She pulled away so she could look into his eyes. ‘In what way?’
It was abundantly clear that Theo didn’t want to have this conversation, but to his credit, he didn’t hold back. ‘The first month was the hardest. I was large for my age, but still just a boy. Skin and bone, and scared of the dark,’ he admitted, lips twisting in a self-deprecating grimace. ‘I begged, but one night, was mugged for what little I had, including my only pair of shoes,’ he said. Annie’s heart cracked apart. ‘But a few weeks later, I met a man—little more than a teenager, actually—called Simon. He took me under his wing, along with a few other kids. He showed us where the good corners were to beg, how to steal from shops without getting caught.’ Theo’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘I hated stealing. Even then, I knew it was wrong, but I was so hungry. And Simon—while he cared for us, he also had the potential to lose his temper—spectacularly—if we didn’t bring enough food or money back to him. After a few years, he and I fell out. We fought. I had to leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘I went to the other side of town. It was darker. Poorer. Rougher, but by then, I was at least able to take care of myself. I heard that Simon died a few months after I left,’ he added, clearing his throat, so Annie knew, without him having to say it, that he somehow blamed himself. ‘He got in a fight with someone bigger. He always had more bark than was wise, for someone his size. But I used to be there, to help. To defend him,’ Theo admitted.
‘But you were so much younger.’
‘I was a quick learner. You have to be on the streets. I knew how to fight, to the death, if necessary.’
She gasped. ‘Was it ever necessary?’
‘Are you asking me if I have ever killed another person, Annie?’
She blinked, the thought one that had never occurred to her. She nodded slowly, but held her breath, and only let it out when he shook his head to indicate no.
‘But back then, I would have, if I’d needed to. Maybe if I’d been with Simon, that afternoon, I would have, to save his life. I don’t know. It was a different time, and I was a different person. Hunger, poverty, desperation—they change you.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, lifting a hand and curving it around his cheek. ‘I don’t think you’re capable of it.’
‘Don’t you?’
She shook her head. ‘Of defending someone, absolutely. But you’re not violent, Theo.’
Their eyes held for a long time, and the longer they looked at one another, the more Annie felt a sense of conviction deep in her gut. She knew the real Theo. She always had done. She saw beneath whatever he projected and saw what was in his heart.
At least, she thought she had.
‘I have never spoken about Simon,’ he said, slowly, as if only coming to that realization himself.
Warmth spread through her. ‘I’m glad you told me.’
‘I have felt a sense of responsibility for a long time. I walked away from him, and I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed. I knew what his temper was like. But by then, I had my own feelings and thoughts…’
‘You couldn’t have been with him twenty-four-seven.’
‘No,’ Theo agreed, but quietly, as though he wasn’t convinced.
‘You cared for him,’ Annie prompted, remembering Theo’s assertion, the day they’d left the island, that she, Annie, was the only person who’d ever inspired that emotion in him. Maybe that hadn’t been entirely accurate.
‘We were part of a team,’ he said, with a small shake of his head. ‘It’s different. For all I felt it my obligation to defend him, to protect him, I expected nothing in return. I did not rely on Simon, I did not need him to need me. But I would have given my life to spare his, if I could have.’
Annie shuddered at the very thought of Theo having died as a teenager. ‘What happened next?’ she asked. ‘Did you find another…team?’
‘No, Annie. After that, I was resolutely alone. Until I met the Georgiadeses, and then, until I met you.’
Silence fell, heavy with the weight of their past, their difficulties, the hurt that each brought to this. And yet there was also a strange sense of peace flooding Annie, because for the first time, they were really connecting honestly and openly, about something of substance. He wasn’t trying to shield her from the brutal reality of his childhood, and in hearing this truth, she felt like she would crack other parts of him open, too.
Annie stayed there, on his lap, as close to him as they could be in a public space, even when the waiter brought their food. She wasn’t ready to relinquish this, and she was relieved—and delighted—that he evidently felt the same way.
But the longer she sat on his lap, the more her feelings morphed, from sympathy and concern to something far more grown up, her awareness of him, as a man, flooding her body. She dropped one of her hands to his chest, and pressed it there, feeling his warmth and strength, the hard beating of his heart.
‘Why don’t you not work late tonight?’ she murmured, her eyes dropping to his lips. ‘In fact, why don’t you take the afternoon off?’
One side of his mouth lifted in a mocking half smile. ‘Would you like to go shopping? Or perhaps to see a movie?’
She pulled a face. ‘Neither of those things holds much appeal.’