“I’m sorry, too,” I say. “For not recognizing that it might take you longer to trust me with something this significant and pushing you to share before you were ready. I made an already shitty situation worse.”
“You were hurt.”
“So were you. My pain doesn’t supersede yours.” Emotion swells in my throat at the look in his eyes—a powerful affection I recognize but want him to name. Theo waits, as patient as I should have been with him, his hands sweeping up my arms. “Clearly we still have a lot to learn about each other and how we respond to things, but I want to learn your—” I shake my head. “I’m not going to call them secrets anymore. Your truths, I guess, when you’re ready to give them to me.”
“Funny you mention that.” His eyes dart past me, further into the room. “Can I come in?”
I push back against him as he steps forward, tilting my chin back. “Can you give me a proper hello first?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Is that the price of admission, Shepard?”
“Yes,” I say impatiently, smiling when he laughs quietly.
But our amusement is short-lived. He cups my jaw, his fingers fanning over my cheek to bring me to him. His touch ignites me, and this close, he can see it. His mouth curls up right before it brushes against mine.
I let out a quiet, needy sound, fisting his shirt in my hands. He sighs out my name, kisses me softly once and then again. I push in closer, but he keeps it light. Patient.
“Hi,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“Hi,” I manage to get out.
“Today went well?”
My eyes fill. Of course he’d ask about that. “Yes, it was amazing.”
I get his dimple, a brilliant, proud smile. “I knew it would be.”
“It makes it more real now that I’ve told you.” A tear starts to fall down my cheek, but Theo’s there to catch it.
“I’m about to know the feeling,” he says with a private smile I wonder at. But he just kisses me again, lingering like he wants to make sure this is real. “Let’s go talk.”
Leaving my luggage at the door, he leads us to the couch, setting down a bag I didn’t notice before.
“How are you feeling about work?” I ask.
He slides me a look and pulls out a folder, then circles my wrist to pull me down onto the couch.
“It’s a lot, but I’ll be fine,” he says. “I had an oddly civil talk with Anton and Matias and a rough one with my dad.”
“What happened?”
“I told him about the trip Granddad and I took with you. He wasn’t thrilled about our family business being splashed all over the internet.” I grimace, but Theo just shakes his head, looking surprisingly unruffled about it. “I knew he’d hate it. But I didn’t. Those two weeks meant everything to me—and to Granddad—and that matters.”
My heart squeezes at the steel in his voice.
“Anyway, he moved on from that to focus on what happened with my job. He’s having a harder time letting go of the dream than I did, but I told him he has to. I’m not going to talk to him until he does. His voice can’t be louder than mine in my own head, you know?” His gaze locks with mine. “And I’ve got people in my corner who’ll help drown it out, anyway.”
I scoot closer to him, my chest tight. It’s a massive step, and I can see in his eyes that he knows it, that some weight has been lifted by finally erecting that boundary. “I’m so proud of you.”
“You didn’t say that like you were about to throw up like last time,” he says, grinning. “Progress.”
I roll my watery eyes, then appraise him, letting my gaze run over his face. “You’re really okay?”
His voice is pitched equally low when he says, “Better now.”
We get caught in an extended moment that weaves between us, a thread added to all the ones we’ve made these past weeks. Invisible. Unbreakable.
There’s so much more I want to hear, though, so I nudge us out of the moment, running my hand up his thigh. My fingers brush against the folder in his lap. “Tell me what you’ve been doing with all your newfound freedom.”
“I, ah,” he starts, scrubbing a hand over his jaw with reluctant amusement, “I actually spent yesterday trying to figure out how to make a TikTok.”
My eyes widen. “What? Why?”
“I wanted to make one for you.” His expression turns self-conscious. “It’s harder than it looks to make something as good as yours, so I eventually gave up and moved to plan B.”
“What’s plan B? Actually, I’m not even sure I understand plan A.”
He laughs softly. “Plan A was a video where I basically laid my heart on the line. Plan B is the same, but hopefully with less trolls in the comment section.”
My throat is so tight, my heart so impossibly full. “No promises.”
Theo grins, a hopeful thing that quickly dissolves into a gentle curl. “I went to see Granddad on Wednesday. Well, you saw me, so you know.”
“Yeah.”
“We had a long talk.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. “Very long. So long that he ended up canceling his poker game. He had a lot to say, which won’t surprise you.”
“Zero percent surprised.”
His eyes move over my face like he’s taking a mental snapshot. “You and Granddad both gave me a lot to think about. How I view my success, how others view it, what I think I deserve and how I sabotage myself because of how I grew up.” I reach over to take his hand, and he looks down as his fingers weave through mine. “But it wasn’t until Granddad took me into his darkroom and showed me the pictures I want to show you that I really understood what I was at risk of losing if I didn’t get my shit together.”
My hand tightens around his. “You weren’t going to lose me.”
“I could’ve,” he says quietly. “Maybe not right away, but eventually. I want to be that guy for you, but I want to be it for me, too. We both deserve to be with someone who wants us exactly as we are, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I whisper, my eyes filling.
“Did you ever notice how my granddad took pictures of us?” he asks suddenly.
I frown. “Vaguely.”
“He took a lot, the stalker, because he knew what he was capturing before we did.”
“What do you mean?”
His smile is so tender it looks like it could break, and I hold my breath, not wanting to disturb it. “Let me show you.”
Thirty-Two
My eyes drop to the folder in Theo’s lap. He puts a hand over it, his veins road-mapped underneath his skin. I’ve had that hand all over my body, and now I feel like it’s holding my heart.
“There were things I held back,” he says. “The stuff with my job, but other things, too. I want to tell you now, if that’s okay.”
“Okay,” I say faintly.
He opens the folder and my gaze locks in on the top picture. It’s Theo and me at Tunnel View overlook, the day I took my first photo. I’m in profile, my camera cradled in my hands. It’s clear I’ve just lowered it, and I’m gazing out at the view in wonder. Theo’s several feet away, watching. His expression mirrors mine, but he’s looking at me.