Hush (24 page)

* * *

“You just have to wait,”
Maggie says, taking his phone out of his hand and turning it face down on the table. “And eat.”

Cam shakes his head and looks away. The sun is too bright and he has to find the will to go to class.

“No really,” she says, putting a fork in his hand. “You’re not going to change his mind by starving. Eat something or I’ll call your mom.” He rolls his eyes at her. “Fine, point taken. I’ll call Peyton. I have her number now.”

“What? What the hell?”

“It’s taking a village to keep you together, Cam.”

He just puts his head down.

In the end, he eats,
mostly because Nate comes home and chimes in, and the chorus of people harassing him is not worth it.

Outside, the wind is sharper; maple leaves cascade in golds and reds as he walks to class. His feet kick them up as he shuffles along.

Cam has never experienced heartbreak. He’s not sure that’s what this is; he hopes it’s just the strain of waiting for an answer, the not knowing if he will be heartbroken. But something inside doesn’t feel right, and he doesn’t have a clue how he’ll fix it by himself.

Cam knows there are a
few things
he should do. First, he should stretch, because he ran hard and opted to skip cool­ing down and stretching in favor of a shower. There’s something more soothing about showering than running. All the things he’s drawn from running —sharpening and exposing his senses, open­ing up and feeling connected to the world around him—feel like sand­paper. He runs now out of obligation.

The shower is like a mute button. Time stands still and all the sensory input feels right: the murmur of falling water and the white wall in front of him; the steam and heat that leave him in a stupor—it’s all he craves right now while he’s living in the in between of putting his heart in Wren’s hands and waiting to see if it will stay there.

So. Stretching. A thing he should do. Also: drying off. He’d dropped his towel on the floor and crawled into bed the moment he got to his room. His hair is getting his pillow wet. But he’s so warm and tranquil and, for a moment, perfect.

Until Wren pierces through him. Cam can tell he’s here, senses him close and bright and
fuck
, Cam is naked and his hair is half in his eyes and everything is damp.

He tries to hop into some pants as fast as he can, but he’s only gotten on boxers and has one leg in when Wren opens the door and slips in. For all the quiet of his entrance, his energy—their energy—is anything but. It’s a cacophony that resonates so deeply Cam vibrates with it.

“Uh,” he manages brilliantly.

“You… aren’t dressed. I should—um, I can—” Wren seems flus­tered and turns to open the door.

“No!” Cam fumbles into his pants. “No, don’t go.” He reaches for a shirt that’s hanging on the foot of his bed.

“It’s inside out,” Wren points out with a small smile, and holds up a hand when Cam moves to take it off. “No, leave it.”

A silence stretches, in which they examine each other. Wren looks devastating, beautiful but strained; exhaustion is writ­ten around his eyes and slumped shoulders. He’s wearing a very un-Wren cardigan, very slim black with red accents around the arms and shoulders. He looks tiny in it.

“So…”

“I want to talk,” Wren states.

“Okay.” Cam steps back and offers Wren his desk chair, which is pretty much the only thing he has to offer other than his bed. Wren’s look is careful; his movements are deliberate when he steps close and puts his hand on Cam’s cheek. It’s cool and cupped per­fectly to the shape of his face. Cam closes his eyes and turns into the touch. Relief is a torrent through him.

“Look at me, please,” Wren whispers. He doesn’t make him though, and that small thing, the freedom to keep his eyes closed if he wants to, is sweet surety to Cam. When he does open them, Wren’s are a steady, rich green. “Yes.”

“Oh god.” Cam bites his lip and he’s lost his breath.

“
Yes
.” Wren’s other hand traces Cam’s ear and cheekbone; Cam sits back on the bed and pulls Wren with him until he’s curled precariously on his lap. “If you’ll still have me.”

“Shut up,” Cam manages weakly. “Of course.” He kisses the tip of Wren’s nose and his cheek and his Wren-redolent hair.

“
Oh
.” Wren presses his face against Cam’s skin and wraps his arms awkwardly around him. Cam tugs, rearranging them so that Wren is still on his lap but leaned against the wall more com­fortably. He feels Wren’s tears and the moisture of his shuddering breaths against his neck. Cam just smoothes his hands over and over the muscles of Wren’s back until he is calmer, marveling at the compact weight of his body and how it fits Cam’s just right.

Finally, Wren pulls away; when he looks up at Cam, his face is like something Cam’s never seen before, hesitant and young. It’s almost unbearable, the feeling of being trusted, finally. Wren’s breath fans over Cam’s cheekbone before he dips in for a gentle kiss. It’s a kiss not meant to heat, but to comfort, long and so soft it’s barely a whisper. Wren is beautiful, so close and openly vulnerable, all lovely male lines and boneless, a trusting weight in Cam’s arms.

“I have no idea how to do this,” Wren confesses again.

“Neither do I. We’ll figure it out,” Cam says. He feels a confi­dence glowing solidly inside, one with an origin he can’t discern but doesn’t really want to.

“I’m probably getting heavy,” Wren says after slow and newly shy kisses, spilling off of Cam’s lap and onto his damp pillow. Cam wants to protest, but he can’t really feel his left leg. Wren laughs when he feels the dampness on the pillow and pulls it out from under him to flip it over. He curls one hand around Cam’s waist to pull him down so they can lie next to each other. He looks sleepy. Cam can feel how hard it is for him to be so open, as if he’s poised for the moment Cam will hurt him. Cam slips two fingers against Wren’s collarbone and takes in the slight shiver that runs through him.

“What now?” Cam asks.

Wren cuts Cam off with a kiss, pulling him in with grasping hands and the smallest exhalation.

“Wait,” Cam says. He pulls back and smiles, then runs his thumbs down the line of Wren’s neck to settle him. Wren shakes his head and kisses Cam again, sending a wave of fervor from his mouth through Cam’s body. “Don’t do that,” Cam says more softly. “I told you I want
you
.”

“So…” Wren hesitates, drawing his hands back, and Cam floun­ders for a second. Wren sits up and moves to the edge of the bed, knees together; his pale fingers fiddle with one of his plugs, a bright lapis with darker blue streaks. Cam wants to kiss him there, tender and sweet, where Wren’s nervous fingers meet his ear; he realizes with a flutter that he
can
. That all the little gestures and touches and words he’s been holding back, he can say and do now. He props himself up near Wren, facing him, and puts one hand on his knee.

“Cam,” Wren pleads, “I don’t know how to be with anyone with­out it. It just happens most of the time. How will I unlearn it?”

“I have no idea,” Cam admits. The littlest moments, the details they’ve never let themselves linger over—those are what he wants the most. “I just think that—I… will you lay back down, with me? We’ll figure this out. We can learn.”

He stretches out carefully on his side next to Wren, adjusting so that Wren can pull the blankets up over them. He sips Wren slowly, each kiss a little different, the flavor of exploration, of newness—of uncertainty, even—coloring each a different shade from the last.

Every time Wren feels himself
sliding
into his old habit, Cam pulls back; sometimes with a tiny smile, his eyes dun, sleepy and happy, sometimes with a whispered
hey you
or a finger tracing the curve of Wren’s eyebrow or the bow of his lip. It’s like being banked in the loveliest fog; Wren can sense the shape of his desire through it, though everything is tamped down and muffled in mists. It shimmers through him, as if wanting Cam is millions of sparks and refracted lights held carefully in the gray. But more, almost frighteningly powerful, is the sensation of home.

Cam pulls away after a moment, settling his head on the pillow so that Wren can only see half of his face. Wren can’t remember the last time he let himself settle with someone like this, their knees pressed together, delicate touches lighting like dragonflies on water—his cheek, the plush give of Cam’s earlobe. The bump of Cam’s shoulder, discernible under his cotton shirt.

“Tell me something about you,” Wren says, finally. There has always been a hunger in him that Cam has been able to rouse with­out trying, a hunger he’s indulged and fed time and time again with his body and Cam’s. But tucked further away has been a denied hunger to know Cam as a person, more than a body. “There’s so much I don’t know.”

“Tell me about it, Mister ‘I have two brothers and a dog,’” Cam says lightly.

Wren laughs too. “Good point.”

“So you tell me a thing,” Cam whispers.

“A thing?”

“I’d say everything,” Cam explains. Happiness is blinding, build­ing and coming out of him in waves Wren can’t help but sense. “But we have time. Let’s discover it all slowly. I want to savor every bit of it.”

“So. One thing.” Wren feels wonder, wondrous realization, with each of Cam’s words. Because he wants everything. “And then everything.”

“
Everything
,” Cam whispers, his eyes holding Wren’s with a power that makes him believe, and hope, and trust.

The End

So many thanks to the
hardworking team at Interlude Press. Annie, for every morning you held my hand and told me to believe in myself and all the work to make this book better. Candy, for fierce support and hard work and belief. Lex, for answering each of my silly questions with patience and for memorable GIFs that often made my day. Becky, for having a vision for this amazing cover I would not have imagined, and Victoria for bringing it to gorgeous life with the cover art. Zoe Bird and Nicki Harper for holding me accountable to each detail and helping me craft this novel into something wonderful.

To the beautiful women in my life who have encouraged me to write: Mo and Emily, I’d never have taken first steps without you. So many thanks to Riah, April, Carrie, Kate, Kathryn, Mel, Jess and Jenni—each hug, each moment and each story I’ve written in the last four years I’ve done with your encouragement and support. Thanks to everyone who answered my questions about Chicago, and to each friend, fan, writer and beta along the way, thanks for the beautiful crazy community we made together.

To my husband and kids, who have put up with a tremendous amount of “Mommy is busy now,” thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jude began her writing career
at the age of eight when she immortalized her summer vacation with ten entries in a row that read “pool+tv.”

As a sucker for happy endings and well-written emotional arcs and characters, Jude is an unapologetic bookaholic. She finds bookstores and libraries unbearably sexy and, to her husband’s dismay, is attempting to create her own in their living room. She is a writer of many things that hope to find their way out of the sanctuary of her hard drive and many that have found a home in a fanfiction community.

Jude has been determinedly aging backwards from thirty each year. As such she’s really twenty-seven and not actually thirty-three, although her addiction to tea and tendency to crochet anything in sight make her sound like an old biddy. Her two cats, husband and two young boys are determined to fill her life with chaos and love. Visit Judesierra.com for more.

1. Why does Cameron want Wren to
compel him?

2. After initially rejecting Cameron as a potential partner, what eventually makes
Wren reconsider?

3. How did Peyton influence changes in Cameron’
s behavior?

4. Wren initially does not allow Cameron to see his sexual release. Why does Wren
deny this?

5. Cameron pushes past the rules Wren has established for their game. How does this change
the game?

6. Why is Wren shaken by his feelings
for Cameron?

7. Why does Wren insist that his partners keep their
games secret?

8. Is Cameron one of the gifted and if so, what do you think his
power is?