Page 153 of Seven Lost Summers
I stop in front of Theo’s door and lift my hand. I knock once.
“It’s open,” he says.
I push the door open gently, and the first thing I see is him, sitting on the edge of the bed, head buried in his hands. His shirt is gone, lying crumpled on the floor. His chest rises and falls in slow, uneven breaths that look heavier than they should.
Outside, the last of the daylight bleeds into the room through the window, casting faint, fractured shadows over the tattoo that spreads across his chest. Those wings that sent me spiralling, bolting out of the room when my fingers traced them.
The guilt still comes, at the thought of what I’ve done with Bianca’s boys. But I shove it down. In less than a week, I’ll be gone. They’ll go back to their usual lives, back to being the untouchable rockstars everyone else sees, and I’ll be nothing more than a memory of someone they used to know. Much like before, when they left the first time.
So I might as well take what’s here now.
Every benefit.
Every stolen second. Live out the fantasy while I can, before it fades into something that used to be. Two weeks of my life tangled up with two rockstars who were once my friends.
Theo’s head lifts when I step inside. And fuck.
There’s something about him at this moment that steals the air from my lungs. There are no walls. No jokes or smirks to hide behind. Theo, unguarded, the fight gone from his eyes. He looks like someone who’s been carrying too much for too long, and it’s dragging him under. I can see he’s in his fucking head again, turning over whatever’s been eating at him until it’s worn him down.
I want to ask and tear it out of him, if only to hold it for a while, so he doesn’t have to.
But I know better. Push him and he’ll retreat. I’ve watched that happen. Bianca and I used to talk about how he’d make himself small when things got bad, curling in on himself until there was nothing left for anyone to grab onto. Back then, Nate was the one who could cut through all that mess, drag him back into the light.
And standing here now, I know I’m not Nate. All I can do is watch him fold in on himself and pretend it doesn’t break something in me.
I cross the room, the carpet soft under my feet. Guitars lean against the wall, some in stands, others resting where they’ve been left after a late-night play. A laptop sits open on the desk beside a scattering of guitar picks, empty coffee cups, and a mess of crumpled set lists. There’s a hoodie draped over the back of the chair, a phone charger coiled on the floor, and a pile of clothes kicked half under the bed.
When I sit beside him, our thighs brush. Neither of us says anything at first.
He only watches me. My eyes flicker to his, and it fucking breaks something in me to see him like this, stripped of the spark that usually lives there. I hold the water bottle out to him. He takes it without a word, but doesn’t drink. Instead, he tosses it onto the bed beside him as if it weighs too much to bother with.
My eyes drift around the room, catching on details I never noticed before. When I was in this bed with both of them, I wasn’t looking. I was too busy being touched, coming apart under two mouths, two cocks, two bodies that knew exactly how to tear orgasms out of me.
On his dresser sits a small ball, the kind he used to throw against the wall or squeeze in his hand when his anxiety got the better of him. This one is a different color, but it proves that some things never change, no matter how many arenas you sell out.
Beside it, a gold photo frame pulls my attention. I rise from the bed and cross the room.
It’s the four of us. Nate. Theo. Bianca. And me.
We look stupid-happy, all sun-drenched smiles and bare, golden skin. The kind of photo that makes your chest ache with everything it holds and everything it reminds you of.
It isn’t one I took, which makes it unfamiliar, almost foreign, yet still loaded. The background looks like Nate and Theo’s old room with rumpled sheets, posters curling at the edges, the faint chaos that was always theirs.
I reach for it, lifting it carefully into my hands. My fingers trace the cool metal, brushing over the fine layer of dust along the frame, proof it has been sitting here a long time, waiting to be noticed.
“Who took this?” I ask without turning.
“Scarlet, I think.”
His voice comes from right behind me. Closer than I realized. Close enough that I can sense the faint heat of him at my back.
I don’t move.
My gaze stays locked on the photo, my eyes tracing every detail. The way Theo’s arm is looped around me, holding me without thinking. The way Bianca’s smile spills light into everything around her, bright enough to burn. The way Nate’s hand rests on Theo’s shoulder, steady and sure, as if he’s anchoring him to the moment.
Something inside my chest pulls tight until it hurts.
I know Theo’s eyes are on me before I even look up. His gaze is steady, carrying a heat that pulls me in without a word.
