of his open infectious laughs, and raked a hand through his dark hair. “I was playing around with a few things. Wonder if they’d be cool if we changed a couple of the chords in ‘Fool For Love’? I think this will work better.”

Elliot settled into the conversation, ready to talk about music, or pretty much anything as long as it would take his mind off of what had happened upstairs. It worked. Almost.

Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, or Reece got lost in his guitar, picking out new melodies and chords, Elliot’s mind would be there again, in that kiss, in that moment he thought would never in a million years happen. It had been both of them, he knew it was. He hadn’t kissed Danny, Danny hadn’t kissed him, they’d kissed
each other
. That much Elliot was certain of. But the question was why did Danny do it? And if he really had participated in the kiss as much as Elliot had, why did he look away like that afterward? All Elliot had wanted to do was grin and laugh, say “Finally,” and pull Danny closer so he could kiss him again. How could Danny not want the same thing?

He didn’t want to go back up to the room and face an awkward conversation, but he was scared of what the cameras were picking up. There was no way his worries weren’t splashed all over his face. The girls online had noticed how close they were, how much time “Delly” spent together hanging out, cuddling, walking close, and having whispered conversations. They all swooned about how protective Danny was over him, how he looked at Elliot like he was the most important thing in the world. More than anything, Elliot wanted to know how much of that was true and how much of it was wishful thinking. But it wasn’t as if he could
ask
Danny what that kiss had meant, if he felt the same as Elliot did. That conversation would be more raging awkwardness than even Elliot could handle. So he avoided it. As long as he could.

When it got to the point where he was falling asleep on the couch, he finally told Reece and the other guys goodnight and went back to the room he shared with Danny, cringing the whole time, worried a gentle letdown was waiting for him upstairs. But when he got there, Danny was asleep on his stomach, face smashed into the crack of his book, phone cradled in his hand. Elliot smiled sadly and tugged Danny’s phone out of his hand, slipped the book out from under his face, and pulled his light covers over him.

“Night,” Elliot whispered to Danny’s peacefully sleeping form.

His gut wrenched painfully. At that moment, Elliot was pretty sure he knew what love felt like.

And it sucked.

Chapter 8

Reece Beaufort @SouthernBoyReece

@Dannyboy94 Is @EPriceisRight up yet?

Danny Bright @DannyBoy94

@SouthernBoyReece @EPriceisRight Nope. He’s still snoring up a storm.

Reece Beaufort @SouthernBoyReece

Kick him out of bed! We’ve got stuff to do:) @Dannyboy94 @EPriceisRight

Elliot Price @EPriceisRight

@Dannyboy94 @SouthernBoyReece I’m up!! Jeezzzzz. And I don’t snore. I wasn’t even sleeping.

Danny Bright @DannyBoy94

@EPriceisRight Morning Elli-bean!! (yes you do snore)….

“You’re ridiculous. I’m right here,” Elliot grumbled.

Danny laughed from the other side of the room. Elliot waited for it to be awkward, for Danny not to look at him or for there to be silence. Instead, Danny bounded up from his bed and hopped over and flopped on Elliot’s. That easy, huh? They’d kissed and Elliot took off and it was weird as hell, but Danny was going to act cool like nothing much happened?

Part of Elliot was relieved. Part of him was pissed. He
wanted
there to be something, some talk, some acknowledgement, anything at all that told him Danny had been as affected by their kiss as he had. He thought. Or maybe it was better to pretend it never happened? The relieved part of him told him that was the case.

“What’s up for today?” Danny asked. He had to already know. Tuesdays had been the same since they moved into the house.

“Rehearsal, recording, video dairy. Two hundred snack breaks for Reece.”

Danny chuckled and leaned over to ruffle Elliot’s hair. “Better get in the shower then. You know the producers don’t like it when we have beanie day on Tuesdays. We have to look pretty.”

See. You knew what was going on today.
He was probably just trying to make Elliot feel less weird. Which was nice. And annoying.
Why can’t you feel weird about this too? Why can’t you want another kiss? Why am I sitting here staring at you like I’m the princess of awkwardland?

Elliot threw off his covers and hopped out of bed. He tried not to notice that Danny followed him to their dressers, studiously ignored the heat that bloomed in his belly when Danny’s bare arm brushed up against his side while he rifled through his shirt drawer, and one hundred percent did not under any circumstance picture Danny naked when he said he’d take the first shower so Elliot could lie back down for a minute if he wanted to. When Danny flipped him that signature cheeky grin before he turned and walked to the shower, Elliot nearly screamed.

Why are you so okay with this?

Elliot spent the entire time Danny was in the shower, which was usually quite a bit longer than everyone else, talking himself into not caring. They kissed. No big, right? Friends kiss sometimes, and it’s cool and everyone’s fine the next day. He imagined it happened all the time. Hell, it had happened to him more than once. He’d kissed a few of his friends at parties and thought nothing of it. So why now? Elliot rolled his eyes at himself.

Hmmm, I wonder? Dumbass.
Could it be that he’d never looked at Danny as only a friend? Just maybe?

He spent his time in the shower scrubbing his hair and skin and pretending everything was fine. Same with breakfast. Lots of pretending. He smiled at Reece’s jokes and halfheartedly punched Webb when he gave him crap over something Elliot barely even paid attention to. But when Danny crawled into the van that would take them to the studio, crowded right up next to Elliot, and slung his arm across Elliot’s shoulders just as he’d done the day before and most days before that? Yeah. Done pretending that everything was no big deal.

Elliot’s body burst into shivers and goose bumps and warm melting heat. That little fluttery bloom earlier? Nothing. He wanted to reach over and curl his hand around Danny’s thigh, run his hand up under the hem of Danny’s shorts, feel golden skin and the muscles from surfing and swimming every day. Elliot dug his nails into his palms and looked out the window. It was desperate, the need thrumming through his body and rushing to his cheeks. It pissed him off.

“What’s up, El?” Danny asked quietly. He couldn’t be that oblivious. Elliot just stared right at his face until Danny nodded. “Oh. Later, okay? We’ll talk later,” he whispered.

Elliot wasn’t sure if he wanted “later.” If the talk wasn’t good, he’d rather not have it. But he supposed they had a long road ahead of them if
something
wasn’t discussed. Even if it was just “Oops, I kissed you. Let’s just be friends.” The idea of hearing those words out loud made Elliot want to puke. A big part of Elliot, the part that wasn’t reveling in the memory of that one tiny perfect kiss, wished things could go back to the way they’d been. To the place where he and Danny were hovering on some invisible precipice but hadn’t jumped over the edge. Maybe that one kiss didn’t count for much of a jump, but to him everything had changed. They couldn’t just exist in oblivious cuddly touch land anymore. They had to say something about what had happened.