“Always. Now promise me you’ll call again before you do something heroic and stupid.”
“Define stupid.”
“Theo,” she said sweetly, and hung up.
I sat there for a long moment, my phone in my hand, listening to the quiet hum of the flat. Then I set it down.
Outside, the clouds over Hammersmith shifted, letting a streak of moonlight spill across the window.
Too late, Rocky. I think I already did.
Raquel’s voice echoed in my head.You’re living with your teenage crush and you’re telling me this as if it’s normal?
She was right. It wasn’t normal.
It was full circle.
Back then, Theo had been the spark that lit the fuse, the reason I’d stopped trying to convince myself I was just “confused,” the reason every half-hearted kiss after that moment had felt like a rehearsal for something real.
And now here we were, sharing a kitchen, trading small talk and glances.
Only, this evening had tilted my world once more.
I gazed at the sketchbook. The face on the page looked back at me, focused, guarded, beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.
“You started this,” I whispered. It wasn’t accusation, but gratitude. That long-ago summer had given me the truth, and this strange, tentative present was letting me live it.
I set the pencil down, flexing my hand.
Maybe attraction isn’t supposed to fade when it finally finds its name. Maybe it just waits, quietly, patiently, until you’re brave enough to meet it again.
I gazed at Theo’s face.
You were my beginning. Maybe you’ll be my home, too.
If I could widen the cracks in Theo’s façade to discover what lay hidden.
Chapter Thirteen
Theo
I woke before the alarm.
I didn’t know what time it was, only that the grey light leaking around the curtains felt too thin, too sharp, as though it illuminated everything I didn’t want to look at. My head hurt in that dull, hollow way that came after a night of not-quite-sleeping.
I lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. My body felt like it didn’t belong to me.
My mind felt worse. Last night replayed with cruel precision: Cameron’s hopeful eyes. My forced apology. The flinch. The lie. The shutdown.
Cameron’s expression when I saidI can’t do this right now.
I pressed the heel of my hand to my brow, as if I could smudge the memory away.
I hurt him. Not intentionally.Neverintentionally, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d done it. I’d seen the confusion in Cameron’s face morph into the kind of hurt that didn’t lash out but folded in on itself.
Exactly how Luka taught me to be.
The thought tasted bitter.