Page 13 of Bond Strength

“There’s this beautiful word called no,” I said. “I like to exercise it often and indiscriminately.”

He snorted. “God, if only. I know my family needs me, but the constant demands from everyone get a little loud sometimes.” I cast him a sharp glance. He’d never shared that. When we were kids, we’d run together in one rampant mass through the neighborhood, but as we grew up, cliques formed, circles that sometimes felt impenetrable.

“Then it’s even more important to tell them no.” I took another sip from my drink. “Your family’s not going to shatter because you set some boundaries. And if it does, how stable was it to begin with?”

Noah blinked at me, not saying anything. Then he let out a slow, helpless laugh. “Jesus, Declan, you’re brutal.”

Right, I’d let my inside voice out to play again. I scratched my nape. This was how I always ended up pushing people away, even though I wasn’t trying to. Anyone but my family, at least. Noah used to be able to read me the best, but we had over a decade’s divide between us, and a handful of chance encounters in a short span of time wouldn’t stitch that together again.

Noah plunked down in the seat beside me. “Maybe you can tell people no, but I’ve never mastered the art form. Probably because of the aforementioned knife to the heart.”

“I wasn’t trying to be cruel.” I chewed on my lip.

“I know.” Noah knocked his foot against mine. The motion sent a frisson of something through me, like my body was in flight mode. “Doesn’t mean the truth is easy to digest.”

“Maybe eat it with some more sodium bicarbonate.” I swished my beer back and forth. His foot still rested against mine, and I was pretty sure I would combust. “That’s how they originally pitched the digestive biscuits.”

“Mmm, pretty sure you’re the one who’s going to have to start packing digestive elements to those truth bombs you lob.” A goofy grin spread on his lips. The familiarity struck me for a moment, but the pressure of his foot against mine, the way it made my whole body aware, was too different to ignore.

“Right, I’ll start on those Truth Digestives at once. Who needs my other projects when people’s stomachs aren’t at ease.”

“You joke, but if you sold something called a Truth Digestive, I’m pretty sure it would blow up. People would start whipping them out in arguments. It’d be a whole ass thing.”

“I’d much rather leave marketing to someone else. Clearly, the Truth Digestive wouldn’t be necessary if I could read people worth a damn.” I tipped back a little more of my cider and stared up at the sky, if only to avoid the pressure of Noah’s gaze on me. My skin prickled from it, and part of me wanted to rush home.

The other part of me refused to leave.

“Reading people isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Noah said with a groan. “If I could zap out my ability to read disappointment, that’d be dandy.”

“Who the hell would be disappointed in you? You were a star football player, you’re well liked around town, and your family keeps you in constant demand. None of that spells out disappointing.”

“Well, you are, for one,” he said, his voice going a bit funny.

I dared a glance in his direction, and my throat tightened. The serious look in his eyes, the way he stared at me with an intensity I’d never faced from anyone else—fuck, I didn’t know what to do. It sentan immediate signal flare to run, but I was frozen in the moment with him.

Noah’s lips were glossy from his beer, and the moonlight did him favors, turning his blond strands silver and deepening the sharpness of his features, the blue of his eyes.

“I’m a given.” I pushed through. “I’m disappointed with everyone on a regular basis. It’s a load-bearing part of my personality.”

Noah snorted, and his eyes softened. “You’re fucking ridiculous, Dec.”

“And yet you’re the one still engaging with me. I came out here to look at the stars.”

“How’s the sky tonight?” he asked.

I stared up, the canvas above soothing me. The pinpricks of light spanned before me like diamonds I could grasp, and the majesty of how expansive, how much existed up there right in our eyesight always took me out at the knees. “It’s clearer. You can see Mars tonight.”

Noah craned his neck as he followed my line of sight. “Oh, there it is.”

We both lapsed into silence, but for the first time in a very long while, the quiet wasn’t fraught with tension. We stared at the stars, letting the night sky wash over us. Like this, a peace existed that I fought to claim whenever possible.

It was only when I took another sip of my beer that I realized he’d never moved his foot.

And I hadn’t moved mine either.

Chapter six

Noah

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