You’re a fucking mess.”
I press my key card against the reader, my body throbbing from head to toe. “And you’re overreacting.”
Theo reaches an arm around me, pushing my hotel door open. His furious tension leaches from his chest into my back, but when he pushes past me into the room, it’s with a gentle brush of his body against mine.
Still. He’s pissed. The ride back to the hotel was deathly silent. Even Paul was quiet, beyond asking several times if I was okay.
As Theo stalks away, I focus on the mud streaking down his pants from his ass to his knee. He’s missing the bottom three inches of his shirt. We used it as a makeshift bandage, so now he’s rocking a crop top. His elbow is scratched but not bleeding, which is more than I can say for my knee.
I look down at it in dismay. It’s no longer gushing, but it looks nasty underneath the shirt. The material is soaked through with blood. And my leggings are trashed, ripped from knee to mid-thigh.
Theo holds the first aid kit he got from the front desk over his shoulder. “Take your pants off.”
“Excuse me?” I choke out, my shoulder clipping the doorway as I cross the threshold.
The look he gives me is incendiary. “We need to clean your knee and your leggings will be in the way. They’re ruined anyway. Off.”
My spine cracks, stiffening at his bossy tone, but I bite my lip against a retort as I watch him stride into the bathroom. He pushes aside all the crap I left out this morning, tossing the first aid kit onto the counter.
He has good reason to be mad; I had no business hanging off the edge of the embankment like that. What’s worse, I didn’t even get the shot and my lens is cracked, though thankfully I have a backup.
I drag myself over to my suitcase, digging around for a pair of shorts while my brain flashes through the past two hours: My foot slipping and the way I tipped forward. The horror of seeing the rocks ten feet below me with nothing to grab onto, knowing I was going to fall face-first into them. The feeling of being wrenched backward by my backpack, being thrown to the side from the force of Theo’s momentum. The searing pain in my knee when it sliced against a jagged rock and the glug of Theo’s racing heart underneath my ear when we finally stopped halfway down to the creek.
He’d gasped out, “Fucking hell. Shepard, are you okay?”
“I think so.” My knee was already wet, on fire.
There’d been a brief pause while Paul called down to us. Then Theo’s voice went sharp as a knife. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Turns out that was a rhetorical question. He ignored my breathless explanations as he got me up the hill, ripped his shirt like the Hulk version of Captain America, and bandaged up my knee. He ignored me during our hour-long ride from the park, and when Paul offered to grab water and painkillers in the gift shop downstairs.
That his first words to me in two hours are “you’re a fucking mess” and “take your pants off” is deeply ironic. I am a mess. And it’s not the first demand he’s ever made of me, but it’s the first one I’ve ever followed with such little hesitation.
I undress to the muffled sounds of Theo moving around in the bathroom. Something about it soothes me, that there’s someone in there waiting to take care of me. That he’s willing to, even after I messed up.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline finally catching up, or the pain, but tears sting my eyes as I pull on my shorts. I take two gulping breaths to push the emotion back. I don’t want to walk into that bathroom if I’m not calm. If I’m not calm, then I’m vulnerable. The thought of Theo seeing any more of my soft underbelly scares me more than falling down that embankment.
When I push the bathroom door open a minute later, though, I feel like I’m seeing his. He’s braced against the counter, head hanging low. I nearly back out to give him more time to . . . I don’t know. Collect himself.
The squeaking hinges alert him to my presence, though, and his expression straightens.
He pushes off the counter, clearing his throat, then freezes. “I—are those underwear?”
I look down, pulling at the cotton. “No, they’re shorts.”
“Says who?” he grumbles, turning back to the counter and grabbing one of the myriad packets littering one side of the sink.
“Target.”
With a deeply impatient sigh, he gestures to the cleared space on the counter. “Hop up.”
“Uh.” I look down at my mangled knee. “I’m not sure I—”
Theo’s hands are on me before I’m prepared. I don’t know how I’d prepare for this, anyway: the warmth of his skin against mine above my waistband, the way his fingers dig into my back, his thumbs pressing hard into my abdomen.
I have to wrap my arms around his neck. I’ll fall otherwise. It feels like I’m falling anyway.
He places me unceremoniously on the counter, his hands loosening but not immediately dropping from their bracketed position. His broad palms are the perfect width for the valleys of my body. I wish I could erase that knowledge from my brain.
My arms are still frozen around his neck. He reaches behind him, our faces inches apart, and grabs my wrists. He doesn’t touch me like I’m delicate or fragile. He touches me like I can take it. My stomach tightens in tandem with the squeeze of his fingers over my wrists as he sets my hands on my thighs.
“Was that necessary? I think I’ve gotten thrown around enough today,” I murmur into the silence.
He smirks. “Didn’t know there was a limit.”
Jesus. I look away, down at the spread of medical supplies. “Are you going to fix me up, McDreamy?”
“Who the hell is McDreamy?”
“He was on a show I’ve been bingeing that’s on its, like, fortieth seas—” I wave my hand in the air impatiently. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. He’s a hot television doctor.”
I look back up to find Theo’s smirk has gotten bigger. His dimple winks at me, though his eyes are still stormy. “Hot, huh?”
“Settle your ego. You skew much more McAngsty.”
He gives me a look that broadcasts his skepticism as he picks up an antiseptic packet. “McAngsty who saved your ass.”
“I wanted to get the perfect shot.”
The rip of the paper fills the bathroom. God, it’s small in here. Theo’s shoulders alone take up seventy percent of the space.
“And you fell down a hill,” he says. “How’s that perfection feeling now?”
It hurts like hell.
Theo looks at me like I’ve said it out loud, and his expression softens, just barely. He braces a hand on my uninjured knee, stepping into the vee of my legs.
“This is going to sting.”
I stare at the starburst in his eyes, thinking yes, it is just before the vicious pain hits.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp out, gripping his forearm. “Oh my god, that hurts.”
“Breathe,” he commands, and my lungs kick out an exhale on instinct. He’s so close my breath stirs the curling hair beneath his ear. I squeeze my eyes shut so I won’t look at him or my knee. The antiseptic burns almost as badly as the injury itself, nearly as much as the burn in my chest from realizing I could have hurt Theo, too. He drives me to the edge of my patience constantly, but I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe out.
There’s a beat of silence. Then, “Don’t do shit like that again, Shepard. We’re going to be walking along much higher drops. I don’t want to watch your body fall off the side of the Grand Canyon.”
If we weren’t close, I wouldn’t have heard the tremor in his voice, but we’re practically on top of each other. My eyes fly open. His head is bowed, focused on his work, his thick black lashes lying against the hollow beneath his eyes. A flush spreads across his cheeks.
I swallow, recognizing his fear. I felt it, too, when I was falling. I feel it now, knowing he cares, even if it’s just that he didn’t want me to die on his watch.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“I know.”
When he doesn’t go on, I press, “This is the part where you forgive me.”
“And if I don’t?” He lifts his chin, pinning me in place with eyes that are dark, but edged in amusement.
“Then lie so I feel better.”
Theo huffs out a laugh. “I forgive you,” he says, just as he presses the antiseptic wipe against my knee again, adding pressure.
“Shit. Oh fuck,” I hiss out, my eyes watering. “You’re making it hurt on purpose, you asshole.”
“Only if you ask nicely.” His voice is electrified, arcing from his mouth right into the pit of my stomach.
I suck in a breath, picturing his hands on me. Not hurting me, but letting me know he’s there, that he’s got me.
The air changes, storm-like, awareness rolling in on Theo’s hot exhale. For all of the ways we clash, I have no doubt we’d be good together like that, and he knows it, too.
“You’re not supposed to like that,” he growls out, frustrated, his gaze tracing my face like a touch.
Somehow his shirt has made its way into my fists. “Why did you say it, then?”
His gaze flickers up from my mouth. “Because I was trying to be an asshole.”
“You don’t have to try.”
He’s gotten so close. I don’t know if I pulled him or he came willingly. He’s between my thighs, but not the way I’d like. The slick material of his joggers brushes up against my skin, his hands shaping the curve of my legs as the antiseptic wipe falls away.
We were doing something before, but I couldn’t say what.
Theo tilts his head. Our noses brush and my stomach spirals so quickly it makes me dizzy. He’s going to kiss me, and I’m going to let him. Some foggy part of me remembers that this is a bad idea. That we don’t like each other, and we had to make a truce to get along.
I don’t think our truce included him running his hands up my thighs, his thumbs tracing the inside with the perfect pressure.
“What’s that game called?” he murmurs. “From last night?”
“Tell Me a Secret,” I manage, my heart in my throat.
His jaw ticks. “So, tell me one.”
I don’t want to admit it, but it’s the elephant in the room. His thumbs are inches from the spot throbbing worse than my knee.
“I wouldn’t stop you if you kissed me right now.” I say it quietly in case he changes his mind, but his eyes darken, pupils dilating. He doesn’t move, though his mouth parts like he can already taste it. “Now you.”
His breath dances over my lips. “If I kissed you right now, I wouldn’t stop.”
My legs flex instinctively, trying to close to relieve some of the ache between them, but Theo’s grip turns even firmer as he dips his head to run his mouth barely, barely against the spot where my jaw meets my ear.
“When you wear your hair up, I can’t stop looking right here,” he whispers against my skin. Another secret revealed, and I didn’t even have to ask. “You’ve never caught me?”
“No,” I moan. “Why are you messing with me right now?”
“Not messing, Shepard.” His nose skims along my cheek until his mouth is millimeters from mine. “Let’s call it playing. Isn’t that what we’ve always done with each other?”
Like that, he puts us on equal ground. I bite back a triumphant grin as my hands release his shirt and move to his forearms. His tendons dance under my palms as he flexes his fingers into my thighs, but he doesn’t move otherwise. Why won’t he kiss m—
There’s a soft knock at the door. A rustle. Footsteps, and the sound of the door next to mine opening.
Paul. He told me he’d let me know when he dropped off my water and medicine, along with chocolate he promised would be more healing than Advil.
Paul, the grandfather of the man I’m about to kiss. Paul, who’s pausing his life to accompany me on this road trip, telling me the secrets Gram either never got to or never intended to spill.
Paul, who clearly wants Theo and I to be a real thing.
My chest goes tight. I cannot mess this up, and getting tangled with Theo would.
“Hold on,” I wheeze out, letting go.
Theo steps back immediately, and the sudden absence of his touch nearly makes me cry. It would’ve been a mistake, but it would’ve been a mistake that felt really fucking good.
I keep my eyes firmly on his face. He’s hard and the material of his pants is thin and I truly can’t handle any details. “We shouldn’t do this.”
He doesn’t answer right away. His pulse thrums in his throat, below his impossibly tight jaw. “Okay.”
“I want to,” I say, in an attempt to reassure him.
One corner of his mouth pulls up as he rubs a hand up and down his cheek, then across his jaw. “I know.”
“But Paul,” I say, ignoring his smug tone. “I mean, you can see he’s trying to play matchmaker, right?”
Theo lets out a breath, his expression softening. “Yeah, I can.”
I run my hands over my thighs. Trying to erase his touch or preserve it, I’m not sure which. “We’re attracted to each other, but that’s all it is. It’s not like we’d ever have something for real.”
Not if he knew what state my life is in, anyway. I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve googled his past girlfriends. They’re all beautiful, with accomplishments pages long. One woman worked for NASA, for god’s sake. Maybe I’d be a fun distraction for him, a way to work out his stress while he’s away, but then what?
More distressingly, I feel myself softening toward him, and it’s only been a day. If I tangle those emotions with a hookup, it could get messy.
I don’t need more messes in my life.
“Right,” Theo says, interrupting my spiral.
His face is wiped clean of emotion. He grabs a Neosporin packet and Q-tip, applies a generous amount of goop onto it, then spreads it over my cut. My throat goes tight at the gentle touch.
“I don’t want to upset Paul,” I say, watching his careful work. The burn is gone, just an ache now. “I—I care about his friendship, and I don’t want to risk his place in my life if things blow up between us.”
His gaze meets mine briefly. “I get it, Shepard. The risk isn’t worth the reward. My granddad already cares about you, and he’s invested in all of this. I’m not going to mess that up for either of you.”
Theo prepares several bandages, then presses them onto my knee. His movements are efficient now, not hungry, not lingering or rough, and I mourn the loss of it even though it’s necessary.
When he’s done, he helps me down, stepping away before our bodies can connect.
I lean against the counter. “Can we extend the truce to ‘can look but don’t touch’?”
His eyebrows raise. “You want to look, huh?”
“Nothing wrong with a little window shopping,” I say. “Now that we’ve admitted we’re attracted to each other, I mean.”
Theo huffs out a tight breath. “Fine. I’m going to go check on my granddad, so I’ll give you the opportunity to stare at my ass again.”
“Again?”
“I felt you looking when I walked in.”
I make sure he sees my 360-degree eye roll, but I do stare at his ass as he walks to the door. He catches me when he looks over his shoulder. The last thing I see before the door closes behind him is his smirk.
What he doesn’t know is that I’m going to look and touch. But the only touching I’m going to do is with myself.
That’s a promise.
