It wasn’t working.  Kai kept closing his eyes, trying to clear his head, but it seemed impossible. He tried sitting up, lying down, hanging over the side of his bed. He even tried standing on his head, which resulted in him crashing down into his bookshelf and knocking it over. The downstairs neighbor pounded on the ceiling, and Jude called “Kai?” from the kitchen.

“Sorry! I’m OK!” Kai yelled, both to his uncle and the neighbor.

“Focus, Kai!” Jude yelled back.

Kai sat back down, cross-legged, on the floor, wiggling into the rug, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to slow his breathing. Sometimes it did work, and he could find a stillness inside of himself that enveloped him and quieted the churning of his mind. A glimpse of what he could be if he were only less impulsive, less restless, less hyper, less emotional—less Kai. If there were less of him, he could contain it all within the sphere of calm he could manage to create. And once contained, his self—his bubbling thoughts, his outsized desires, his errant body—could be left behind, forgotten for a little while. But now—no matter what he did, there he was: Kainoa Harper, wanting. Wanting to feel something, to adore someone, to possess everything worth having in this world,  encapsulated in a single person: Bard. And he cold not have him.

The image that came to Kai first was always the first time he saw Bard—walking up behind Cassandra with the silvery Milton sunlight shining on his hair. He had been slightly rumpled but gave the impression of also having given great care to what he was wearing and how he was groomed—charcoal gray wool slacks and a tweed blazer over a button-up shirt, hair carefully parted although it fell in a messy swoop over his forehead. When he had gotten close, Kai had seen that the shirt was patterned with what looked like maroon cogs—a commentary on Palmer Manufacturing, maybe? The sea green of Bard’s eyes was clear through his glasses, and the way they had met his own had filled Kai with the certainty he so often felt, his instincts pointing in the right direction. But it was something he had never felt about another person before. This person was his. 

Sure, he’d had the odd crush here and there. When he was fourteen, he’d become infatuated with his mother’s intern Nick, and the intensity of it had bled into the air, practically, until Nick, unsettled by Kai’s attention, had almost quit. Kai’s mother, who understood something about being able to have an uncanny effect on the world around her—it was the family trait—had come to his room to talk through it. But Kai had been mortified. His cheeks had burned, he remembered, and it was like a blast of heat had burst from him. He had yelled, “Get out! Get out!” at his mother, both out of anger and fear, and the lightbulb in his lamp had flared, popped, and shattered.

That was when it became too much, he thought. And that—what he had felt about Nick, was nothing really, compared to this. Just a fascination with Nick’s good looks and easy charm—he was the kind of person who could smile at people and make them feel they were instant friends. The opposite of Kai, in other words. And because of that, Kai had felt a chest-filling satisfaction in unmooring Nick’s suave assurance.

But now—Kai didn’t want to disturb Bard so much as but the air around him, wanted to make the air heavy, to push Bard toward him. And it seemed like he could have made that happen. He thought of that body that had been so close to his, almost as tall as he was—but so slight. Kai had wanted to put his thumbs against bones of Bard’s hips, curl his fingers around him, and draw him towards himself, put his hands around Bard’s wrists, gently, just to see how far they’d wrap around. He wanted to admire him, and not from a distance—he wanted to know everything about him, to hear his voice, to feel his breath on the side of his face again.

That thought made Kai shudder with the memory, and he lost the rhythm of his breathing. His eyes flickered open, but he quickly closed them again, not wanting to lose the image of Bard, standing nearly against him under the awning near New World. Before he had ruined everything. He had held his hand and led him outside, twined his hand around Bard’s pinky, and for a moment their breath and pulses has quickened in unison, and everything seemed on the verge of beginning.

Kai grunted in frustration. He had hoped to avoid it—the desire that he had no way of fulfilling, not without Bard. Sure, he could picture his green eyes, his pink lips, the flush rising from the neckline of his T-shirt, settling into the hollows of his collarbones—he could imagine putting his hand on his cheek, leaning forward to meet those lips.

But it wasn’t real. And what Kai Harper craved more than anything else was something real. The meditation, the realm where his instincts and ability to influence resided, the way he could follow people’s thoughts and feelings to their own desires—it was all so intangible, something he sensed but couldn’t get his hands around. He wanted his hands around Bard Fox, wanted to feel the smooth skin over his ribs, the curve of the small of his back.

It was no use. Kai couldn’t help it. He paused, wondering. In everything he had felt from Bard—and there had been a lot—sex had been a tantalizing absence. Not necessarily because it wasn’t there, but because it was something he kept hidden, like whatever it was that he feared and wouldn’t think about. People had those parts of them, what they didn’t want to face, and it took extra effort to see them—effort that Kai had been taught not to make. It was an intrusion, a violation—an assault, even.

What he longed for now, was for Bard to show him that hidden part of his mind, to share with him what he desired—to let Kai see what he wanted. And to let Kai do what he wanted. What was the use in wanting if he couldn’t get, though? But it seemed, to his mind, to his body, that didn’t matter. Kai wanted. He wanted and wanted and wanted.