Chapter 26: : Chapter 26

Theo is waiting on the curb when I step outside, his chin tipped up toward the sky.

“Are you okay?”

He blinks out of whatever trance he was in, blowing out a breath. “Can’t say I’ve ever had a date end that way.”

“Are you okay, though?” I press, inspecting him for signs of distress.

His expression blanks out. “I’m fine. I’m not getting twisted up about a few cards randomly pulled out of a deck.” He steps closer, taking my hand. “You good? It got heavy in there for you.”

I shift from foot to foot, feeling silly suddenly. Inside that room, everything was intensely real. Now, with conversation from nearby restaurants floating in the still air, with Theo looking at me like everything’s fine, I wonder if I overreacted. Maybe I assigned too much meaning, not just to his reading, but my own.

My cheeks flush. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ears, looking past his shoulder. “I’m good. Let’s get back?”

Theo’s eyes narrow, but he nods. When I start to walk, he pulls me back until I’m pressed up against him. “Hey.”

“What?” My heart is pounding. I don’t know why.

His voice dips low. “I don’t believe in that stuff, but if you’re upset about anything she said, you can talk to me. You know that, right?”

I stare up at him, the moon shooting silver through his hair, teasing me with how he’ll look years from now.

A million words sit in my throat, and these are the heaviest:

But he won’t, and because of that, I can’t give him anything more than a shaky “Yeah.”

The ride home is mostly quiet, and we step into an equally silent house ten minutes later. Theo heads for the kitchen. “Want a drink?”

I kick off my shoes by the door. “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

He grabs a bottle of wine, opening a drawer for the bottle opener. “I’ll take this out to the patio. Meet me there.”

When I slip into the bathroom, I lean against the door with a sigh. The small window above the shower lets in a slice of moonlight, and I breathe in the darkness, remembering the energy I felt earlier. The words Flor gave me.

Am I so desperate for change that I want to believe what she said? Is it pathetic to lay so much hope at the feet of the progress I’ve made these past two weeks, with my photography and how I’m processing Gram’s death, and even Theo? So many times now I’ve thought of the bubble I’ve been living in here. It’s expanding every day, and maybe there’s a chance it’ll survive when all this is over. But I’m starting to worry I’m headed for a painful reality check when I get home.

Frustrated, I flick on the light—and yelp when I see my reflection.

There’s mascara all over my face.

“Oh, for sake.” I wet a washcloth and wipe at my cheeks until the streaks are gone. The skin underneath turns pink, then red. Now I look pissed.

But I am, a little. Theo brushed off that whole thing, and I want to believe it, whether it’s ridiculous or not. I want to believe that I’m capable of being brave enough to keep trying. I even want to believe I’m the person he might turn to when he needs help. Isn’t that what people who care about each other do?

And I do care about him, deeply. Has this trip intensified a feeling that would never survive outside of this, or is it real?

Suddenly I’m questioning everything.

I make my way back to the kitchen, slipping out the door to the patio, which Theo left ajar. He’s sitting on a sleek L-shaped couch, facing out toward the dark horizon. When he hears the creak of my footsteps on the deck, he looks over his shoulder.

“I gave you a big-ass pour,” he says, holding the glass above his head as I come up behind him.

I relieve him of the glass, taking such a deep gulp that I’m breathless when I’m done. Theo raises an eyebrow as I skirt the couch and plop down, keeping a few inches of space between us. “Thanks for telling me I had mascara all over my face.”

He double takes at the tone of my voice. “It wasn’t that bad, Shepard, and we were headed home anyway. You looked like a beautiful raccoon.”

God, this asshole. He makes my chest hurt. “I looked ridiculous.”

“All right, point taken,” he says, his mouth pulling up. “I’ll be sure to alert you next time.”

I nod, swigging again.

“Noelle.” When I look over at him, he’s watching me carefully, his expression morphing from amusement to concern.

“Theo,” I volley back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

For a beat, the only sound between us is crickets chirping. Finally, he says, “Tell me the truth.”

Those words hit me somewhere deep. It’s a more intense version of Tell Me a Secret; the stakes are so much higher.

I’m afraid the bubble is going to pop when I least expect it, and I’ve been through that before. I never want to feel that loss of control again, so I put my finger to it, and I pop it myself. This is my life, and if it’s ugly and he hates it, he was going to walk away eventually anyway.

“You don’t believe what Flor said, but my reading was spot-on. The big expectations that turned into none, Gram being my guidance when I was floundering, and how I just . . . felt uprooted when she died.”

I take him in as I set my wineglass down—the stern set of his eyebrows, the concern glowing in his eyes just below, the way he’s leaning in toward me, ready to catch every word. And there, written all across his face, how he cares for me.

“I don’t have a job,” I say. “I lied to you when I said I did. I got laid off five months ago, and I’m pretty positive it was just a more humane way to fire me. I mean, it wasn’t my dream job by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve never had that. That photography assistant job decimated my self-esteem, and the rest of my professional career has been underwhelming. Then I can’t hold on to some mediocre job I didn’t even like?”

His eyebrows fly up to his hairline, and he sits back, his mouth parting.

I continue, gaining steam. “I couldn’t tell you, so I let you believe this was a vacation instead. I didn’t have a choice at the time. All we ever did was battle against each other to be the best, and thankfully we didn’t see each other for years, so you had no idea how easily you leapfrogged me. But then you caught me at my lowest moment while you were at your highest. I mean, god.

Really?”

Hurt flashes across his face, but he schools it immediately. “That’s why you didn’t tell me? Because you thought I’d look down on you for not being successful? When who the fuck knows what that really means, anyway? You look at me and think that’s the only way success looks, but I promise you it’s not.”

“You cofounded an company, Theo.”

“It’s not that straightforward,” he argues.

I can’t help thinking of Flor’s words earlier:

. But if he doesn’t believe that, it can’t be true.

“I’ve been living in my childhood bedroom turned Peloton studio since January, if you want to talk straightforward. For better or worse, I wanted to save face in front of you. It’s not like I knew when we met up that first time that eventually we’d be . . .” I gesture between us. “Whatever this is.”

“Whatever this is,” he repeats blankly, running a hand over his jaw. “Right.”

“I’ve been job hunting, but it’s so bleak, and I’m still scared of pursuing photography. It feels safe here, but what happens when I go home?” I let out a breath. “What if I fail again?”

“You’re already not failing,” Theo says. “That thing with the Tahoe resort—”

“What if that’s it?”

“What if it’s ?” he shoots back. “You’re talented. You you are. And holy shit, fine, so you had to take a breather after one of the most important people in your life died. So you got laid off from a job you hated anyway, and you haven’t quite found your place. You tried to make a go at photography years ago and it didn’t work . Do you think that’s an indictment on who you are as a person, that you’re struggling? Do you think that I’d look at you now and think ?”

I shrug helplessly. “Historical data goes against me. You dated a woman who worked for NASA.”

“And you mean more to me in two weeks than she did in nearly a year, you little Google stalker,” he snaps out, genuinely affronted.

My heart takes off as that settles between us. He sees my eyes go saucer-wide and lets out a frustrated grunt.

“I said it earlier today and I’ll say it again—you have no idea how amazing you are. I’ll give it up to that psychic, because she had one thing right: you’ve been through hell losing your grandma. Maybe I didn’t know her personally or see your relationship play out, but I know what you had with her. I recognize it in my own relationship with my granddad.” His voice wobbles, and he clears his throat over it. “The way you talk about her, the way you’re honoring her by taking this trip. Hell, the way you made the decision to just and allowed me and Granddad to tag along. We’re getting to create memories together while you’re still grieving the fact that you don’t have any memories left to make. You don’t fucking know, Noelle, the scope of what you’ve done.”

Just like that, my eyes are leaking again, and this time he reaches over to wipe the tears away.

“Have you been reading the comments on your videos?” he asks, his eyes locked with mine. “The ones where people say they’ve called their grandparents, their parents, their people to tell them they love them because they’ve realized how lucky they are?

The ones where people say this story you’re telling is helping them with their own grief?”

“Yes,” I whisper. Those are the ones that heal me the most.

“You think that’s not success? You think I don’t look at you and wonder what you see in ?” His thumb moves down to my cheek, and he follows it with his eyes. “You think I don’t watch you taking pictures or editing them on your computer with that scrunchy little face you make”—he grins when I let out a choked laugh—“and sit in awe of the work you do? How people connect with it? Because I promise you, I do. If you could see yourself through my eyes, your head wouldn’t fit through the door.”

It’s not my head that’s grown, it’s my heart, suddenly too big for my chest. It presses painfully at my ribs, struggling to get out so it can plop itself in Theo’s hands.

“Don’t put yourself up against me,” he says. “I’m going to be the one who doesn’t measure up.”

“That’s not true,” I say, insulted on his behalf.

“It .” There’s something searching in his voice, in the way he looks at me. He inhales, as if he’s going to say more.

But instead he lets out a pained, frustrated sigh, then grazes his lips over the corner of my mouth, moving to the other side. I close my eyes, parting my lips to let him in if he wants it.

“I hate that you felt like you had to lie to me,” he murmurs. “But just so we’re clear, I want you, Noelle. Don’t think that there are conditions to the way I feel about you.”

I pull back, as breathless as if he’d been kissing me for minutes or hours, instead of just teasing me with his mouth. “I feel the same way.”

His gaze turns intent. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He sighs, dragging his mouth along my cheek, until it gets to my ear. “Tell me a secret.”

“I don’t want to be done with this in two days.” As soon as that last confession is out, the relief pours through me like adrenaline. “Tell me yours.”

He pulls back. “I don’t want to be done with this at all.”

Firecrackers in my blood. It’s the only way to describe the feeling, and I suddenly have to be closer to him, so I crawl into his lap. I cradle his face and bring him to me, laughing against his surprised inhale, then licking up his groan. He adjusts to the change in mood flawlessly, cupping my ass to pull me closer.

Theo’s kiss turns intense immediately, and I take it, because I can. Because we battle, but at the end of the day we’re doing it side by side.

“I need you,” he says against my mouth.

“Can we go—”

He has me in his arms, striding toward the door, before I can say . He closes and locks the patio door behind us, then carries me to his room, tossing me onto the bed.

“I knew you wanted to throw me around,” I say as he crawls over me, biting softly at my neck, sucking at my skin. He moves up to my jaw, the corner of my mouth, before nipping at my bottom lip.

He props himself up on one elbow, tangling his free hand into my hair. For a moment, he just looks down at me. I wish I had my camera so I could capture this moment, even though I know I’ll never forget—it’s the beginning of something I don’t see the end of.

“I meant all of that,” he says. “I want to keep seeing you when we get home.”

I run my fingers through his hair, melting when his eyes fall closed, his mouth pulling up. “I do, too. And I’m sorry I lied.”

“I understand,” he says hoarsely, then kisses me so deeply, with an urgency I’m not sure understand, though my body runs wild with it.

Our clothes are gone in minutes, and I grip his hair while he settles between my legs, licking at me until I’m begging for him to make me come. He pushes me over the edge with brutal care, so hard I have to muffle my sounds with the back of my wrist. And when he crawls back over me, panting from all his tireless work, I take the condom he pulled from the pocket of his jeans and put it on him, watch as he leans back and takes himself in hand, stroking up and down through the wetness he created.

“Fuck,” he whispers, mesmerized.

“Really wish you would.” I push my hips up, trying to pull him into the clasp of my body. The need I have is so big it aches. I want it to hurt when he fills me.

He grins and I reach up, pressing my thumb into the crevice of his dimple. He curves over me, still pressing right where I need him, but not sliding in. His tongue slips past my lips, tangling with mine as he rocks his hips. I cup my hands around them to feel the way his body works, muscles playing under hot skin. Then I dig my nails in, smiling in triumph when he groans against my mouth.

“You can take me, can’t you,” he pants out, and it’s not a question. He just wants to hear me say it.

“Yes,” I whisper.

The give-and-take we have is so good. He knows I can handle what he gives me and throw it right back, and it stokes my craving, that he wants all of me, even the parts that are still broken or healing.

A hungry look curls into his expression as he lines himself up, his chest rumbling out an . He doesn’t see the relief on his face when he sinks all the way inside me, but I do. It’s a secret he doesn’t even know he’s told me.

But I know, as he curls his hands around my shoulders and fucks me until I’m crying out quietly against his skin, it’s also the truth, simply set free.