Under the Bridge Read Online Free Page B

supposed to be this tired?” he
speculated slowly and Nick gave him a funny look, clearly not
getting what Chris was trying to say. A moment later he
shrugged.
    “If they’ve been drinking.”
    “I still feel things,” Chris offered
absently, barely keeping his eyes open. He was drunk but he felt all kinds of things. Nick stopped and exhaled. He looked
over with a frown.
    “Brave and stupid.” He hitched a
breath when Chris responded by licking his swollen lip and
considering the taste. He tasted like spit and blood and come and
whiskey.
    He swallowed and then had to clear his
throat. “Is this the part where I get my heart broken?” It would be
just like Nick to make him happy and then leave again.
    Nick looked sideways at him and then leaned
over. His hands cupped the back of Chris’s head, holding him still
even though Chris wasn’t moving because Nick’s mouth was hovering
above his, then sliding carefully over his lips before Nick eased
back. Nick was scowling and breathing hard.
    “Right now I think you’re the one person in
the world I don’t want to hurt,” he muttered and closed his eyes.
“Sorry.” It was a weird thing to apologize for, unless Nick was
saying he was going to hurt him anyway.
    Chris tensed and closed his eyes and lifted
his head to blindly push their mouth together. He let Nick feel his
tongue and the hot, metallic taste of his split lip and then
dragged his mouth away enough to speak. His pain had Nick shaking
like he wanted to come again. It was strange how much Chris got off
on knowing that. “You like that though.”
    He thought some people would think that it
was sick, that even Nick thought that Chris should find it sick,
but at the moment it didn’t seem that way. At the moment it was
like Nick wanted Chris to feel , and he did, so much. He
opened his eyes.
    Nick froze, barely breathing for several
seconds until the air rushed out of him. Without pulling away he
lifted one hand and very carefully touched the puffy skin around
Chris’s eye. “I don’t like all of it.” His hand became a fist and
he yanked himself back and hunched his shoulders. “Look at
yourself, Chris. What they did to you. What I did….” He glanced
over.
    Chris knew about his face but he looked down
at his messed up, come-stained shirt and noticed that he had
goosebumps on his arms. He hadn’t even felt them. Nick must have
seen them though, because he looked away and stared out past the
wall.
    “Here,” he said suddenly, and shrugged out of
the jacket. He shoved it over at Chris without turning. “Put it on.
I can get it back later.”
    “I don’t think I can pull off this look.”
Chris stared at the jacket as he took it. It was warm and soft and
smelled amazing. Nick was only slightly smaller without it. Chris
wanted to straighten his rumpled shirt, but Nick didn’t turn back
around until Chris sat up and slipped the jacket on.
    The fur was matted and feathery against his
neck. The sleeves were a little long. If Chris had had that last
growth spurt his mom kept saying he would have right at that
moment, the sleeves would still have been a bit too long. The only
part of it that fit was the shoulders. If anyone else had seen him
in it, they’d probably laugh.
    “I’m not really this badass,” he mumbled once
it was on and Nick snorted.
    “Yeah right. You take all those beatings and
come back for more and you aren’t a badass. Do you know the real
reason I never talked to you?” He reached over, but just to pull
his cigarettes and his lighter from the jacket’s front pocket. He
held them both in his lap and flipped the lighter around. Chris
remembered that lighter as having definitely belonged to Nick’s
dad. It made him run a hand down the worn leather he was now
wearing, that he shouldn’t be wearing if it meant so much to Nick.
But he couldn’t ask and when he didn’t say anything, Nick turned to
him. “I couldn’t think of what to say to you.”
    “Anything.” Chris