Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
THEO
Morning presses soft light through the curtains in thin stripes that reach across the bed and catch on the crumpled sheets tangled at our feet.
I surface gradually, and for a long moment, I don’t move at all.
The weight in my chest is foreign—not the ache I’ve lived with for fifteen years, but something fuller, sweeter. Happiness, heavy enough to anchor me.
But beneath it, dread lingers sharp and quiet.
Because happiness isn’t simple. Happiness has a cost. The reality is thousands of miles between us, a lifetime of separate routines, separate beds, separate cities.
Last night felt impossible, a dream transformed into flesh, but now the question hangs between us like morning fog: What does it mean, the morning after?
The sex was phenomenal. There’s no point pretending otherwise.
Every second of it ripped me open and stitched me together again.
But it wasn’t just sex. It was the way he said he loved me—simple, unshaken—and the way I believed him with my whole heart.
I love him too. God, I do. But do we still know each other?
Or did we just fall into old grooves that are too easy, too familiar to resist?
I’m halfway down that spiral when his voice cuts through, rough and low from sleep.
“You’re thinking too hard again.”
I start, glance over. He’s awake, head tipped back on the pillow, eyes heavy but knowing. He looks unfairly good like that—hair mussed, lips swollen from all the kissing we did, gaze steady like he’s already caught me in the act.
“I wasn’t—” I begin, weak denial at best.
His full lips tilt into the smallest smirk, and then he leans across the rumpled space to kiss me. Soft, unhurried, like he’s pressing the truth into me. The protest dies on my tongue.
When he pulls back, he exhales and mutters, “I need to pee.”
The glamour of the moment cracks, but it makes me laugh. “Do you… do you need your prosthesis? Or… support? Or are you good to just—” I gesture vaguely, words tangling. “I mean, I don’t know—”
The discomfort crawls up my throat. I hate that I don’t know, hate that I can’t read the rhythms of his body anymore the way I used to. Fifteen years gone, and suddenly we’re strangers to the most practical parts of each other.
He notices—of course he does. He lifts his hand and brushes my frown away with his thumb.
He kisses me again, firmer this time, until my chest unclenches.
“Help to the en suite would be great,” he says lightly.
“Save me putting my leg on. And with my bladder this full, best not risk bouncing around too much.” His grin is sharp, teasing, meant to make it easier.
“Okay,” I murmur, relief and affection tangling in my chest.
I slip out of bed and brace his side as we cross the few steps to the bathroom. He moves easily with me, not fragile, not breakable—just mine to steady. When he disappears inside, shutting the door with a click, I stand there for a second like a fool.
Do I get dressed? Cook breakfast? Pretend I know how to be normal the morning after my entire world turned inside out? None of it feels right.
In the end, I head down the hall to the other bathroom, relieve myself, then splash cold water over my face. My reflection stares back at me, raw-eyed, hair a mess. I look exactly like someone who didn’t sleep much because he was busy rediscovering the love of his life.
After padding back to the bedroom, I fish my phone from the pocket of my pants. When I stand straight, he’s already there, leaning against the doorframe like he owns the place, even naked, something he apparently has no hang-ups about. And he smiles at me.
God. That smile. It’s not the practiced one he used to give cameras or teammates, not the sharp one that cut across a room and drew every eye.
It’s softer, slyer, private. The corners curl up like he’s remembering exactly what we did last night, and his eyes gleam with it.
He looks hot as sin, casual and devastating, like desire wrapped in familiarity. My chest clenches hard at the sight.
“You’re still naked,” he drawls as we climb back into bed. “Glad to see some things haven’t changed.”
Heat floods my face. I flop back onto the pillows, muttering, “You’re an ass.”
His smirk widens as he pushes into my side, every line of his body promising trouble. And God help me, I want it. For a moment, I just look at him, memorizing the curve of his mouth, the steadiness of his eyes.
The words tumble out before I can stop them. “When’s your flight?”
He blinks at me, surprised, then shrugs a shoulder. “Not sure. Early afternoon, I think. I should check.” He tilts his chin toward the chair where his jacket hangs. “Hand me my phone?”
I lean over, fish it from the pocket, and pass it to him. The screen flickers dimly to life, the red sliver of battery already threatening.
“Not much juice left,” I warn.
“There’s a charger in the drawer?” His tone is casual, like he already knows it’ll be there because I’ve always kept spares.
“Yeah. Top drawer, left side.”
He shifts, still draped against me, and reaches back without looking. He fumbles through cords and pens until he goes very still.
“What?” I murmur, tilting up on one elbow.
Slowly, he pulls something out. Not the charger.
The firefighter LEGO sits in his palm, tiny and unchanged—helmet red, a drawn-on mustache, a crooked smile stamped on his blocky face.
My chest seizes. Words clog my throat.
Caden stares down at it for a long beat. Then, without accusation, without a trace of mockery, his mouth curves. Soft, aching. “You kept him.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah. I—I couldn’t not.”
He brushes his fingers over the little plastic figure, almost trembling. “Almost twenty years,” he whispers. “And you still—” His voice cracks, and he doesn’t finish.
I cover his hand with mine, pressing the LEGO between our palms like the fragile thing it is. “I kept him safe. Even when I couldn’t keep you.” The admission tastes like rust on my tongue.
His eyes rise to meet mine, and there’s no anger there. Just something rawer. A brightness that undoes me. He leans in and slowly kisses me, grounding me in the present instead of drowning me in the past.
When we pull apart, he rests his forehead against mine. His voice is quiet, deliberate. “Come with me today.”
I blink, pulse stuttering. “What?”
“Come with me. Same flight. To San Francisco.” He strokes my jaw, coaxing me to believe him. “Spend time with me. Not just last night, not just this morning. Longer. More.”
The words hit my brain like a live current. I want to say yes so badly, it terrifies me. Thousands of miles. A life I’ve built here. A life he’s built there. And yet—here he is, asking. Offering.
“Caden….” My voice shakes.
His eyes search mine, steady and fierce. “Don’t overthink it, Theo. Just… say you’ll come.”
“Yes,” I blurt, before my brain can gag me with caution tape. “Yes. I’ll come.”
Relief breaks over his face like sunlight, quick and unguarded. He laughs—a startled, breathless sound—and kisses me so hard, I forget where my hands are supposed to go. I end up clutching his jaw like I’m afraid he’ll disappear if I don’t hold him in place.
“Okay,” he says against my lips, smiling around the word. “Okay.”
We pull apart an inch, and I can feel my pulse skittering everywhere—in my throat, my wrists, my ribs.
I said it. I meant it. The part of me that hoards practicalities immediately starts writing on a whiteboard: money, clothes, toothbrush, how long, what if—but the rest of me is louder for once. Go. Be with him. Figure it out later.
“Flight,” I manage. “What time?”
He lifts the phone I just handed him. The low-battery icon blinks red like it’s scolding us. “Let me check.”
“Charger’s in the drawer,” I remind him.
He kisses my cheek and feels for the cable again. When he finally finds it, he plugs his phone in and squints at the screen. “Early afternoon,” he says, thumbs sliding. “Two-ish. Enough time to pack if you don’t decide to bring your entire library.”
“I was considering it,” I deadpan.
“We’ll buy you a book in the airport. Or ten.”
“Dangerous promise,” I warn, even as something inside me unclenches. It’s ridiculous that looking at flight details could soothe me, but it does. Plans. A path. The next right thing.
He scrolls, then glances up. “I’ll put you on the same flight. If not, same connection and I’ll wait.”
“Same flight,” I say, too fast. “I want the same everything.”
A spark lights behind his eyes at that. “God, Theo.” He exhales, leans in, kisses the corner of my mouth like he doesn’t trust himself with more. “Okay. We’re doing it.”
He props the phone on the bedside table to charge and tugs me closer by the wrist until I’m half sprawled over him. The sheets are cool, his skin warm, the morning light a thin gold drape across his shoulder. We breathe there for a while, noses brushing, the quiet turning thick and sweet.
Then reality taps again. “I should… pack?” I say, the word absurd in my mouth, like I’ve never done it before.
“Mm. Essentials,” he says, counting them off with kisses to my temple. “Wallet. ID. Toothbrush.” Another kiss. “A shirt you’ll pretend isn’t mine that absolutely is.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I literally saw one of my old basketball jerseys draped over your laundry basket in your en suite,” he says and trawls a grin across my mouth when I glance down at my very naked chest and cough.
“Details,” I mutter, only slightly mortified that I have a shirt that’s sixteen years old and that I still wear the damn thing.
He laughs and then sobers, thumb tracing under my eye. “You okay?”
I want to say yes without hesitation, but he deserves truth, not autopilot reassurance. “I’m… scared,” I admit. “Not of you. Of the whiplash. Last night, this morning, now a plane. It feels like jumping into the deep end and realizing I forgot to learn how to swim.”