Elliot sat on the edge of his bed. “This may come as a surprise to you, but promise me you’ll keep it a secret, even if you don’t believe what I say. You have to—” He swallowed. “You have to promise, no matter how crazy you think I am, that you won’t tell anyone.”

  Damon didn’t feel like making a joke anymore. “I promise. You can tell me anything.”

  Elliot fingered the sheets on the bed near Damon’s hand. He didn’t know why, but he wished Elliot would touch him, would hold his hand as he said whatever it was he wanted to say.

  Elliot took a deep breath and released it. His eyes glided up to Damon’s. “I’m a witch. I healed your broken arm in the first grade, and I healed the other one like forty-five minutes ago.”

  Chapter Seven

  When Elliot watched Damon crash into his teammate on the baseball field, he almost had a heart attack. His chest ached so much that it threatened to bring him to his knees. He’d ignored the pain and ran onto the field, trying to push through the players and coaches and medics.

  He wasn’t quick enough. Someone grabbed him and held him back before he could get close enough to touch Damon and heal him.

  Elliot watched, helpless, as they put him into the ambulance. Damon’s eyes were closed, and his arm was bent in a sickening angle.

  Elliot’s magic burned through him, straining, reaching, yelling out for his best friend.

  Elliot had ridden the bus that morning, so he didn’t have his car. He called his mom and dad, but they were both slammed with work and couldn’t drive him to the hospital.

  His grandmama drove up to the baseball field twenty-five minutes later. She took one look at his hands, which were intermittently blinking white light, and said, “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the key to your magic.”

  Elliot could only nod. Too numb from shock. He got into the car and squeezed his hands together to get the magic to calm.

  “What happened?” Grandmama finally asked after Elliot’s heartbeat ratcheted down.

  “I’m pretty sure his arm is broken,” Elliot said. “I’m going to heal him. He’s got a scholarship for baseball. An injury could make them revoke it.”

  Then they wouldn’t go to college together.

  Elliot was not going to let that happen.

  Grandmama tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “You do what you got to.”

  Grandmama never instilled fear into Elliot about sharing his power, not like the covens did, which was why Grandmama and Elliot were considered outcasts among them. She wanted to do more to help people, but the covens were too afraid of risking exposure.

  The world they lived in was ruled by powerful drug companies who would defend the use of their expensive medicines until their last breaths. If entire industries could be toppled with a simple wave of a witch’s hand? They’d be courting extinction, the covens warned.

  So healing witches worked on the peripheral and didn’t draw attention to themselves.

  Elliot stared out the window, gnawing on his lip and thinking about his best friend. “And I already decided I’m going to tell him.”

  “That you’re in love with him?”

  “I’m not in love with him!” Elliot said. “It’s just a little crush.”

  Grandmama hummed.

  “But no. I’m not telling him that. I’m going to tell him I’m a witch. I can’t keep secrets from him anymore.” Damon deserved to know whose fault it was his dad was gone. Elliot shouldn’t have kept it a secret for as long as he had.

  “Seems a little contradictory,” she said, and Elliot grimaced. “But you do what feels right.”

  “I’m a witch,” Elliot said. “I healed your broken arm in the first grade, and I healed the other like forty-five minutes ago.”

  Damon just blinked. His long black eyelashes fanned his face. Even all disheveled and in a hospital gown, Damon was gorgeous. Elliot was entranced by the strong cut of his jaw and his plump lips with the little dip in the middle.

  Elliot shook himself out of ogling his best friend and continued, “I healed us after the car crash. Accidentally. I don’t really have control over my powers. I’m not good at them. I tried”—he hiccupped, tears blurring his vision again—“I tried to heal your dad, but it didn’t work. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for not telling you. For not being better. For not saving him.”

  Elliot sniffed and wiped his eyes, searching Damon’s face for any clue that he believed him, or if Damon was about to punch him in the face.

  But Damon kept blinking.

  Maybe Elliot broke him.

  Damon finally took a long inhale and sighed it out. His fingers intertwined with Elliot’s. “The police report said Dad was dead on impact. No one could have saved him.”

  “No, no. I could have—I should have been able to—”

  Damon squeezed his hand. “You may be a healing witch, Elliot, but you aren’t a god. Unless you’re about to tell me that you can do necromancy too?”

  Elliot’s jaw quivered. The disbelief over his casual acceptance was staggering. That he could joke about this.

  Damon smiled, his eyes narrowing, and then he was nodding his head. “You know…this explains so much.”

  It was Elliot’s turn to blink dumbly.

  “So can you heal concussions too?” Damon asked. “Because my head hurts like a bitch.”

  Chapter Eight

  Things between Elliot and Damon went back to normal.

  Well, mostly normal.

  Elliot was acting normal. Damon, however, was trying very hard to hide how weird he was acting, which only made him weirder.

  On the bright side, Damon was pretty sure Elliot attributed his awkward behavior to Elliot’s admission of being a witch…and not the real reason.

  Part of Damon had suspected that Elliot did something to fix his arm after he’d jumped off the swing in first grade, but as Damon got older, he figured he’d misremembered how much pain he’d been in.

  Elliot having healing powers just made sense. It explained his ability to always know how Damon was feeling and why his touch made everything better. Damon wasn’t freaked out about it. He’d always known that Elliot was special.

  No, that wasn’t the revelation that was making Damon act weird.

  “My mom wants to take us to get our suit rentals,” Damon said, elbowing Elliot so he missed when he shot at Damon’s team as they played Wizard Combat Zone 2.

  “Okay,” Elliot said, elbowing him back. “When?”

  “I don’t know. Next weekend?” Damon shoved his shoulder into Elliot’s.

  “Sure.” He retaliated by kicking Damon’s shin and killing his entire squad.

  “Yes!” Elliot threw his arms up. “Sucker!”

  Damon tossed his controller and dove toward him, wrapping his arms around Elliot’s waist and taking him down.

  “Omph.”

  “You kicked me,” Damon complained. He buried his face into Elliot’s stomach to tickle him and used all of his weight to wrestle him to the ground. “You cheated.”

  “You were shoving me first!”

  Elliot tried to break away, but Damon used his legs to wrap around his and didn’t let him escape.

  Elliot panted. His blonde hair curtained one of his eyes. It grew too fast. It’d only been one week, and he already needed another haircut. Damon hated when Elliot’s hair obscured the sight of his blue eyes.

  “You’re the cheater,” Elliot said.

  “No.” Damon rolled them and pressed his body into Elliot, weighing him down, flattening him. Every inch of Elliot’s body was covered by Damon’s. Elliot went limp under him and stopped struggling.

  Damon sat up, his hands on Elliot’s shoulders to pin him, his legs on either side of his waist.

  Elliot’s eyes widened. It took Damon an embarrassingly long time to realize why Elliot was panicking.

  “Shit,” Damon said and rolled off in a clumsy panic. “Sorry. I—”

  “It’s fine,” he said, fixing his shirt and running a hand through his hair. “It’s fine.”

  “I shouldn’t have—”

  “We always do—”

  “Right, but that was before…”

  Elliot met his eyes when he didn’t finish the sentence. “Before you knew I was gay?”

  Damon averted his gaze. “It’s just…well, if I did that with a girl, I’d probably be getting turned on, and…” His gaze traveled from Elliot’s bare feet, over the light dusting of hair on his legs, to the zipper on his pants. Was he hard? Did he make Elliot hard?

  Why did that thought make something tug deep in Damon’s stomach?

  Elliot snorted. “You’ve got a high opinion of yourself, don’t you?” He grabbed the controller and plopped down on the futon, starting a single-player game.

  “What do you mean? I know you think I’m hot. I distinctly remember being told I was three levels hotter than you. Which I still think is bullshit, by the way.”

  “I have eyes and can see that you are attractive,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you’re my type.”

  Damon didn’t know why he was more than a little offended. He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you saying I’m not?”

  Elliot snorted again and glanced over quickly before settling his gaze on the screen. “What exactly do you want the answer to that question to be?”

  Damon dropped his arms to his sides.

  Elliot’s gaze stayed glued to the TV while Damon’s bounced all over him. Elliot flicked his head back to get his hair out of his eyes, and Damon’s fingers twitched to grab the hair clip that he always put in his hair when it got this long, but if he did that now…

  If Damon wrestled him to the floor and sat on him and ran his hands through his hair to clip it back, would Elliot think Damon was coming on to him?

  Fuck. Had Damon been coming on to him this whole time?

  No wonder Elliot never told him he was gay.

  “We probably shouldn’t be horsing around anyway,” Elliot said. “Just because I healed your concussion doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful about jostling your tiny pea brain around more than necessary.”

  “Ha,” he said. “Hilarious.”

  His heart raced, and his palms started sweating. Damon mumbled something about using the bathroom and practically sprinted down the hall.

  He gripped either side of the sink and stared into the mirror. His face was flushed from wrestling with Elliot. “Do I like guys?” he whispered.

  He shook his head. No way. He really liked boobs.

  Like a fucking lot.

  He’d never jerked it to a guy.

  Although…sometimes he did notice good-looking guys.

  But that was appreciation, right? He wanted to be them, not touch them.

  Except he did like touching Elliot. He never touched any of his other friends like that. But Elliot was his best friend. It was different.

  Damon stared into the mirror as if he could find the truth of his sexuality if he looked hard enough. His eyes caught on the swim trunks he’d hung on the shower rod to dry out.

  Damon had way over paid for those trunks.

  His mom had surprised him by letting him bring Elliot on their spring break vacation. It was a kind of joint eighteenth birthday gift to them both. Damon had turned eighteen in the fall, and Elliot’s birthday had been the week before they left.

  While his mom was out, doing whatever grown women do in the morning at the beach, Elliot and Damon slept in late.

  The beach didn’t get fun until the middle of the afternoon, so they were being lazy and spent the morning shooting the shit in bed.

  They’d slept side-by-side, but it was a king-size bed. It wasn’t like they were cuddling or anything. Besides Damon’s mom was sleeping in the bed next to them. So that would have been weird.

  And maybe because Damon didn’t have any of his usual privacy, he was a little extra horny that morning, which was probably why he started going on about the logistics of threesomes.

  “I think doing it standing would be the easiest,” Damon had said. “If all three people are standing, then one guy could be in front and one in the back.”

  “As long as the guys are the same height,” Elliot said.

  “The taller guy could crouch to get it in,” Damon said.

  “Yeah, but that’s like uncomfortable and annoying. Like thrusting would be…” Elliot squinted his eyes and thrust his hips up off the bed like he was trying to picture the angle.

  “Yeah,” Damon said. “But you’re having a threesome, so who cares if it’s a little uncomfortable?”

  “You want to have a threesome with another guy?”

  Damon shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s not like I’d touch his dick. It’s more about the taboo of it.” Damon kind of preferred to watch threesome porn with two guys.

  “Right.”

  They were quiet, and then Damon yawned, shutting his eyes. “You know…we’re the same height.”

  “So?”

  “So we could have a threesome.”

  Elliot didn’t respond, so Damon opened one of his eyes. “Cause the angles would be right,” he added.

  “Yeah. I got that.” Elliot was staring at the ceiling.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Damon grinned. “You’re thinking about it, right? It’d be hot as fuck. Who’d we share?”

  Elliot groaned dramatically. “You have a girlfriend. Should we really be talking about this?”

  “Oh, come on,” Damon said. “It’s just a fantasy. Do you want to share Rochelle with me?”

  “Dude! Rochelle would not appreciate you saying you’d share her with me.”

  Damon shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. She’s kinda freaky. I bet she’d be into it.”

  “I’m not having a threesome with you.”

  Damon huffed. “But think about it.” He laid on his back, closed his eyes, and his hand wandered into his swim trunks. “I’d be kissing the back of her neck, and you’d be kissing her tits, and she’d be making noises and grabbing on to your back, leaving red marks on your shoulders—”

  “What are you doing!”

  “What?” Damon said, his dick getting rock hard in his hand. “I’m just thinking about how she’d bite and lick your neck, and you’d probably moan, and while you two were busy with each other, I’d lube up—”

  “Damon,” Elliot said, but his voice was no longer upset. It was low and needy.

  “Are you touching yourself?” Damon asked, not daring to open his eyes, wanting to stay in the fantasy, wanting to make sure nothing disturbed the images in his head.

  “Yeah,” he said, and Damon could hear the faint noise of skin-on-skin, of Elliot’s hand stroking his dick. He sensed the slight movement from just a couple inches away. “Keep going.”

  There was absolutely no way Damon was stopping now. “I’d lube up and fuck her ass, while you’d put your hard cock in her pussy. She’d moan and whine but wouldn’t be able to move because she’d have both of us inside of her. We’d fuck her so good we’d practically feel our dicks rubbing each other inside of her.”

  He gasped. “Yeah?”

  “Uh huh,” Damon said. “I’d grab her hips and thrust up in her, and you’d have to put your hands on my chest so we could keep in rhythm.”

  “I’d have to touch you?” Elliot asked.

  “Yeah, but her tits are rubbing on your chest, so you’d be focused on that.”

  “And what would you be focused on?”

  Damon stroked harder and thought about it. To keep the right angle, he’d probably be looking over her shoulder, looking at Elliot’s face as he fucked her. Looking at his face scrunched up in pleasure, his blue eyes soft with need.

  “You,” Damon said.

  Elliot whimpered, and Damon felt it shivering up his spine. His balls rose up, tight, and he had to slow his hand or he was going to come, and he wasn’t ready for this to be over.

  “Because I’d, you know, have to keep the right pace with you.”

  “Uh huh,” Elliot said.

  “We wouldn’t come inside her though,” Damon said.

  “Where would we come?”

  “I’d keep the same rhythm with you, so we’d time it perfect to come together, and we’d pull out and stand beside each other, and she’d be on her knees, and we’d stroke our dicks together. We’d have to stand pretty close. Our hips and legs would have to be touching, but we’d come all over her face. Our come would mix together.”

  Elliot moaned, and at the same time, Damon came so fucking hard that it stained his swim trunks.

  Stained them so bad that they had to sneak out of the hotel to buy him new ones. Damon told his mom he’d ripped the old pair.

  It had never occurred to him that anything weird happened. They were fantasizing about fucking a girl.

  But now, he was questioning which part he actually enjoyed more: the fantasy of fucking a girl together or lying in bed next to Elliot, the sound of his moans and whimpers, the feel of the bed rustling as Elliot jerked himself off, the experience of coming together.

  Damon rubbed his eyes and made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. He turned, ripped the swim trunks down from the shower curtain, and tossed them in the laundry bin before covering his face with his hands.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  He was so fucked.

  Chapter Nine

  Damon was acting weird.

  Elliot had been right to keep his sexuality a secret all these years. Sure, Damon wasn’t homophobic or anything, but he was tiptoeing around Elliot, uncomfortable and tense.

  When he caught Damon staring at him (on more than one occasion), Damon would panic and look away, embarrassed. Elliot pretended not to notice, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do.

  He might have assumed Damon was just coming to terms with Elliot having powers.

  Except Damon never acted strange when Elliot used his magic. In fact, he’d started coming to Elliot for all his minor bumps and bruises.

  My shoulder hurts from practice.

  I stubbed my toe.