Chapter 8: The Whole Way

Cassian put a twenty-dollar bill in the Yes Jar at nine fifty-eight and carried the jar upstairs.

"What's this?" Noah asked from the blue room doorway.

"A deposit," Cassian said. "For tonight. In case I say it."

"Say what?"

"Sure."

Noah took the jar out of his hands and set it on the hall table.

"You're not going to say it," he said. "Come here."

Cassian's bedroom was dark except for a lamp, and the bed was huge and unmade.

Noah shut the door behind them and locked it, which was a new sound in that house.

"Before we start," he said, "I want you to hear me say it."

"Say what?"

"What I want."

He stood very straight in front of the bed, with his hands at his sides.

"You thought I was just being polite," Noah said. "A paid tutor with good manners."

"I did think that."

"I'm not polite. I'm hungry."

He swallowed.

"I want you. Not the library or the name or the house," Noah said. "I want to hear you ask me for things, and I want to give them to you."

Cassian had been waiting four days to hear something like that, and he had not known it.

All the careful, cold thoughts he'd built about Noah dropped away at once.

"Okay," he said. His voice cracked. "Then I want you to take your shirt off."

Noah took it off.

He pulled the green hoodie over his head and dropped it on the floor.

Cassian saw all of him in the lamplight for the first time.

He had narrow ribs, a pale scar under one arm, and dark hair across his chest.

"Come here," Cassian said.

Noah crossed the room, pushed him back onto the mattress, and climbed over him.

They kissed until the sheets were warm.

Noah's mouth went down his throat and his chest.

He stripped off Cassian's cardigan and shirt with quick hands.

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