Chapter 9
Theo
I’ve been staring at my ceiling for three hours. The sheets are twisted around my legs from rolling over too many times. My body won’t settle. I can’t remember how to relax, and every time I close my eyes I’m back on that landing outside Emma’s apartment.
I can’t stop thinking about her mouth under mine, the way she felt pressed against that door, soft everywhere I touched her.
The way she grabbed my shirt and pulled me closer instead of pushing me away.
The little whimper she made when my teeth caught her bottom lip, like she wanted more, like she’d let me do anything I wanted to her.
I came home right after the kiss and immediately got in the shower and wrapped my hand around my cock, still hard from her touch.
I stroked myself slow at first, then faster, rougher, imagining it was her hand instead of mine.
Imagining her on her knees in front of me, those green eyes looking up while she took me in her mouth.
I thought about bending her over the kitchen counter and fucking her until she screamed my name.
Thought about burying my face between her thighs and making her come on my tongue before I even got inside her, tasting her until she begged me to stop.
I came so hard my vision went white, her name on my lips, my free hand braced against the tile to keep myself upright. Then I felt like shit about it.
I still do.
There are legitimate reasons I’ve been keeping my distance.
She rents from me. The age gap isn’t nothing.
Power dynamics exist whether I want to acknowledge them or not.
I’ve been attracted to her for weeks, but I figured it was one-sided, something I could manage on my own.
I could keep things professional. I wouldn’t act on it.
I’d jerk off in the shower like some desperate teenager and get it out of my system, and that would be enough.
Tonight she made it crystal clear the attraction goes both ways.
Which makes everything harder. Now I know what she tastes like.
I know how she feels pressed against me, how perfectly she fits in my arms. I know she wants this too, and I know I could have her if I let myself.
But I’m the one who needs to be the responsible adult even when every cell in my body is screaming at me to drive back to her place, knock on her door, and finish what we started.
She’s twenty-four. She deserves someone without all my complications, someone who isn’t her landlord and her student’s father and a decade older with enough baggage to fill a cargo plane.
Walking away was the right call. I know it was.
I sit up and rub both hands over my face, then glance at the clock on my bedside table. 4:43 AM. Early enough that sleep should still be possible, but I know it’s not happening. Not with how wound up I am, not when my cock is half-hard again just from thinking about her.
Fuck it.
I throw the covers off and head downstairs, willing my body to calm down.
The kitchen is dark, and I flip on the light over the stove and start the coffee maker.
Chloe’s at Olivia’s for a sleepover. Mary texted around ten saying the girls were still wide awake making friendship bracelets, which means they probably crashed hard around eleven.
The house is always too quiet without her. Even when the occasional breaks are good for recharging, I miss her every single time. She’s an early riser, would normally be walking downstairs around six in her favorite pajamas, asking about pancakes and whatever adventure we have planned for the day.
Our cat, Nala, appears from wherever she was sleeping—probably Chloe’s bed—and winds between my ankles, meowing her complaint about the early hour.
“I know,” I tell her, reaching down to scratch behind her ears. “I’m sorry. It’s too early for both of us.”
She purrs anyway, butting her head against my palm. I pick her up and she settles against my chest, her warm weight grounding me slightly. The coffee maker gurgles and hisses, filling the kitchen with the smell of dark roast.
I keep scratching behind her ears, focusing on the simple comfort of it and trying not to think about red hair and green eyes. The coffee finishes brewing and I pour a cup with one hand, and take a sip. The warmth spreads down my throat and settles something in me. Not enough, but something.
Nala starts wriggling, apparently deciding she’s had her fill of companionship and I’ve crossed into annoying territory, so I let her hop to the counter before she claws her way free.
She struts back down the hallway toward Chloe’s room, tail swishing, apparently deciding the hour is too early for her after all.
Now I have nothing to distract me. No daughter to take care of, no opening shift at the restaurant, no cat demanding attention. Just me and my thoughts and this restless energy crawling under my skin like something trying to claw its way out.
I lean against the counter and sip my coffee, looking around for a project like a smoker desperate for a cigarette. I need something to do with my hands, something to occupy my brain before it drives me insane.
I could go into work, but it’s my day off and that would raise questions from Alex. Questions I don’t want to answer, not when my face would give everything away. Alex has known me too long. He’d take one look at me and know something happened, and then he wouldn’t let it go until I told him what.
My mind keeps drifting back to Emma. I can’t seem to stop it.
I want her. She’s like some kind of siren, this gravitational pull I’ve never experienced before, and I almost lost complete control tonight.
I never lose control. I’m the responsible one.
The dependable one. The one who pays his bills on time, makes sure his daughter is taken care of, helps anyone in town who needs it. I do what I’m supposed to do, always.
Except tonight I had a woman pressed against her door with my hands in her hair and my tongue in her mouth, and I would have fucked her right there on that landing if I hadn’t somehow found the willpower to stop.
I haven’t seriously dated since my marriage fell apart. A brief fling here or there over the past six years, but nothing real, nothing that lasted. Quick and easy arrangements that scratched an itch without any risk of getting attached.
I never wanted to risk disrupting Chloe’s world. Victoria blows in and out of her life like a summer storm, canceling weekends at the last minute, making promises she doesn’t keep, showing up with extravagant gifts when guilt finally catches up with her.
Chloe never knows what to expect from her mother, so she needs to know exactly what to expect from me.
Our life together is steady. Routines she can count on.
Saturdays that belong to her no matter what.
A dad who’s always there when he says he’ll be there, who never makes promises he can’t keep, who shows up every single time.
I’ve never given her a reason to wonder if I’m going to stick around, and I’ve never brought someone into her life who might not.
And now, in the span of a month, I’ve gone from perfectly fine being alone to completely wrecked over a twenty-four-year-old teacher with red hair and a Swedish candy addiction who looks at me like she can see right through every wall I’ve built.
Like she knows exactly what I’m hiding and isn’t scared of it.
I don’t even recognize myself anymore. Every rule I made has started to feel like something I wrote for a different person. Someone who hadn’t met her yet. Someone who didn’t know what it felt like to have her look at him like he was the only person in the room.
I drain the last of my coffee and set the mug in the sink harder than necessary, then head upstairs to grab a sweatshirt and running shoes. Maybe an early morning jog will burn off some of this restless energy. Maybe if I move fast enough, I can outrun my own thoughts.
The path behind my house is dark and cold, the grass still damp from last night’s rain.
The chill seeps through my sweatshirt immediately, biting at my skin, but I welcome it.
I need something to shock me out of this spiral.
I take off down the road with my feet pounding against the pavement and my breath fogging in front of me, trying to move faster than my thoughts can follow.
Douglas firs rise dark on either side of the road, their branches reaching toward each other overhead like a cathedral ceiling.
For a few minutes I manage to think about nothing but the rhythm.
Foot strike, exhale. The burn building in my calves as the road slopes gently upward.
Just my body doing what it knows how to do.
I live about two miles outside town proper, close enough to be convenient but far enough to have space and quiet and room for Chloe to run around. The route I’m running now will take me past a few neighboring properties, then open up as it approaches Main Street.
I realize too late that I’m heading toward Emma’s apartment, like my feet know where they want to go even when my brain is trying to steer them somewhere else. I veer left before I can do something stupid like end up standing beneath her window at five in the morning like a stalker.
I cut down Birch instead and loop toward the waterfront, picking up the pace until my lungs burn.
I wind through the empty streets, past the post office with Marjorie’s autumn display still glowing in the window, past the little jewelry store where my dad bought my mom’s engagement ring forty years ago, past the antique shop that’s had the same rocking chair out front since I was in elementary school.
The town is still asleep, streetlights casting yellow pools on empty sidewalks, and there’s something comforting about running through it like this. Like I have Dark River all to myself for a few stolen minutes. Like I can pretend I’m the only person in the world with problems.