He looked at me like I shouldn’t be there. I don’t know how to be somewhere he is and not want to stay.
I didn’t send it. I deleted the last sentence and sent the first.
If the night had taught me anything, it was that I could stand in a room with the man I’d once built my teenage universe around and not collapse. I could be cocky and bright and not look. I could survive it.
It didn’t mean it hadn’t taken something out of me along the way.
It did mean I’d think about seeing Theo again later, alone in my bed, my mind running through every version of how it could have gone—Theo kissing me, pulling me closer, finally taking the virginity I’d spent the last six years imagining he might.
Chapter One
Theo Sinclair
We’re finally here.
The thought made me a little giddy. In the intervening months since my close friend Max Rivers and I had first had the idea of forming an a cappella group, we’d auditioned maybe thirty guys.
Thirtygayguys.
I had to smile. Max’s proposal to put us all in leather had been one hell of a hook, but add to it my suggestion that all of us needed to be gay, and I’d wondered if there were that many queer voices out there.
Goodvoices.
But we did it. We found them.
We’d aimed for ten guys, and while some of the men who’d shown up had been mediocre, I had to admit the eight singers we’d decided on were outstanding. Aged from twenty-one to twenty-seven, they were the perfect mix for the sound Max and I wanted to create.
They were also a pretty eclectic bunch.
I knew we couldn’t go from zero to awesome in the space of a few weeks. This was going to take effort, sweat, and yeah, probably tears.
But awesome was the goal, and I was going to keep it firmly fixed in my sights. I’d steer us in the right direction.
‘Someone has to keep order.’
A shiver ran through me.
Not now.
There was zero chance of my brain listening to me. Cameron Walters had been infiltrating my thoughts ever since?—
No, don’t go there. Focus.
I swallowed as I came to a halt. “This is it.”
Max chuckled. “I think those are the first words you’ve spoken since I met you at Leicester Square. Do I want to know where your head is right now?”
God no.That would be like handing Max the perfect excuse to tease the fuck out of me. And he knew me too well. He’d been there that night.
He saw way too much.
“What else would I be thinking about but this?” I lied.
Max stared at the peeling paint on the door that led to the rehearsal room I’d found, tucked away in the back streets of Soho, located above a dry cleaners.
“When you said it was low rent, you weren’t talking about the cost, were you?” Max murmured. “After the studio we used for the auditions, this is going to be one hell of a comedown.” That had been sleek and polished, with mirrors everywhere.
I said nothing but unlocked the door and removed the padlock.