Chapter 22 Theo
THEO
Iwake with a slow, luxurious awareness—warmth at my back, heavy weight across my chest, and the steady rhythm of someone else’s breathing against my neck. Victor. His arm draped possessively over me, keeping me anchored against the solid wall of his chest.
Five, maybe six hours of uninterrupted sleep. I can’t remember the last time that happened.
I should feel trapped. I usually do, when lovers stay the night—that itchy, restless sensation that sends me slipping out of bed before dawn, inventing excuses about early meetings or deadlines. But Victor’s hold doesn’t make me want to escape. It makes me want to sink deeper.
Safe. That’s the word that floats to the surface of my mind. I feel safe.
The realization hits with unexpected force. I’ve never prioritized safety—I chase experiences, sensations, the electric rush of something new. Safety was always the boring alternative, the path not taken.
Now I’m not so sure.
I shift slightly, and Victor’s arm tightens instinctively, pulling me closer. Even in sleep, he’s claiming me. The thought should be suffocating. Instead, it feels like being tethered during a storm.
Dangerous territory, this. I know what I’m good at—pursuing relentlessly, seducing thoroughly, leaving before breakfast. I’m excellent at wanting people, having them, then wanting someone else. The temporary nature of desire has always been its most appealing quality.
This feels nothing like that.
Victor makes a soft sound against my neck, his breath warm and steady. Something unfamiliar expands in my chest—tender and vulnerable and absolutely terrifying.
I’ve always gone after exactly what I want, without apology. But what happens when what you want stops being a fleeting hunger and starts feeling like necessity? What happens when temporary no longer seems like enough?
I close my eyes and let myself sink back into his embrace, knowing I’m venturing into uncharted waters. Whatever this is becoming, it’s nothing like anything I’ve wanted before.
Victor stirs behind me, his breathing pattern changing as he wakes. His arm, which has been draped across my chest all night, suddenly tenses. I feel his body go rigid against mine for a heartbeat, that split second of realization—he stayed the whole night.
I hold my breath, waiting for him to bolt.
Instead, his muscles relax, his hold on me softening without releasing entirely. This wasn’t what I expected. In our brief but intense history, our encounters have been explosive, desperate—rarely gentle.
He shifts, and I turn to face him, curious about this new development. Morning light filters through the curtains, casting his face in dim light. The hardness that usually defines his features has softened with sleep. He looks younger, almost vulnerable.
“Morning,” he murmurs, voice still rough with sleep. Then he does something that catches me entirely off guard—he kisses me. Not the bruising, claiming kisses we’ve shared before, but something gentle. Almost sweet.
“Hey,” I whisper back, uncertain how to navigate this unfamiliar territory.
Victor’s thumb traces my jawline with surprising tenderness. We lie there facing each other, neither of us pushing for more. The silence between us feels comfortable in a way that’s entirely new.
His eyes study my face with an intensity that should make me uncomfortable, but doesn’t. No one’s ever really looked at me like this before, like they’re trying to memorize every detail.
“You slept well,” he says, more observation than question.
I nod. “Better than I have in... I don’t even know.”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth—not his usual smirk, but something genuine that reaches his eyes. His hand finds mine beneath the sheets, fingers interlacing.
This is new. This quiet intimacy. No performance, no power struggle, no desperate need to consume one another. Just breathing together in the morning light, his heartbeat steady against my palm.
I’ve never wanted this before. I’m not entirely sure what to do with it now.
Victor stretches beside me, his muscles rippling beneath tanned skin. “Your bed is too fucking soft. It’s like sleeping on a cloud.”
“You didn’t seem to mind last night,” I say, tracing a finger along one of the scratches I left on his chest. “In fact, I think your exact words were fuck yes and don’t stop, baby.”
His eyes flash with heat, but there’s something different in them now—a warmth that wasn’t there before. “You always this mouthy in the morning?”
“Depends on what my mouth is occupied with.” I flash him a wicked smile.
Victor’s hand slides up to grip my jaw, thumb pressing against my lower lip. “I’ve got some ideas about that.”
“I bet you do.” I nip at his thumb. “But first, coffee. Even sex gods need caffeine.”
“Sex gods?” He raises an eyebrow, but I catch the pleased look before he masks it. “That’s what you call all your conquests?”
“Only the ones who make me scream loud enough to concern the neighbors.” I sit up, deliberately letting the sheet fall to my waist. “But don’t let it go to your head. Your ego’s already taking up most of the bed.”
Victor snorts, then pulls me back down against him. “Five more minutes.”
“What happened to the man who couldn’t get away fast enough?” I ask, curious rather than accusatory.
His fingers trail along my hip, gentle and deliberate. “He’s still figuring this shit out.” The vulnerability in his admission catches me off guard—this raw honesty that he’s only just learning to offer without armor.
The bed is warm in the way it only is when neither of us has anywhere to be, when the world outside can wait another hour. Victor’s tracing absent shapes on my hip with his thumb, the repetitive motion soothing in its steadiness.
I shift to look at him properly, studying the planes of his face in the morning light filtering through the curtains. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Specific.”
“Do you have siblings?”
Something passes across his face—surprise, maybe, that after everything we’ve shared, I’ve never asked this fundamental question.
“A sister. Older. Lives in Sacramento with her husband and their kid.” His voice takes on that careful neutrality he uses when discussing things that don’t quite fit comfortably.
“We talk on her birthday. Mine. Christmas. That’s about it. ”
“You’re not close.”
“We’re fine. Just different lives.” His thumb keeps moving, the rhythm unchanging.
“She didn’t get it when I quit fighting and opened the gym.
Didn’t get me before that, either. We were never the kind of siblings who told each other things.
” He pauses, and I watch his throat work as he swallows.
“Parents are gone. Mom died when I was nineteen. Dad moved to Arizona the year after, and we stopped knowing each other somewhere around when I turned twenty-five. He’s still alive. We just don’t talk.”
The way he says it—matter-of-fact, like he's reciting a grocery list—tells me there’s more pain there than he’s letting on. Thirteen years of silence. I wonder if he's holding out hope for a phone call that might never come.
"Only child," I offer, giving him something of mine in return. The words come slower than usual. "You already know most of it. The placements, the laptop, the records. The before is the part I don't talk about much."
Victor's thumb stills on my hip. He doesn’t push. He waits.
“My mom came over from Beirut in ’82. She was nineteen, alone, the war had taken everything from her in a way I’m not sure she ever explained, even to herself.
She met my dad at a wedding in Connecticut six years later.
They married, had me a year after that." I trace a pattern on his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady beneath my palm. “He died when I was seven. Heart attack at the kitchen table, on a Tuesday morning, eggs still on his plate. She didn’t have anyone here. No family. No money to speak of. She tried for two years, and then the state took me, and she didn’t have what it took to fight it.
They tried to put me back with her twice. It didn’t take either time.”
“Christ, Theo.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, because what else is there to do with it after twenty years?
“She wasn’t a bad mother. She was a twenty-something widow in a country that wasn’t hers, with a kid she couldn’t afford to feed.
The system was always going to win that one.
” I exhale slowly. “I aged out at eighteen with a duffel bag and the records he’d given me.
Kept them hidden through every placement.
Some kids hide drugs under their mattresses. I hid Massive Attack.”
Victor lets out a sound that’s almost a laugh, almost not. “Records.”
“Records.” I press my palm flat against his chest. “It’s why music matters so much, I think.
They were the only thing I kept from before.
Dad used to play them Saturday mornings—Mom would be making something on the stove, he’d put on Blue Lines, and the kitchen would smell like cumin and sound like the only kind of safe I knew how to recognize back then.
That record went missing somewhere in the placements.
The others I kept hidden, but Blue Lines I lost early and never replaced.
I built a whole life out of remembering that, though.
Didn’t realize I was doing it until I was about twenty-five and Eclipse was making money. ”
Victor’s eyes search my face, seeing me the way he always does—completely, without flinching from the messy parts. “Records,” he says softly, understanding without me having to explain further.
“Records.”
His thumb resumes its movement on my hip, grounding us both. “Marco’s been more of a brother to me than my actual sister. Says something.”
“It says you built your own family when the one you were born into couldn’t hold you.” I press my palm flat against his chest. “It says a lot.”
“Yeah.” His voice carries a weight I don’t quite understand yet. “Yeah, it does.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. His thumb keeps moving in those same absent patterns. Outside the window, traffic noise is starting up—the city deciding it’s morning, demanding we rejoin the world. I don’t want to move. I don’t think he does either.
There’s something peaceful about this moment—both of us sharing the parts of our pasts that shaped us, the families we’ve lost or left behind.
It feels like we’re building something new between us, something that doesn’t require the approval or understanding of people who were never going to give it anyway.
Eventually, I clear my throat against his chest, lightening the mood before it gets too heavy. “Just so you know, my coffee maker is top of the line. Criminal to let it go unused.”
“Always with the sales pitch.” Victor shakes his head, but his eyes are smiling—that soft expression that’s become more frequent lately, the one that makes my chest ache in the best way. “Fine. But after coffee, I’m bending you over the nearest surface."
“Promises, promises,” I tease, even as heat pools in my belly at the rough promise in his voice.
We’re still us—still trading barbs and challenges, still finding that edge between tenderness and hunger. But something fundamental has shifted. The aggression hasn’t disappeared; it’s just made room for something else. Something I’m not ready to name yet.