“What?” Caelan barked. Horror widened his eyes and left his mouth hanging open. “Rayne? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Drayce hopped from the counter and threw his hands up in the air. “Dude, I don’t know! I’m wondering…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought out loud. Did the kiss mean anything to Caelan? Because deep down, Drayce wasn’t sure if he’d recover from Caelan admitting that the kiss didn’t mean anything.
“Just…let’s drop it. It’s going to ruin things. You’re gonna feel uncomfortable with me, and things will get all awkward. I…let it go.”
Drayce crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “I thought awkward was our thing.”
Caelan groaned. “Awkward around other people. Not with each other.”
“Come on, Cael.”
The prince slammed his hands on the counter separating them. “I’m attracted to you, okay? I have been almost since the moment we first met. But you’re not gay and I really like having you as my best friend, so I kept my mouth shut and my damn hands to myself. And yeah, that night on the roof, I was scared of dying and never seeing you again. I didn’t want to die having never…”
“Having never kissed me,” Drayce finished softly when Caelan appeared to run out of steam. His heart was pounding so hard he was stunned that Caelan couldn’t hear it. Caelan was attracted to him. His friend had actually wanted to kiss him, not any random guy as a final fling before going off to his death.
Caelan dropped his head and curled his fingers into fists. “Can we drop it now? Forget I even said anything.”
This would not do at all. He didn’t want to drop it or forget. And he hated the way Caelan was drawing into himself, wrapping himself in dark emotions.
“I get it, though. I mean, I am pretty damn hot,” Drayce said, buffing his nails on his chest.
Caelan snorted but didn’t lift his head to meet his gaze. “You’re an idiot.”
“Would you be willing to kiss me again?”
“What?” Caelan screeched. That got him looking at Drayce with an expression of complete disbelief and shock.
“Would you kiss me again?” Drayce repeated. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the floor. Maybe for this part, it was a little hard to hold Caelan’s gaze. “The first time, it happened so fast. You’d just told me you were handing yourself over to the enemy, and I was thinking that you were gonna die. I was definitely gonna die because Rayne and Eno were going to kill me. And then bam! You kissed me and you were gone.”
“But you kissed me—”
Drayce scoffed at him. “That was a revenge kiss to get back at you for kissing and running. I want a real kiss.”
“You’re…you’re not gay,” Caelan stammered as though his brain were still locking up over this conversation. “You like girls. I’ve seen you flirting with them.”
Drayce shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe I’m bi.” Or maybe I’ve already found the perfect man, and no other compares to him.
Caelan’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out and he closed it again.
“Come on, Cael. Kiss me. What do you have to lose?”
“You,” Caelan replied, that single word coming out razor sharp. “I could lose my best friend, and no kiss in the world is worth that.”
“You won’t lose me,” he promised in a gentle tone. “Do you think our friendship is so weak that a kiss would destroy it? You are never fucking getting rid of me. No matter what happens between us.”
Slowly, Caelan lifted his head and their eyes met across the center counter. In the low light, the blue looked almost fathomlessly black, as if Drayce could drown in his eyes. “Do you promise?” Caelan whispered.
“You are never going to lose me.”
Caelan nodded. “Okay.”
And then neither of them moved for several seconds. Drayce’s entire body had become a live wire of excited, anxious nerves now that he’d talked Caelan into this. But no one was moving. They were stuck in place, breathing a little heavy as if they’d just run several times around the block trying to escape Empire soldiers.
“You know,” Drayce started with a chuckle, “this might be easier if you come here to me.”
Caelan glared at him. “I have to come to you?”
“You did the first time.”
“Exactly. This was your idea. Shouldn’t you be coming to me?”
Okay, this was a silly argument, but it had put fire in Caelan’s eyes and Drayce preferred to see his friend sparking and prickly. “Fine, how about we meet each other halfway?” He jerked his head to the end of the counter.
Drayce took a step and Caelan matched him, sliding his hand along the marble as if he needed the island to support him. Four short steps and they were facing each other, a foot of electrified space separating them. They were approximately the same height, but Caelan was carefully avoiding meeting his eyes.