Page 76 of Cross the Line

“What’s it like?” Alec whispers.

“Hmm?”

“Sex.”

“Shit, Alec.”

“S’just a question,” Alec mumbles, fighting against his own exhaustion. He wants to talk to Theo.

“I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that. Don’t you want to ask one of your brothers or friends?”

“I’d rather walk into oncoming traffic than ask my brothers about sex,” Alec huffs. “And all my friends sleep with women.”

“I sleep with women.”

“You’re so annoying,” Alec grumbles, swatting his chest. Rio readjusts herself immediately, resettling under Alec’s chin. “You sleep with men, too. I know you do.”

“Do you actually want to know how I sleep with men?”

No. It will break him into a million pieces so small no one will ever put them back together.

No.

No.

No.

“Yes,” he whispers because he is drunk and weak. “I’m tired of being a virgin.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, Alexander.”

“You only say that because you’re a sex god. Maybe I should’ve told one of those guys yes. They all asked.” He yawns, eyelids drooping.

Theo makes a choking noise, long fingers wrapping around Alec’s forearm. If Alec weren’t so drunk and damn near passing out, he’d almost think Theo was holding onto him on purpose. His touch is grounding, steadying, and Alec wiggles closer, throwing his leg over Theo and shoving his own face into the crook of Theo’s neck so the two of them and Rio are all smashed together in the center of the bed.

“I just wanna know what it’s like,” Alec slurs, everything getting so damn heavy. “I wanna—” but Alec can’t finish the thought, because Theo’s big hand ends up on the back of his head, long fingers smoothing down the back of Alec’s skull, and his body collapses. Surrounded by Theo, he gives up trying to stay awake and lets go.

CHAPTER 14

Theo

The thing about being an only child is that you’re allowed a fair bit of control. There’s no one else to compete with for attention, assuming there’s any to get in the first place. There’s no one else to move your things or hog the bathroom or leave things lying around. No one to eat all your favorite snacks or change the channel because they want to watch something different. There’s no one to steal your stuff or outshine you. There’s no one for teachers to look at and compare you to, and no one will ever meet you and say, “oh, you're so and so's sibling.”

Everyone always told him he was fortunate to be an only child. “Oh Theo, you’re so lucky not to have to share your bedroom, your bathroom, or your dad with anyone.” Except going home to a quiet house didn’t feel so lucky when the silence was oppressive. When his dad was either working or blowing off steam from working so much, Theo was always home alone. Shared dinners or someone stealing your food didn’t sound so bad to the little boy who ate peanut butter and jelly on a tv tray alone because he didn’t know how to cook and there wasn’t much food to cook in the first place. Having someone steal the remote didn’t sound so bad when you didn’t care what you watched because all you wanted was for the silence to stop.

Theo was so lucky, they said, but he never felt that way at home. He felt the luckiest when was with the King family, when they’d invite Theo over for a sleepover or a family picnic. When Charlie would steal his cookie and Jason would take off after him, nearly knocking the house down because his brother had dared to pilfer from his best friend. Theo never told Jason he liked it. He never told anyone that having his cookie stolen made it feel like he was one of them.

Sometimes when he closed his eyes and listened to Jason and the twins fighting, while Alec tried to join in with no idea what was going on, Theo would pretend he was one of them. At least until he went home to an empty house with darkened rooms, and then he remembered he wasn’t one of them. Sure, he was important to Jason. He was his best friend and that meant something to Theo, but it changed nothing at home. As much as Theo loved Jason and his family, at the end of the day, Theo wasn’t a King.

No matter how many family dinners and sleepovers he got invited to, he was still the only child of a single parent who wasn’t there when Theo needed him. As a kid, Theo had hated his dad as much as he loved him. Alone in his room he would close his eyes and think that maybe if he could be the smartest or the strongest kid, maybe his dad would have more attention and love for him. By the time he was a teenager, he’d stopped crying. He’d grown up and while his childhood stung, he kind of understood, in the shittiest way possible, why his dad was the way he was. Theo’s mom and dad were so young when they had him and then his mom had taken off with the rent money when Theo was six weeks old and never came back. Theo had no idea what her face looked like or the sound of her voice, but he understood what the shape of the hole she’d left in his dad felt like.

His dad was sixteen from a broken home of his own when Theo came into the world. He hadn’t been good at emotions or bedtime stories, but he didn’t leave. He did the best he could, even when his best wasn’t really good enough. He put food on the table and worked dead-end jobs without a high school diploma to make sure the rent was paid and Theo had what he needed for school and football. Growing up, Theo saw firsthand that love could break people, that wanting to do the right thing wasn't always good enough and it absolutely terrified him. There’s a very specific kind of trauma that comes from knowing that one of the people meant to love you forever walked away from you. A kind of trauma that makes it hard to imagine anyone else might love you, might decide to stay.

As far as Theo is concerned, love isn’t beautiful, it’s terrifying.

His dad had loved his mom and she’d broken his heart. His dad had loved him and Theo still had a difficult childhood. The only reason Theo knows he loves Jason is because Jason told him first when they were seventeen and drunk. Theo had started to cry because he’d been scared to lose his best friend after realizing his own bisexuality. It wasn’t something he’d needed to worry about, though, because Jason had pulled him into a bear hug and told him he loved him and that was that. Jason hasn’t said it again, probably because he knows Theo would run away if he tried, but he doesn’t need to say it for it to be true. Jason is solid and steady as an oak tree and the closest thing to a brother that Theo will ever have. In every way that matters, he is Theo’s family and nothing in the world can change that. At least he didn’t think so, before tonight.

Tonight Theo has Alec in his bed, naked aside from Theo’s sweater. He has Alec wrapped around his body while he holds him close. He has Alec asking to know what sex is like, giving Theo thoughts about what it might be like to teach him, and Theo has never been so terrified of his own feelings in his entire life.

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