I turn back to him. “Do you feel better now?”
I can’t help my curiosity—or concern, though it’ll probably be rebuffed.
His face wipes clean of its small smile, his eyebrows cinching back into the frown that’s been his constant companion today.
My heart sinks. I start turning away in anticipation of him shutting me down. I don’t want to look at his face when he does it. I don’t want him to see how much it affects me that I can’t get to him.
“Shepard,” he says just as I start to swim away.
I glance over my shoulder, raising an eyebrow. He looks nervous, but something in his gaze is fortified.
“Can we play our game?”
It’s my game with Gram, but the truth is, playing it with Theo keeps it alive. And if he’s going to hand me a secret right now, he can call it ours all he wants.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Tell me a secret.”
He wipes a hand over his mouth. Delicate water drops shift all over his skin, clinging desperately to his eyelashes and hair, collecting in the soft hollows of his collarbones and rolling down his shoulders, his chest. They touch him everywhere I want to. I resist the urge to press my finger against every one, wipe them away so all he feels is my touch.
“I’m stressed because they’re—uh, Where To Next’s business model is shifting. We had investors come in last year and buy a majority stake of the company, and—” He lets out a dejected sigh. I move closer, the water lapping gently at my skin, and he watches my approach. “Any way I describe it will be a massive understatement, but to give you an example, the off-season deals will go away eventually.”
“What!” I exclaim. “That’s the best part.”
Theo’s expression twists. “I know. If the projections hold, then we’ll recoup whatever losses we suffer with VIP packages and other elevated offerings. And if they don’t hold, then the whole fucking thing goes down. I think it’ll go one way, everyone else thinks it’ll go the other.” He runs his hand just beneath the water. “Anton and Matias got on board with it quickly. Really quickly.”
“That hurt you.”
Theo’s eyes flash with surprise. “I—I mean, it could run the company into the ground, and there goes all our hard work. It also goes against the reason we came up with it in the first place. Travel should be accessible, not some series of Instagrammable moments that puts people on the outside looking in. This would make it unachievable for some of the people we’ve served for years.”
His voice drops, so quiet that the birds singing above us nearly drown him out. “My dad thinks I’m too emotional about it. He keeps demanding that I do whatever they want just to keep—the peace.” He clears his throat, squinting off into the distance. “Last night I told him he has to stop calling me. I don’t want to spend the rest of this trip miserable over shit I can’t control. It’s bad enough I let him ruin my night last night.”
Relief is as cool as the water against my skin, and pride as warm as the sun shining down on us. I get the feeling he doesn’t set boundaries with his dad often.
“I’m glad you did that. No offense, but your dad’s a dick.”
One corner of his mouth pulls up. “Told you, it runs in the family.”
Normally, I’d jump all over that, but I’m starting to see there’s very little of Theo’s dad in him. Paul’s fingerprints are everywhere; it’s just taking time to reveal itself.
“There’s nothing wrong with being emotionally invested, you know.” His expression softens with the realization that I’m not taking the bait. “It’s not close to the same thing, but for me, caring about the pictures I’m taking means I’m doing my best work. Why is it a bad thing that you’re invested? You built this business from nothing. If you’re worried about its success, of course you’ll want to fight it, whether it’s business, emotion, or a mix of both.”
His gaze moves over my face. “I do want to fight it.”
“Then don’t stop pushing,” I say. “Maybe you can change their minds.”
Theo looks down, then over at Paul, who’s lying on his back now, hands resting on his stomach. His eyes are closed, and Theo’s close, too, just for a beat.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “It’ll be fine.”
It’s hard to tell if he actually believes it, but I have no doubt it will be. If anyone can make miracles happen, it’s Theo, even backed into a corner.
He circles around me, the tightness in his shoulders loosening just a bit. “Now it’s your turn for secrets, Shepard.”
I blurt out, “I’m proud of you.”
I don’t know who’s more shocked by what comes out of my mouth: Theo or me.
“Oh god. I can’t believe I said that. Out loud.” I press my hand to my forehead, groaning. “Your head’s gonna get so big it’ll explode everywhere.”
He grimaces, but amusement overtakes his surprise. “Graphic.”
“It’s true, though. I’ve . . . kind of followed your career a little bit over the years.” His mouth curls in a wide grin, his dimple popping. I press my finger against it, pushing his face back. “Shut up, don’t you dare bring up the LinkedIn thing.”
Thank god he doesn’t know about the notifications; he’s already too smug.
“We fought a lot for supremacy in high school, didn’t we?” I continue.
“Voted Most Likely to Succeed,” he says, dryly. “Our one and only tie.”
“But you won that, too, in the end.” I’m being unbearably honest. But with his admission, he’s showing me I’m strong enough to lean on. That maybe it’s safe to lean on him, too. “I’m sure you’re far too busy doing Forbes 30 Under 30 things to stalk my LinkedIn, but I’m not exactly killing it.”
“You never list your titles, so I don’t actually know what you do,” he says. “You don’t like your job?”
I don’t have one. I could just spill it all right now, but that’s too big. If I’m vulnerable in pieces, I won’t lose myself completely.
“It’s not what I want to do,” I say instead. “But I’ve been too scared to do what I actually want.”
“Your photography.”
I nod. That’s a secret, too. I’m handing them out now, but they’re manageable ones. “I tried to make it work after I graduated, but I got burned and gave up. Or failed, depending on how you want to frame it. When Gram died, I didn’t want to do anything at all.” I blink, and a drop of water falls from my eyelashes. “Especially something that she never got to see me succeed at.”
“I doubt that’s how she saw it.”
Deep down, it feels true, but it hurts too much to dwell on. “Anyway, you’ve always been this bastion of success to me. You never second-guessed yourself. And trust me, I recognize that some of that is white man confidence.”
He laughs. “I second-guess myself all the time.”
“Well, from my perspective, to see you at the helm of this thing you built, being invested in it in every way, and fighting back . . . I don’t know, it’s impressive. You’ve always been impressive, which is your most annoying trait.”