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Nate let it pass and continued drawing. In a way, Leo was right. This was weird. Nate just couldn’t let himself linger on the thought.

His pencil scratched over the paper. Somewhere upstairs a pipe ticked as the house warmed, and Leo’s eyes went after the sound.

“Eyes on me,” Nate said.

They came back, looking straight at Nate.

And in that moment, Nate knew exactly what he’d gotten wrong about the first drawing.

It wasn’t their shape, or even the color.

It was the light in them. The intensity of their gaze, catching Nate and locking on to him. Bright and green and alive enough to make a breathing man’s blood rush to his head.

Nate looked down at the page.

He’d lost his place on it.

This was ridiculous. Maybe it was just too early in the morning. He’d just finish a very rough sketch and then get coffee.

He glanced up again to get the shape of Leo’s mouth.

Last night he’d drawn it held-tight, working up to an argument, because that was how he saw it most. But for now, Leo had stopped talking and his mouth had gone loose, a little parted, the lower lip fuller than Nate had drawn it. Softer.

Nate tried to draw the line of it and had to give up. His hand wasn’t steady.

He tried again.

“You’re very quiet,” Leo said.

His mouth moved when he said it. Nate watched it move, involuntarily.

“Stop doing that,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Nothing.” Nate closed his notebook. “I need coffee.”

“Now?”

“I haven’t had any.” He set his pencil down. “I’m taking a break. Stay there. Or don’t.”

He went to the kitchen and got the coffee maker going. Then he stood in front of it with both hands flat on the counter and tried to figure out what the hell was happening to him.

Because…

What was that?

He’d looked into a man’s eyes and lost his place.

That was a thing that happened to people. It had happened to him, a handful of times.

But.

Leo was dead.

He repeated that thought to himself. Leo was dead, and Nate had spent his whole life around the dead, and he’d never once looked at one and thought…

What, exactly? He made himself admit it.