Page 111 of Caden & Theo
I tilt my head, eyes flicking to his mouth. He mirrors me, lips parting just slightly. The world narrows, heat rising like a tide, until I’m certain this is it?—
Then he stops.
Not pulling away—just holding. Hovering in that fragile space wherealmostis its own kind of torment. His eyes lock with mine, darkened, burning.
“Theo,” he breathes, the word so soft, I almost miss it. “You wanna get out of here?”
For a second, I can’t think. The gym, the people, the music—they all blur into nothing. There’s only him and the sharp pulse of possibility.
“Yes,” I say, immediate and certain. “God, yes.”
We break apart only enough to move. He threads his fingers through mine, and I don’t care who sees that we’re in a hurry to leave. The exit feels impossibly far, the floorboards creakingunder every step like they want to mark our escape. My chest is tight with anticipation, nerves, hunger—everything I’ve kept caged for years pressing to the surface.
The cool air hits as soon as we push through the doors. Outside, the night is quiet, moonlight spilling across the parking lot. I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath since we stepped onto that floor.
He doesn’t let go of my hand. Not once.
For a moment, we just stand there under the night sky, suspended between what was and what comes next. His thumb strokes my knuckles, tender and thoughtful over a scar I got when attempting some home renos a few years back. My body hums with the echo of his nearness, with the promise in his eyes.
I think of the boy I was—jealous and hopeful and so sure I’d never get this chance. I think of every mistake, every year of silence, every lonely night, a plastic firefighter on my nightstand my only company. And now, impossibly, I’m here. With him. Walking out of prom hand in hand, like we should have twenty years ago.
We head for Caden’s rental, our footsteps echoing in the cool dark of the parking lot. His hand is still in mine, warm and steady, and I keep waiting for him to loosen his grip, to remember himself, to put that space back between us. He doesn’t. Not once.
At the car, he pauses, then presses the keys into my palm. For a second, I can only stare at them, metal biting into my skin. My chest goes tight. The last time I was behind the wheel with him in the passenger seat, everything went wrong. One blink too long, one slip into exhaustion, and his entire life changed. Mine too. The accident is stitched into me so deep, it feels like my blood remembers it. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget the sound of crumpling metal, the silence after, the devastation of knowing it was my fault.
And now—he’s handing me the keys.
It feels like something inside me is splitting open. He trusts me enough to climb in beside me again, to let me carry him forward when all I did back then was fail him. Forgiveness. Faith. Maybe even love. I don’t know how to deserve it, but my fingers curl tightly around the keys anyway, trembling.
Without a word, he moves to the passenger side, opens the door, and slides in like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he’s already decided this isn’t a night for ghosts.
I open the door and sink behind the wheel. My breath shudders in and out, the engine hums to life, and the headlights spill across the asphalt. The sound steadies me, but my hands ache from how hard I’m gripping the wheel with one and his fingers with the other.
The silence settles around us like new skin. We’ve shared quiet before—after games, after time apart, after long drives with music too loud to talk over. But this is different. This silence is sharper, fuller. It isn’t bad. It’s just… heavier. Weighted with trust and forgiveness, shaped by the men we’ve become, by everything we’ve survived separately and everything we might still risk together.
My chest tightens as his thumb strokes idly over the back of my hand, back and forth, like he’s cataloging me.
I drive slowly, yes for the speed limit, but also because I want the minutes to stretch. The streets are empty, familiar in that bone-deep way only those in a hometown can be. Each intersection is a breadcrumb trail back to the boy I was, but the man beside me makes them feel new.
I sneak a glance at him, his profile lit up in fragments by passing streetlamps. He looks calm. Too calm. Like he isn’t leaving tomorrow. Like he hasn’t built a whole life three thousand miles away. And the questions stack up inside me until they’re choking me: Does he mean it, what he said about SanFrancisco? Does “see me” mean next week? Next month? For a weekend, or for as long as it takes? Do I even deserve to ask?
My dick is throbbing like it has its own agenda, voting hard for reckless, for fuck it, for take him inside and let fifteen years collapse into this one night. But under that insistence, there’s the smaller, crueler whisper: Is this a mistake? He’s flying out tomorrow. He’s lived a life without me. And I’ve learned, painfully, how quickly promises can vanish.
The silence keeps stretching. I grip the wheel tighter with my free hand, afraid if I let go, I’ll say something that cracks the night in half. But then his thumb brushes that same scar again, one he’s never touched before tonight, and I swear the world rights itself.
When I pull into the driveway, my chest is tight enough that I can barely breathe. The porch light is on—automatic timer—but it still feels like a welcome. The house looks the same from the outside, but it isn’t. Not anymore. It’s mine. My parents’ old room is mine now, the walls painted in colors I chose, the furniture carrying my stamp, not theirs. I’ve made it a place I love.
But the love I feel for my home is nothing compared to how I feel about the man sitting next to me.
I kill the engine. For a long beat, we don’t move. The cooling tick of the car fills the air. He doesn’t let go of my hand.
Finally, he turns to me, eyes shadowed but steady. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. Whatever this is—whatever happens next—whatever he might have said is already written across his face.
I swallow hard. “Come in with me?” A given, I suppose, since I drove him here and not to the B&B, but I still ask.
His answer is immediate, soft, almost a relief. “Yeah.”
We climb out, palms reconnecting as we walk to the front door. The key shakes a little in my hand from the nervesconnected to everything pressing down on me—the years lost, the hours left, the impossible luck of tonight. I get the door open, and we step inside.
