He’s Gary’s brother.
He trusts me.
He’s sleeping ten feet away.
And worst of all:
He makes me feel louder… and I don’t know how to be that man.
A tremor ran through me, not physical, but emotional, something I hadn’t allowed since Luka. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, my breaths evening out slowly, painfully. Cameron’s face hovered in my mind again, open and guileless, and nothing like Luka’s.
That was the real danger.
Although I could endure control, punishment, withdrawal, even coldness, I couldn’t endure kindness.
It stripped me bare and made me reckless.
It made me imagine things I wasn’t allowed to want.
I closed my eyes. This was the last time I’d let Cameron into my fantasies. It had to be this way.
Iwouldn’tlose myself again.
I rolled onto my side, my body exhausted, my mind a mess, and my heart pounding with the aftershocks of something that felt too much like longing. Through the bedroom door I caught the creak of the sofa bed, Cameron shifting in his sleep.
My chest constricted, and I whispered to the empty room, ashamed of how much it hurt.
“This is going to ruin me.”
Cameron was going to break me.
All I felt was the raw ache of wanting something I was terrified to reach for.
All I heard was the ghost of Luka’s voice, still whispering.
Cameron
The smell of coffee woke me.
I blinked, groggy, disorientated for half a second until I remembered where I was. Then I sat up fast, becauseshit—this wasn’t my house. This was Theo’s sofa.
And Theo was awake.
I rubbed at my eyes, conscious of my hair sticking up at every angle, the way it always did, and reached for my hoodie, trying to make myself look less like a guy who’d been dreaming about his host.
From the kitchen came the quiet rhythm of morning. The kettle was boiling. A cabinet door closed. There was the scrape of a spoon against ceramic.
I hesitated, then pushed the blanket aside, grabbed my jeans and squirmed into them, and stood.
Theo was already dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows.
Of course he is.
His hair was damp from the shower, the faint scent of soap trailing in the air between us. He looked so freakingcomposed, like someone who didn’t have a clue what it felt like to fall apart at two AM.
“Morning,” I croaked.
Theo turned, his mug halfway to his mouth. For half a beat, he froze, then straightened. “Did you manage to get some sleep?”