Page 12 of Shock & Awe
“Neither do I,” Kelly whispered.
“And right now there’s a wicked big thing hanging there.”
Kelly snorted.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Kelly blurted.
Nick shrugged, looking around the room with a little smile. “I feel like I took advantage of you being drugged.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I feel like I did,” Nick insisted.
“Yeah but, if you hadn’t, you’d be feeling guilty for telling me no,” Kelly argued.
“No I wouldn’t,” Nick said. A smile pulled at his lips. “I’d be regretting telling you no and probably very frustrated, but . . .”
The admission warmed Kelly all the way to his toes. “So that’s how you do it,” he muttered.
“What?”
“I just learned the secret to the O’Flaherty charm,” Kelly said, beginning to grin. “You just . . . stun the other person with honesty.”
Nick chuckled, his cheeks beginning to flush. But he didn’t look away. They stared at each other, getting lost in the familiarity for long seconds before Nick leaned closer. “Are you okay, Kels? And I don’t mean the hole in your chest.”
Kelly nodded. Then he frowned. “No, actually.”
Nick’s face clouded over, his brow furrowing and his eyes apprehensive.
“See, every time I think about you now, I get these butterflies,” Kelly explained, fluttering his fingers at his chest. “And it’s weird because it’s you, and you’re you. But I like it too. And . . . I like that it’s you. So I’m not sure what to do with that.”
Nick licked his lips, leaving his tongue at the corner of his mouth like he always did when he was thinking. Kelly’s eyes were drawn to it briefly before he tore his attention away and focused back on Nick’s eyes.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Nick finally said.
“How about telling me it’ll pass? Or that it’s just the drugs. Or almost dying. Come on, O’Flaherty, I know you have half a dozen excuses at the ready to use for things like this.”
Nick was silent, chewing on his lip.
Kelly’s smile fell. “Don’t you?”
“I’ve never run into a thing like this,” Nick admitted.
Kelly cocked his head. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
Nick laughed. “Butterflies whenever I think about myself?”
“Don’t play word games with me, smart-ass. The meds haven’t kicked in yet.”
Nick sighed and contemplated his hands. He dragged his thumb over the scar on the back of his hand. “I think it’s unproductive to talk about it until you’ve recovered a little more.” He looked up, forcing a smile to cover the hint of fear Kelly could see in his eyes.
Kelly wanted to push, to get past that smile and see just what Nick was thinking, what he was afraid of. Because the prospects last night had opened up were all parading past Kelly’s mind, and he liked what he saw. He needed Nick to be on the same page with him, though, and Nick obviously wasn’t yet. Kelly knew one thing for certain, and that was that Nick wouldn’t be pushed, he wouldn’t be bullied, and he sure as hell wouldn’t turn that page faster if Kelly tried to do it for him.
So Kelly just nodded. “How about pancakes?”
“With M&M’s?”