13. Theo
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEO
I roll out of bed wanting nothing more than to continue sleeping, but I know it’s the only time I can see her. She has to see I’m going to be all in for this.
I don’t even turn on the lights as I use the bathroom and then wash my hands and face.
I brush my teeth with my eyes closed. I turn on the light in my walk-in closet for a second, then shut it off when one eye barely opens.
I grab the first pair of jeans my hands land on from the shelf they’re folded on, and a T-shirt.
Once dressed, I rush out of the house. I want to make sure I’m there by the time she gets home so I can make her something to eat while she showers.
When I arrive at her place, I shut the door to my truck softly to not wake the whole neighborhood, and sit on the top of the porch steps to wait.
I’m about to pick up my phone and call her when headlights come down the street.
I get up when the car slows down in front of her house and open her door when she turns the engine off.
“Hi,” I say softly as she looks up at me.
I can tell from her face that she’s tired.
I hold out my hand to help her out of the car, even though she doesn’t need the help.
“Hey,” she says, putting her hand in mine.
“What are you doing here?” I get a whiff of her, making my mouth water.
I put one hand on the top of her car door.
I have the most intense need to bend my head and kiss her.
The way it rips through me makes my whole body feel like it’s on alert.
I’ve never felt this before. “You okay?” she asks me when I say nothing and just stare at her.
“Yeah.” She lets go of my hand, and it falls to my side. “I thought I would come here early so I can make you something to eat while you take a shower.”
Her breath hitches. “Theo.”
“Yeah?” My hand moves from the top of the car door to her face. My thumb sweeps the softness of her cheek. “You tired?”
“Yeah,” she admits. She takes a deep breath, and then her head falls and lands in the middle of my chest. I pet her head and let her rest like that for as long as she wants.
“I need a long shower, some food, and ten hours of sleep.” What I would like to do is take her inside and have her sit with me on the couch.
My hand moves to the side of her face before I put my finger under her chin to lift it to look at me. “Then let’s get you inside.” I move her away from her car, closing the door and grabbing her bag. “You have your keys?” She holds the keys up in her hand as we walk up the steps.
She turns on the soft entrance light as I close the door behind her. “I’m going to make you something to eat,” I tell her as she reaches for the bag in my hand. “What do you want?”
“I don’t really have anything in mind.” She tries to grab the bag from me, and I move it out of her reach.
“You can sort the bag later. Shower.” I motion with my chin toward her room. “If you fight me on this, I have no problem carrying you there and undressing you to put you in the shower.” Her gray eyes go dark blue. “Your choice,” I smirk.
“I’m going to get in the shower,” she mumbles.
“Really wanted you to go with door number two,” I tell her, retreating back.
I put the bag on the table and open the fridge.
I scan a couple of things before taking out a pack of chicken breasts and some peppers.
I find an onion and slice the vegetables first, then put them in the frying pan.
I cook a chicken breast in strips once the veggies are tender, seasoning it with the few spices she has.
I heat some oil in a fresh pan, open two tortillas, put chicken in them, and then add the veggie mixture before topping them off with cheddar cheese and some salsa. I fold them over and lay them in the frying pan.
“It smells good in here.” She comes back into the room wearing a pair of lounge pants and a tank top, her hair now out of the ponytail but piled on top of her head. “What are you making?”
“My version of a chicken quesadilla.”
“Well, whatever it is, my mouth is watering.” She smiles at me.
“Do you want to go and sit on the couch until it’s ready?”
“I’m good waiting with you.” She pulls out a chair and sits, looking at me. “What time do you start work?”
“Seven.” I flip the tortillas in the pan to the other side.
“What?” she says, shocked. “You start work at seven, and you are here at three in the morning?”
“Yeah,” I confirm, as if it’s not a big deal. “I set my alarm for two-thirty.”
“Do you go back home after you leave here?”
“No,” I admit. “I start work so I can maybe finish early.” I shrug. “That hasn’t been the case the last couple of days.” I don’t bother telling her the reason why.
“So how many hours of sleep do you get?” I grab a plate and put one of the tortillas on it.
“Enough.” I know I said I wasn’t going to lie to her, but if I tell her I’m averaging four hours a night, she might refuse to see me. “You want sour cream?”
“Do I have sour cream?” She laughs nervously.
“You do.” I cut the tortilla in two, putting the plate down in front of her before getting the sour cream. “I wish I had bought guacamole.”
“Are you going to sit with me?” I smile and nod my head, but I grab some fruit before I do.
She takes a bite of the tortilla and groans. “This is so good. How do you know how to cook?”
“I like to watch cooking shows,” I confess to her, “and after I moved out of my parents’ house, I got tired of fast food really quickly, so it was either learn to cook or starve.” She laughs. “Do you know how to cook?”
“A bit.” She takes another bite. “I learned really young that if I didn’t cook for myself, I would starve.” She avoids my eyes. “My parents weren’t the best.” She shrugs, and I know I need to ask her about it, but I don’t want her to shut down on me.
“What is your favorite thing to cook?”
“Probably chicken-fried steak.” I make a note to grab a recipe online. “But with the real sausage gravy.” She laughs. “It’s not as good as the kind the real Southern grandmothers make, but if I ever get a wild hair on a day off, I try to make it.”
“When is your next day off?”
“Not this weekend, but next weekend, I have four straight days off. Though I might pick up a couple of shifts . . .” She trails off. “Not sure, I’m going to see how I feel by next week before I ask for them.”
“Why don’t you just take the days off and recover?”
She dips a piece of quesadilla in the sour cream before looking at me. “I’m going to be off work for a bit when the baby is born, and I figure I should have a nest egg in case something happens. I heard babies can be pretty expensive.”
“They are,” I agree as she finishes what I made her. “You want the other one?”
“You’re not going to eat it?”
“I made both for you. I ate earlier.”
“Oh. Thanks. I’ll take it for my lunch then.”
I get up and store it in a container. “If you want, you can go to bed, and I can clean up here.”
“I was going to go and sit outside a bit,” she says. “You want to come with me?”
“Yeah.” I follow her to the front door, where she puts on a pair of flip-flops before heading outside. She walks down the stairs and heads to the side.
“Where are you going?”
“The door to go out back is broken.” I follow her around the house to the back deck.
It needs to be ripped out and replaced. “No trees here,” she says of the empty backyard, “so you can see the sky.” She sits at the top of the two steps, and I join her.
“It’s peaceful, isn’t it?” She puts her elbows on her knees. She looks at me. “Are you scared?”
I tell her the truth. “Petrified. Knowing you were pregnant was one thing, but seeing my child—our baby—and listening to his or her heartbeat made it so much more real.” I smile shyly. “You?”
She takes a second to think about her answer.
“You have no idea,” she starts softly, and I put my hands on my knees like she has hers.
Her shoulder rests against my arm. “I hate that I said I wasn’t going to lie to you.
” She smiles sadly. “Not that I lie in general. Actually, I hate lying altogether, but I have been fibbing about a couple of things the last couple of weeks to everyone I work with. It’s been eating at me, and I know soon I’m going to have to tell them the truth, and I’m a little bit afraid no one is going to trust me anymore. ”
“I’m sure they will understand,” I say, trying to ease her fear.
“I really fucking hope so. I worked so hard to get to this point with them.” She looks ahead.
“My parents didn’t do me any favors when I was growing up,” she shares softly, “and I’ve been working my whole life to make sure people know I’m not like them.
” It’s the first time she’s let me in. The first time she’s given me a piece of her that I know she’s been hiding.
“I promise you that everything is going to be okay.” I raise my hand and tuck the hair behind her head. My fingers touch her cheek as I gaze into her eyes.
“I highly doubt that,” she tries to joke.
I can’t help myself. My head moves into her space, and my lips touch hers.
It’s a soft kiss, or at least that is what I wanted it to be.
Instead, my hand moves to her cheek, and I hold her face as I slide my tongue into her mouth.
The kiss I didn’t know I needed. The kiss I know I’m going to want to have more of.
The kiss, I think, that changes everything.
She places her hand on mine at her cheek as we share the kiss that is slow and full of need.
She’s the first one to move away from the kiss, and when she does, I bend my head and kiss the side of her neck. “You should get to bed,” I tell her.
“Yeah.” She rubs her thumb over my hand before standing up.
“Thanks for making me dinner, Theo. I’ve never had anyone try to take care of me.
” I stand and slide my hand into hers, making a silent vow that I will do whatever I need to do in order for her to never feel that way again.
I am going to show her that I will always take care of her. Of her and our child.
I walk with her to the front door, and she lets my hand go, but I follow her inside. “I’m going to clean the kitchen before I leave.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know, Collins, but I’m going to. I can’t do much for you right now. You’re doing all the work.” I reach for her hip instead of putting my hand on her stomach like I want to do. “So you take care of our baby and let me take care of you.”
She walks to her purse and takes out the picture of our baby. “This is for you.”
“Thank you so much for this.” I smile as she hands it to me, looking at the image. “I already picked up a frame to put this in.”
“You did?” She sounds surprised.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Shit, I should have gotten you one also.”
“You’re too good to be true, Theo,” she mumbles and walks away from me into her bedroom. All I want to do is follow her. Instead, I go to the sink and wash the dishes. As I leave her house, the sun is slowly starting to rise.
I stop by the bakery to grab a coffee before heading to the jobsite.
“What the hell are you here so early for?” Everleigh asks me. “You’ve been my first client for the past week.”
“Yeah.” I chuckle. “Early bird gets the worm, right?”
She makes me a coffee and hands me a little bag with a donut. “On the house,” she says. “That’s your reward for being the early bird.”
“I’m going to tell Brock that you gave me a donut and flirted with me,” I joke.
“It’ll be your funeral.” She winks at me. “Have a good day, Theo.”
I’m on the job twenty minutes later. I’m putting on my tool belt when the door opens, and Caleb walks in. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Sierra said if I didn’t go to work today, she was going to cut off a special piece of me that I would like to keep.” I laugh at him as he cups his junk.
“What the fuck are you doing here so early?” he asks me. My stomach tightens. “Did you come here from one of your dates?”
“No . . . I’m sort of seeing someone.”
He looks at me, shocked. “Excuse me?” He puts his hands on his hips. “Did you say ‘seeing someone,’ as in singular? Since when are you a one-woman man?”
“You’ve been otherwise too busy for me to mention it.” I avoid looking at him. “I think I’m going to go and visit my parents in a couple of weeks.” I thought of it when she told me she would have a couple of days off.
“That should be fun.”
I nod, grab my things, and move to the bedroom where I’m going to be putting up the crown molding.
The guys show up, and everyone gets to work. When four o’clock hits, I unbuckle my tool belt and put it in the corner of the room as usual. I find Frankie and Nino in the middle of the kitchen, placing the island base. “You need help?”
“Nah,” Nino says, “we got this. Caleb left to go take care of some shit at the barn.”
“Okay, I’m going to head out. See you two tomorrow.”
“Unless I win the lottery,” Nino calls after me. I laugh as I walk out into the hot air.
I parked my truck at the curb, and now there’s a white paper under the wiper, folded in thirds. I unfold it, and my eyebrows pinch together as I read:
Watch your back, motherfucker.
“What the fuck is that?” Caleb asks from behind me.
“Nothing,” I hiss, putting the note in my back pocket. “Some girl I hooked up with over six months ago showed up at my house, and when I let her down, she wasn’t exactly happy.”
“Showed up at your house? You never take girls home.”
“I know. She said she saw me driving down the street and decided to follow me home.”
“You think she’s the one fucking with the jobsites?”
“Could be.” I inhale deeply. “I didn’t think of that. Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Knew your dick would get us into trouble eventually.” He slaps my shoulder. “Just thought it would be someone getting pregnant.”
The guilt of not being able to tell him eats me up.
“I’m going home. Sierra said I’m now allowed to grace her with my presence.”
“You better hurry before she changes her mind, and you’re stuck sleeping on your couch.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “Nah, she loves me.”
“For now.” I open my truck door and get in, pulling away from the house. When I get to the stop sign, I look right and then left, and spot Claire in her car, driving away.