Adam's place looked exactly like Nick remembered. A simple
one-bedroom walkout in the basement of an apartment
building. No television, but three packed bookcases and an impressive
stereo took up the main wall. Nothing else was noteworthy:
a small kitchen with a two-seater table tucked in the
corner, a tiny bathroom, and a bedroom dwarfed by the queen
bed crammed in there. But the living room was huge and open,
especially with the wide sliding door leading to the outside.
Nick had gone to friends' houses before. Parents would either
be home, or there'd be plenty of evidence they existed. Parental
involvement was a reality. Even his own house had Gabriel's
sports equipment stacked in a corner of the garage, or Michael's
bills and papers always left on the kitchen counter, or Chris's
laundry flung at the bottom of the basement stairs. Always a reminder
that no matter what, being alone was practically impossible.
Here, this space was very much Adam's.
And they were very much alone.
"How long are you planning to hang in the doorway?" said
Adam. He shrugged out of a fleece pullover and tossed it
through the bedroom door. It left him in a loose T-shirt, cords of
muscle trailing down his arms. The air carried his scent to Nick,
oranges and cloves.
The truth was that he liked watching Adam move, all rhythmic
and lyrical as if the music never stopped.
He could hardly say that. He leaned back against the front
door and took a sip of coffee. He meant it to look casual. It
probably looked like he was eager to escape. His heart was already
working double time. He lived his life doing what others
expected of him. Being here with Adam had no place in that.
And worse, he had no idea what Adam expected.
Except maybe an answer to his question. Nick shrugged a little,
feeling the hardness of the door at his back. "I was wondering
what you had in mind."
Then he mentally kicked himself again. He shouldn't have
said that, either.
Adam didn't tease him this time. He stopped in front of Nick.
"You're safe here," he said quietly. "Okay?"
Nick nodded and looked away. His jaw felt tight.
"Seriously. You don't have to watch your words or your
thoughts or whatever has you so wound up." Adam put his
hands on Nick's shoulders, not letting go even when Nick stiffened.
"I only brought you here so we could talk. You just
looked like you needed a breather. You can leave any time you
want."
A breather. Nick needed a whole oxygen tank. He swallowed
and made himself meet Adam's eyes. "I don't want to leave."
"I don't want you to leave." Adam took Nick's free hand and
tugged. "Come on."
Nick hadn't held hands with another guy since it was mandated
on field trips in kindergarten. It should have felt foreign,
uncomfortable. He should have been pulling away.
But it didn't feel foreign. Adam's grip felt warm and secure.
He could have led Nick straight off a cliff and Nick would have
followed. At the bedroom door, Nick's heart staggered and
scrambled to maintain a rhythm, but Adam led him past that, to
the couch.
Not like it mattered. They were alone.
Comforting and terrifying at the same time.
Adam sat close, curling into the cushions to face Nick. Their
42 Brigid Kemmerer
fingers were still loosely twined, and Nick knew Adam was giving
him space to pull away. He didn't.
Nick waited, testing the air. He'd always been able to sense
changes in air patterns, from a door opening, from someone
coming close. But lately he'd also been able to sense emotion indirectly,
from the rate and quality of someone's breathing.
The air always talked to him, and now, it echoed Adam's
promise. You're safe here.
He looked at their fingers latticed together. Adam's thumb
brushed against his own, very slowly, very gently, a tentative
touch as if he knew that too much would send Nick reeling.
But firm enough that Nick knew he could grab on and cling
for dear life.
"I never kissed a guy before you," Nick said, flat out, no preamble.
"My brothers have no idea." He winced, remembering
Quinn's comments during the landscaping job. "They probably
think I'm a total player. Even my twin brother—"
"Gabriel, right?"
"Yeah." Nick glanced up, surprised that Adam had remembered.
"He says I'm the good twin, and that's why I get more
girls."
"That would make him the evil twin?"
Nick frowned. "If you ask Quinn, she'd say yes. But he's not.
He has a good heart. He's very loyal. We got picked on when we
were younger, and he always took a beating so I could get away.
He's the kind of guy to punch first and ask questions later.
Quinn hates him, and I wish I could fix it. But he can be sharp—
cruel. He speaks without thinking, and it gets him into trouble."
"You're close?"
"Yeah." Nick hesitated. "I think we're growing apart this
year. A little."
"And he has no clue you're into guys?"
Despite the fact that he was sitting here holding hands with
Adam, the instinct to reject the notion was so strong that Nick
almost denied it. He had to clear his throat. "No. No idea."
"Do you think he'd hurt you if he knew?"
Nick blinked in surprise. "What, you mean physically?"
SECRET 43
"Yeah, I mean physically."
Nick had never worried about his brothers beating the shit
out of him over something like this. Anger, isolation—those he
expected. Not violence.
His eyes zoomed in on the scar pulling at the edge of Adam's
lip. Years ago, someone had slammed Adam's face into a locker
at school, causing enough damage that he'd needed plastic
surgery to put his face back together.
But Nick couldn't imagine Gabriel hurting him. Not with his
fists, anyway. Disappointment and rejection were another story.
Nick shook his head. "I don't think he would. But he might
not take it well. Gabriel is very . . ."
Adam waited.
Nick ran a hand through his hair, feeling it stand up in tufts.
How could he explain Gabriel? "He plays on four varsity teams
at school. I think he knows most of the cheerleaders intimately,
if you catch my drift. He's got a girlfriend now, but if anyone's a
player, it's him. He's brave—I mean, he's trying to get into firefighter
school. Just very . . . I don't know."
"Alpha?"
"Yes. Perfect word."
"You admire him."
Nick shrugged.
Adam smiled. "You do. I can hear it in your voice." He
paused. "How old are you?"
"Seventeen. How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
Two years. It felt like twenty. Nick didn't know how to explain
that it wasn't just his brothers, that school would take on
an entirely different feel if he had to walk down the halls with
all his classmates knowing the truth. Adam could be himself,
and he had a safe place to go if the world started to crumble
around him.
Nick wasn't sure he had anything. He didn't think his brothers
would throw him out of the house, but he didn't want to live
there feeling their resentment, their unease. Their judgment.
44 Brigid Kemmerer
And he couldn't stop going to high school. Education was his
only way out of this town.
But he still couldn't bring himself to tear open those college
letters hidden in his desk. What if they didn't want him, either?
"Do your parents know about you?" Nick asked.
"Yes." Adam smiled. "I was obsessed with dance from day
one. I used to make up routines to show tunes in my living
room. I asked my parents for hot pink legwarmers for my ninth
birthday. I'm a walking cliché. I think they knew before I did."
"And they were all right?"
"They were all right until I got hurt. They wanted to send me
back to school, but they wanted me to pretend to be straight—like
anyone would believe that, right? I mean, I get it, they were worried.
I spent two weeks in the hospital. They'd seen what those idiots
had written all over my Facebook page. But I couldn't do it. I
couldn't pretend, and I didn't think it'd do any good. So I got my
GED, I got a job, and I moved out." He paused. "We're all right.
They help me with rent sometimes, since I'm going to school parttime."
But Nick heard it in Adam's voice. His parents had asked him
to pretend, and that had created a gap that time wasn't fixing.
Nick spent so much of his life pretending not to be an Elemental,
risking persecution for something he couldn't control.
What if he came out and his brothers told him to keep pretending?
This felt like a double whammy.
Nick looked into the warm depths of Adam's eyes. "You
spent two weeks in the hospital?"
"I might have played the patient a little more than necessary.
I had a hot male nurse."
Nick smiled and found himself reaching to trace the line on
Adam's face, before realizing what he was doing. He started to
pull away.
Adam caught his wrist. "You can touch me."
But Nick didn't move. His pulse was choking him. This was
so different from the first night they'd come here. Then, he'd
SECRET 45
been so confused and desperate that he hadn't even admitted his
feelings to Adam until he leapt out of his chair and kissed him.
Now there were too many thoughts in the way. Too many
fears. No Quinn to break them up if things went too far. He felt
like he was falling, scrambling to find purchase, and the only
rope he had was fraying strand by strand.
"What do you want?" said Adam, his voice a bit lower, the
sound curling through Nick's thoughts. "Something like this?"
He traced a finger over Nick's lip, slow and deliberate.
Every nerve ending in Nick's body responded to that touch.
His breath shuddered before he could stop it.
Adam smiled. He shifted closer, putting his palm against the
side of Nick's face, sliding fingers through his hair. He leaned in
to breathe along Nick's jaw. "Or something like this?"
If Nick turned his head, their lips would meet. Adam's weight
pressed into his side, warm and solid and masculine. Just from
those simple touches, Nick's body was responding more forcefully
than it ever had with any girl. Heck, once Quinn had
climbed in his lap and unbuttoned his pants, and his body hadn't
stood at attention the way it did for Adam's palm on his cheek.
His brain might have been a hot mess, but his body was definitely
not confused.
Adam moved closer still, pressing his lips to the hollow below
Nick's jaw, sliding his hand out of Nick's hair and down his
neck. His movements were strong, confident, nothing like the
feather-soft touches of a girl. Adam's hand slid lower, squeezing
Nick's chest through the T-shirt.
Nick swore and grabbed his face, bringing their lips together
because he couldn't take it. Adam kissed him back with equal
force. Nothing hesitant, tongues and heat and strength. Nick's
hands found Adam's neck, his shoulders, the muscled planes of
his chest. Tugging at his shirt yielded the smooth skin of Adam's
waist, the curve of his rib cage.
Adam grabbed the waistband of Nick's jeans and jerked him
closer. Nick's breath caught. His brain stopped working. He
wanted to throw Adam down on the couch.
So he did just that.
46 Brigid Kemmerer
But when he followed him down, Adam put a hand against
his chest. "Easy," he said between breaths.
"The hell with easy." Nick knocked his hand away and
kissed him again, pinning his wrist against the cushion.
Adam smiled and yielded, kissing him back before putting his
free hand against Nick's shoulder.
Nick grabbed his hand and pinned that one, too. But then he
realized Adam had tried to stop him twice. He broke the kiss.
Their breathing turned loud in the space between them.
The tiniest bit of tension hung around Adam's eyes, but his
voice was teasing. "The hell with easy, huh?"
Nick blushed fiercely. He actually felt the heat crawl up his
neck.
Adam laughed, but quickly sobered. He flexed his wrists.
"You're strong."
"Sorry." Nick let him go. But he didn't draw back.
"I wasn't complaining."
Nick wasn't sure how to read this, and it wasn't like he had a
ton of experience to draw from. "You stopped me."
"I stopped us." Adam paused and put his hand against Nick's
face, almost a caress. Nick closed his eyes and inhaled.
Then Adam's voice lost the softness. "Let me up."
What could he do? Nick shifted back, sitting on the edge of
the couch. This felt like a prelude to rejection.
You're safe here.
No. He wasn't. He didn't feel safe anywhere. Emotion clawed
at his throat. He'd let a wall down, and now he was furiously
trying to put the bricks back together.
Were they going too fast? Had he done that, or had Adam?
The hell with easy.
For a breathless instant, it had been amazing to let go of
thought, to let instinct rule his motions. But now he was paying
for it, and he couldn't analyze everything fast enough.
"Look." Adam drew a hand down his face. "I don't want
you—"
"Forget it." Nick shoved off the couch. The path to the door
seemed a mile long.
SECRET 47
"Hey." Adam came after him. "Hey."
Nick's hand closed on the doorknob. Adam grabbed his arm.
He was stronger than Nick was ready for, and he spun him
around.
Most girls couldn't do that, either.
"What?" Nick demanded. The air had dropped ten degrees.
"Well, you're definitely gay. A straight guy wouldn't be such
a drama queen."
Nick set his jaw. "Let me go."
"Can I finish what I was going to say?"
Nick stared back at him. For all his gentle grace, Adam had a
core of strength. Nick had seen it once before, and he was seeing
it now.
"Fine," he said. "You don't want me . . . ?"
"I don't want you to rush into something you're not ready for."
Oh.
Adam's hand loosened on his bicep, but he didn't let go. "I've
dated guys before who don't want to be out. It's a personal decision,
and I get it, but . . ."
Nick swallowed. "But what?"
Adam looked at him, hard. "But if you wake up hating yourself,
I don't want you taking it out on me."
Nick studied him, allowing some of the earlier moments to
click into place. Adam asking if Gabriel would hurt Nick. The
tension in his eyes when he said, "You're strong."
Even now, he was holding himself at a slight distance.
There was more to Adam's story, hiding behind this easy selfconfidence.
Nick shifted his weight, and Adam almost flinched. Without
the air to reinforce his impression, Nick might have missed it altogether.
Slowly, carefully, Nick reached his hands out and put them on
Adam's shoulders. "You're safe here," he said softly. "Okay?"
Adam's eyes widened as Nick fed his words back to him.
Nick smiled, just a little. "You don't have to watch your
words or your thoughts or whatever has you so wound up."
Now Adam was blushing. "Okay, okay—"
48 Brigid Kemmerer
Nick kissed him. Not with the feverish intensity of a few moments
ago, but a bare brush of lips.
When he tried to pull away, Adam caught his face and held
him there, putting his forehead against his. "You're going to
break my heart. I can feel it."
"Not if I can help it." He put a hand over Adam's, holding it
to his cheek. "Slow?"
Adam nodded, turning his head to kiss Nick's palm.
Then he grinned. "Well," Adam said. "Slower."