Page 4 of Stop and Seek
Liam.
Okay. Cuter than the pictures. Theo had to admit that. Tousled hair. Kind eyes. Great smile. Easy, relaxed laugh. Even if he wasn’t Theo’s type, he’d promised himself he’d try.
Hehadto try.
For his fucking sanity.
That resolve lasted about five minutes.
“So, you game?” Liam asked, leaning forward, voice weirdly sweet. This wasn’t a first-date segment onThe Match Game. It was the back corner of a sticky-floored bar in the worst part of Cleveland.
“Yeah,” Theo said, dragging the word out a little.
“Same. What kind?”
“All of them.”
Liam’s smile twitched. His eyes darted toward Alyssa, then back to Theo, like he was checking for signs of irony.
Meanwhile, the girls’ conversation picked up just loud enough to fill the silence.
“And then, like—” Rachel slammed her empty soda glass on the table. “—she was screaming!”
“Oh my god,no,” Alyssa gasped, one hand flying to her mouth.
“Right!?”
Theo closed his eyes, resting his forehead against his hand. His other hand curled around the shot glass.
This couldn’t have been going worse.
Shoot me now.
“Holy crap, is that Kyran?”
Rachel’s voice cut through the noise, her hand shaking Theo’s shoulder hard enough to jostle him away from the drowning misery.
Following her gaze across the crowded bar, he scanned unrecognizable faces until he saw it.
Decker.
Kyran fucking Decker.
Same bleached and dyed hair, except longer. The five piercings on his face had turned into fifteen—or twenty, hard to tell from this angle. The last time Theo had seen him was back in high school, when Decker was the guy you went to for a fake ID—if you had extra cash laying around and zero fear of expulsion.
Theo had only talked to him once. Briefly. In the computer lab that smelled like crayons and BO. They’d run in completely different circles.
So what the hell was he doing here?
“I thought he went to California,” Theo muttered.
Rachel slapped his shoulder. Hard.Repeatedly. “It’s wild, right? It’s like looking at a ghost from your past.”
“The past can stay there.”
“You didn’t hear, Teddy?” Alyssa asked, her nails tapping the table. The glitter eye-shadow had melted into raccoon-like smudges down her cheeks, streaked with sweat and eyeliner.
Theo glared at Rachel, and she grinned back.
