Page 77 of What Comes After

“Why are you crying?” he pressed.

I was not going to admit to him that I’d started thinking about him and burst into tears as a result, so I went with something else that was partially true.

“Life just seems to like to kick me in the teeth on a regular basis,” I said. “I’m dealing with business things. Now, what are you doing here?”

He tipped his head slightly to the side, allowed his eyes to roam over my face, and replied, “I was going to call, but I’ve decided I’m done doing the bare minimum.”

I couldn’t bring myself to react to his words the way I might have if he’d said them to me ten years ago. I refused to assume what he meant.

It also seemed I refused to worry about self-preservation, because I ignored all the shock and confusion I felt at seeing him standing there, and I stepped back to allow him the space he needed to come inside. Once I closed the door behind him, I repeated, “The bare minimum of what?”

For long moments, seconds that felt like whole minutes, Theo didn’t respond. He looked at me. His eyes raked over my face in such a way that it was almost like being touched by his fingers.

“Do you know what I was doing when I got the call from my mom that you were in the hospital fighting for your life?” he finally asked.

If his goal was to try to surprise or confuse me, he was succeeding on both fronts. Because not only did I not anticipate that question, I also didn’t know what it had to do with why he was here now.

“No, Theo, I don’t know what you were doing,” I answered honestly, hoping he wasn’t going to tell me he’d woken up in bed next to a beautiful woman.

“I’d just woken up not long before in a luxurious hotel up in New England, and I was preparing for a day of looking at properties, hoping to find one to purchase,” he revealed.

This was becoming more and more strange with each word he spoke. “Okay,” I replied.

“I got that call, and my whole world stopped,” he declared.

Suddenly, my mouth became parched, and my lips parted slightly.

Theo wasn’t done. “My mom told me you were in the ICU and that the doctors weren’t sure if you were going to make it,” he began again. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The craziest part about all of it was that mere minutes before I got that call, I’d been thinking about you. It had dawned on me you never responded to my text the night before, and I had gone through my phone to find a folder I’d saved on there. In that folder were pictures of just you or you and me, and I hadn’t added a new one to it in years, because I hadn’t been home for years. That led me to thinking about the last time I saw you, the last time I spoke to you. Too much time had passed, and I was a fool for ever allowing things to be that way.”

There was so much to unpack in all that he’d just shared, but I couldn’t stop my mind from going to one important thing. He claimed to have a folder on his phone with pictures of just me or me and him. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that information.

Why would he have a folder like that on his phone?

When I finally managed to get myself to stop focusing on that, I realized I needed to say something. Since he was standing here sharing all that he was and placing so much blame on himself, the safest and easiest thing for me to tackle was that.

So, I replied, “You were working, Theo. You did so many movies in such a short time. I’m sure time was just passing you by, and before you even realized it, years had passed. It wasn’t intentional.”

Shaking his head, he said, “No, it wasn’t. And you’re right, I did a lot of filming in that time, but I also didn’t make the effort to come back. That’s unacceptable.”

“I’m not upset with you for doing something you love, Theo. Why are you telling me all of this? What is going on?”

Frustration moved through him. “I was up in New England searching for a place to buy, a place to settle down. I didn’t know if that’s where I was going to end up, but that’s where I started my search. Then, I got that call, and I knew this was where I needed to be.”

“How? Why?”

“You’re here,” he said in such a way that he must have believed offered all the explanation I needed.

It didn’t.

“I’ve always been here,” I reasoned.

He nodded. “Yeah, and I stayed away for too long for a lot of reasons, none of which were particularly good. But I’m here now, and I know so much time has passed, but I bought that house, because this is where I’m settling down. I’m not leaving, Devyn, and I want you in my life.”

Wow.

I hadn’t realized Theo had reached a point in his career where he was looking to slow down or stop acting, so he could settle down.

But more than that, I had been sitting here just minutes before he arrived, believing that he had already moved on from our discussion days ago and had gone back to California. Not only was I wrong about that, but I had seriously underestimated how much that conversation had affected him.

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