Chapter 19
NINETEEN
CADEN
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.
I didn’t even enter the B&B. I just kept driving past it. Past the grocery store that has an updated sign. Past the field we used to cut through on the way to the gym, now fenced off and “under development” if the cheap banner signs are to be believed.
My hands did the driving, but my heart had steered.
And now I’m here. On the street I haven’t dared to think about in nearly sixteen years.
Parked in front of a house I once knew like the back of my hand.
Except now the front door is the wrong color—dark teal instead of white—and there’s a different car in the driveway.
Not his old Jeep. Not his mom’s sedan. But I know it’s still home.
Theo’s home.
I stare through the windshield, heart racing like I’m about to walk into a playoff game, only worse—because I have no idea what play I’m supposed to run. I’ve got no game plan. Just this knot in my chest and the way my hands won’t stop trembling on the wheel.
He could slam the door in my face. Hell, he should.
But then the car door opens—so does mine—and time skips a beat.
Theo steps out.
And just like that, I can’t breathe.
God, he looks good. Not just handsome—he’s always been that—but solid in a way that speaks of stability and presence.
There’s a weight to him now that wasn’t there at twenty-two.
He was beautiful then, sure. Lean. Quick to smile.
A little too serious about everything. But now?
Now he’s the kind of man people slow down to look at. A full-grown heartbreaker.
His brown skin is darker than I remember—May sun already starting to claim him for the season. His curls are gone, hair trimmed short and tight at the sides. He’s wearing a faded Gomillion training T-shirt and jeans, and he’s staring at me like this is just any other afternoon.
But it’s not.
His gaze sweeps the street and lands on me. My feet hit the pavement unevenly, the weight of the prosthesis always more noticeable when I’m tired. I wince. My knee doesn’t lock quite right, and I have to catch myself on the car door.
Theo freezes.
His eyes drop—right there, to my leg.
Denim covers it, but the outline’s obvious. The awkward angle of my stance. The way I hesitate, shifting my balance.
And there it is. That flicker of guilt on his face. The wet glass of unshed tears in his eyes. His mouth parts like he’s about to speak, but the words don’t make it past whatever wall he’s put up since the last time we saw each other.
The hospital.
The moment I told him to leave.
The last time I saw him standing in a doorway, expression cracked wide open with grief and fear and love I couldn’t take.
A thousand memories crash into me all at once.
Theo holding my face in his hands in the back seat of his mom’s car after my first big win.
Theo barefoot in my kitchen, wearing my hoodie and holding a spoon like a mic while making pancakes.
Theo whispering forever against my neck in the dark.
The boy who knew every scar, every dream. The man I left behind.
I take a breath. It’s not enough. Another. Still not enough.
But somehow, his whispered name still escapes my lips.
His simple “Hey” follows, and then finally, after too many awkward, breathless heartbeats, he says, “You coming in, or do you want to keep standing there like a horror movie extra?”
His voice is soft. Familiar. Rougher than I remember, but God, it wraps around me like a thread pulling me forward.
I bark out a laugh, something strangled and surprised. “You always were dramatic.”
He shrugs, but his lips twitch. “Yeah, well. You’ve got a flair for entrances.”
A pause stretches between us.
“I didn’t know you still live here,” I say finally.
“Yet you came anyway.”
I step closer. Not too close, but enough to cross the space between the sidewalk and the porch. I can feel my limp with every step, like a flare of heat under my skin.
“You’re not gonna tell me I look like shit?”
“You don’t.” He looks me over, eyes lingering maybe a second too long. “You look… older. Tired.”
I smile crookedly. “Accurate.”
“You hungry?” he asks, like we’re two guys catching up after a game, not two men standing on the wreckage of what they once were.
“I’m always hungry,” I say.
He nods once and opens the door. “Come in, then. I’ve got beer and leftover spaghetti if you’re brave.”
The house smells like pine cleaner and something faintly citrus.
It’s tidy. Not overly neat, but lived-in.
There’s a framed photo of his parents by the door, a pair of running shoes kicked to one side.
I follow him down the hall to the kitchen, watching the way his shoulders move, how he rubs the back of his neck like he always did when he’s thinking too much.
He grabs two beers from the fridge, pops the tops, and hands me one without looking. I take it. The cold bottle sweats against my palm.
We stand there in silence for a beat. Maybe two.
“You don’t have to explain anything,” Theo says quietly, his eyes not quite meeting mine.
I open my mouth, then close it again. The instinct is there—to spill everything, apologize, rewind the years.
But it’s too soon. The silence between us isn’t an empty thing—it’s dense, packed tight with memories and regrets and the ache of too much time lost. So I just nod and let the words die in my throat.
We move into the living room with our beers, the space familiar, but Theo’s clearly made it his own. We sit on opposite ends of the couch like polite strangers with a shared past neither of us knows how to address.
He doesn’t ask why I’m really here. I don’t ask how he’s really been.
Instead, we talk around it, skimming along the surface of safer topics.
“You’re coaching the team?” I ask, lifting my beer to my lips.
“Yeah. Well, assistant coaching,” he says. “Varsity boys. We made district finals this year.”
“That’s great.” I glance at him. “You always were patient with kids.”
He chuckles lightly. “You’re the only one who’d say that.”
I smile. “Because I once saw you try to teach a four-year-old how to tie his shoes.”
“That kid had it out for me,” he says, and this time, the smile sticks longer.
We fall into an uneasy rhythm after that.
Talking about town politics, the way Main Street’s finally getting repaved, the new stores.
I nod along even though I already saw it when I drove past it all.
Still, I like hearing it from him. Like I’m borrowing his version of Gomillion to layer over my own memories.
Theo’s body is relaxed, one arm slung over the back of the couch, but there’s a tightness in his shoulders that doesn’t ease. Like he’s braced for something. Like he’s waiting for me to break open the past while he’s still trying to figure out if he even wants me to.
I don’t. Not yet.
It’s enough just to be here, even if I can feel the weight of the years pressing down like a hand on the back of my neck.
I clear my throat. “How’s Amelia doing? I haven’t seen her since….” I let the sentence trail off, because finishing it would mean saying since before the accident.
His expression softens. “She’s good. Living in Charlotte now. Got her degree, went into social work. She’s tough as nails—exactly the kind of person you want fighting for you.”
“Yeah?” I smile into my beer. “Sounds about right.”
“She and John divorced last year, but she’s holding it down. Connor’s eleven now.” His voice. “Smart kid. Loves basketball, but he’s really into robotics too. Joined a STEM league last year and won his first competition. You’d like him.”
“Man.” I shake my head, grinning. “We’re old enough to have middle-schoolers running around calling us ‘sir.’ That’s wild.”
Theo laughs quietly. “Yeah. Makes you feel it.”
He gets up at one point to grab us more drinks and a bowl of chips, and I watch him move—fluid and sure. Confident. It hits me all over again how much he’s grown into himself. Not just older, but… more grounded. Like someone who built something after everything fell apart.
He hands me a bottle, and our fingers brush.
Just for a second. But my chest tightens in response, heat rising up the back of my neck.
I cover my reaction with a sip and glance around the room again, looking quickly away when I spot a photo of the two of us taken when I was thirteen and he was twelve.
We’d survived whitewater rafting and were both wearing shit-eating grins like we were badasses.
We weren’t. We’d screamed and hung on for dear life over the rapids.
“I almost didn’t come,” I admit, voice rough.
He doesn’t turn to me, but I see the flicker of something in his expression. “I figured.”
Another silence.
“I didn’t know if you’d be attending the reunion at all,” I add. “Or if you’d want to see me.”
His jaw ticks, but he keeps his gaze forward, saying lightly, “But you’re still here.”
And that’s the most honest thing either of us has said all night.
We linger in the quiet. The kind that used to be easy between us, filled with shoulder bumps and knowing glances and shared CDs. Now it’s taut and cautious, full of all the unsaid things neither of us is ready to grapple with.
After a while, Theo leans back and stretches his legs out, one ankle propped on the other. His fingers still cradle the neck of his beer, and he rotates it absently like he’s not ready to let go just yet.
“You still in San Francisco?” he asks casually.
I blink. “Yeah.” I take a small sip, buying time. “Running my studio.”
He nods once, like that tracks. “I figured,” he says.
I narrow my eyes, curious. “You figured?”
He doesn’t look at me. He shrugs one shoulder, eyes on some vague spot near the TV. “You never really struck me as the ‘move back home’ type. Not after… everything.”
“Still,” I murmur, “bit of a shot in the dark. You keeping tabs on me?”
He huffs a quiet laugh and finally glances my way, eyes glinting with mischief. “You think it’s hard to find you online? Please. You’re not exactly subtle, Caden. The studio’s website basically treats your face like a branding strategy. I counted nine photos of you on the home page alone.”
There’s a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth now, and for a split second, I see him—the Theo I used to know. The one who used to tease me out of bad moods, who knew exactly how to press a button and then soften the blow with a smile. It’s like muscle memory: affection wrapped in sarcasm.
And damn if it doesn’t knock the breath out of me.
“I didn’t design the website.”
“Sure.” He smirks faintly again, but it fades quickly. A beat passes. Then he adds, quieter, “I saw an article a few years back. About a para-athlete you helped get back into competition condition. It mentioned you lived in Bernal Heights. That stuck.”
I stare at him. “You read an article about me?”
He shrugs again, but his ears flush a little. “I read a lot of things.”
I try to hide how much that gets to me. How much it means. Theo’s never really been one for idle curiosity. If he looked, he wanted to know. And not because someone like Cameron handed him updates, but because he went looking himself.
That knowledge hits somewhere tender.
The light outside has dimmed, the sky folding itself into that indigo softness that May evenings always bring in the South. A dog barks in the distance, sharp and brief. The scent of cut grass lingers, mingling with the faint sandalwood from Theo’s cologne.
I look at him again. At the strong lines of his jaw, the quiet confidence in how he sits, even with the weight of everything unspoken between us. His profile’s sharper now. Still him, but more… settled. Like someone who built a life around the pieces he couldn’t fix.
And here I am, still holding the ones I broke.
“You staying long?” he asks, interrupting the spiral I feel coming on.
“Just the weekend. I head back on Sunday.”
He nods again with quiet acceptance.
The pause that follows hangs heavy. It’s thick with everything unsaid. It presses into the space between us until I can feel it in my chest, a thudding kind of ache.
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” he says, his voice soft but steady.
“Yeah,” I say, my throat a little tight. “Guess you will.”
He stands, and I follow. The weight of the moment pulls me up slower than I mean to rise. I adjust out of habit, trying to make the shift smooth. But I catch it—his eyes flicking to my leg, just for a second. A tiny shift in his expression. Not pity. Not disgust. Just… awareness.
And this time, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look away.
He meets my eyes, and in them, I see the same unspoken storm we’re carrying.
There’s a beat. Then, casual as anything, he says, “I was about to throw something together—nothing fancy, but definitely better than leftover spaghetti. You want to stay?”
I almost say yes.
Almost.
The words hover behind my teeth, and I can feel how easy it would be to let them fall.
To sit down at his table like we haven’t lost fifteen years.
But I don’t. Because I’m here, and he’s here, but we’re not here—not really.
Not yet. The past is still sitting between us like a third presence, thick and sharp-edged and unnamed.
“I appreciate it,” I say, forcing a small smile, “but I should get back. Still gotta check in and pretend I’m organized.”
His eyes search mine for half a second longer than necessary, and then he gives a single, understanding nod. “Fair enough.”
“Thanks for the beer,” I add.
He nods again, gentler this time. “Drive safe.”
I make it to the door, ignoring his wince when he spoke. I make it to the car, but I don’t start the engine right away.
Instead, I sit here, the steering wheel cool under my hands, watching the porch light dim and the living room fade to dark behind the blinds. Somewhere inside that house, Theo’s moving through his evening like it’s just another day.
But it’s not.
That was the first time we’ve shared space in years.
And though we haven’t talked about any of it—not the hospital, not the accident, not the way I shoved him out of my life like he didn’t anchor me through the best and worst years I’ve ever known—I feel it, still breathing.
Some part of us is still here.
Still alive.
Still waiting.