CHAPTER SIX
CONNOR
The back of the couch jolts, knocking me forward, my pen skittering across the hardwood.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and bend to grab it, only for a leg to swing over my head where my face was a second ago.
“Jesus Christ.” I duck lower, glaring up.
“Sorry, little bro!” Marcus hollers, landing heavily on the cushions beside me before scrambling straight back to his feet.
I stare after him.
He doesn’t sound remotely sorry.
Carter comes charging into the living room behind him, absolutely furious, bright pink streaks smeared through his blond hair that definitely weren’t there when I arrived.
“You’re fucking dead, Reid!”
Carter storms after him, shouting something about murder while Marcus’s laughter carries in from the kitchen, and I drop my eyes back to my notebook before either of them can catch me smiling.
Idiots.
The entire house has been steadily descending into chaos since practice ended, every available space slowly disappearing beneath another body until people are crammed onto couches, sitting across the floor and leaning against walls with beer bottles hanging from their hands.
Music thumps through the speakers, apparently at the exact volume required to make everyone shout over it without actually drowning any of them out, leaving me trapped in one constant wall of overlapping voices and laughter.
It smells of beer, takeaway someone ordered hours ago and whatever body spray half the hockey team seems determined to drown themselves in.
I knew I should’ve stayed home.
I have stayed home for the last week, despite Marcus asking me almost every day to come over for dinner.
Tonight he finally wore me down with the promise of actual food, which was apparently a lie considering it’s after ten, my stomach physically hurts, and there hasn’t been anything resembling dinner.
Just beer bottles littering every available surface and hockey players behaving as though intoxication counts as a personality.
And Theo.
I haven’t looked at him since I sat down, but I could still point to exactly where he is without lifting my head from my notebook.
Not that I’ve been paying attention.
He’s somewhere behind the couch, his voice occasionally breaking through everyone else’s, followed by that stupid laugh I’m beginning to recognise far too easily. Every time it does, my concentration slips, and I have to reread whatever sentence I was working on.
I blow out a breath and drop back against the couch, flipping through my notebook until I find the right page and forcing my attention back onto the half-finished line in front of me.
“Are you done pretending I don’t exist?” Theo drawls from directly above me.
I tip my head back and find him leaning over the couch, that familiar amusement back in his eyes like the last time we spoke didn’t end with him slamming his way out of my flat.
The knot that’s been sitting in my stomach all week loosens slightly.
I roll my eyes and turn back to my notebook, flipping the page only to realise I was already on the right one.
Theo chuckles.
“I’m over it, by the way,” he hums, his forearm brushing the side of my neck, a faint prickle following the path of his skin. “So you can stop pretending.”
My pen stills against the page.
He’s over it.
Good. I can stop spending half my days working out how to apologise to someone who apparently doesn’t need one.
Except my pen presses harder into the paper instead of moving.
Theo vaults over the back of the couch and drops beside me, the cushions dipping under him, tipping me slightly towards him before I catch myself and shift the other way.
Theo, naturally, takes that as an invitation to occupy every inch I’ve just given him, stretching out across half the couch with one arm sprawled over the cushions and a beer hanging loosely from his other hand.
“Don’t you get tired of being so boring?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Sorry, I don’t enjoy acting like a brainless neanderthal.”
Theo hums, rolling his head against the back of the couch until he’s looking at me fully.
His hair is still damp from his shower, darker strands falling messily across his forehead, and this close I can see the shadows beneath his eyes that weren’t visible from across the room.
He looks tired, enough that it should probably make him look worse, except somehow it only takes some of the usual sharpness out of his face.
His mouth starts to curve, the silver ring through his bottom lip catching the light.
Right.
I’m staring again.
“You know your brother’s one of those neanderthals, right?”
He tips his head towards the coffee table, and I follow his gaze.
Marcus is standing in the middle of it, swaying badly out of time with whatever song is playing, a bright grin stretched across his face while Lucas shouts encouragement from somewhere nearby.
The laugh gets as far as my throat before I manage to swallow it.
Marcus has always been able to do this. Walk into a room and belong there without thinking about it. He can be too loud, dance terribly on a coffee table and have everyone around him laughing with him instead of at him.
He never seems to wonder where to put his hands or whether he’s talking too much. Never seems to notice when a room gets too loud or too crowded or when there are too many people brushing against him.
He just exists.
I look down at my notebook, thumb running absently along the edge of the page.
Sometimes I wonder how we came from the same family.
“I tolerate everyone but you, Knox.” I flick Theo a glance from the corner of my eye. “And it has nothing to do with you being gay.”
His mouth ticks up, loosening the knot that’s been sitting beneath my ribs all week.
There’s that look again, the one that makes me think he understood a little more than I actually said.
Before I can decide whether that’s a problem, a hand lands on his shoulders and Theo disappears.
An embarrassingly startled noise tears out of him when Marcus yanks him clean off the couch, and I turn around just in time to see my brother haul him over his shoulder.
Theo somehow managing not to spill his beer.
“Put me down, jackass,” he huffs, laughing too hard for it to sound remotely threatening.
“Not a chance, Knox.”
Marcus spins in a circle, the room erupting into laughter.
I shake my head, but the smile wins this time, spreading while Theo curses and grabs desperately at his beer.
“Marcus, you’re going to drop him.”
Neither of them hears me.
Or, more likely, neither of them cares.
Theo finally gets an arm around Marcus’s neck and drags him into a headlock, laughing while they stumble into the middle of the living room, knocking into people who only seem to find the entire thing more entertaining.
Grown men.
Actual grown men.
Marcus somehow wins whatever ridiculous wrestling match they’ve started and tries to shove Theo onto the coffee table.
Theo’s eyes widen.
“Absolutely not,” he argues, shaking his head.
Marcus claps him on the back. “I wasn’t giving you an option.”
I look between them.
Apparently everyone else knows what’s happening, because the shouting gets louder while Theo glares around the room.
“Assholes,” he grumbles, though the grin he’s sporting ruins the effect, making it difficult to take him seriously. “The lot of you.”
He puts up considerably less of a fight when Marcus ducks and drives a shoulder into his stomach, throwing him over it again.
The chanting starts before he’s even on the table.
I drop my eyes to my notebook and start the paragraph again. I have an assignment to finish, and whatever the fuck they’re doing has absolutely nothing to do with me.
I reach the end without taking in a single word.
Marcus drops Theo onto the coffee table, and whatever chance I had of concentrating disappears with the thud.
Everyone crowds closer, laughing and shouting while Marcus climbs up beside him. Theo stands in the middle of it all with his dark hair falling across his forehead while he takes another drink of his beer.
He looks resigned to whatever humiliation Marcus has planned for him.
Then Marcus starts dancing, and I have to snort back a laugh when he misses the beat so badly I’m not entirely sure he can hear the same music as the rest of us.
His hips are nowhere near the beat, shoulders somehow moving to an entirely different song while he repeatedly crashes into Theo, who keeps trying to drink around him.
A laugh finally escapes me, loud enough that Theo finds me across the room. His mouth ticks up when our eyes meet, before Marcus crashes into him again.
Theo rolls his eyes, his body moving along with Marcus.
The next laugh never makes out, though it should. Marcus is still being an idiot on a coffee table, surrounded by half the team chanting.
Except I’m not looking at Marcus anymore.
Because Theo can actually move.
His hips find the rhythm easily, rolling lazily with the beat while he moves around Marcus, still laughing whenever Marcus gets in his way. There’s none of the awkwardness I would feel standing up there with an entire room watching me. Theo barely seems aware of them.
Or maybe he is, and he just likes being watched.
A strange heat pulses in my stomach and I have to shift against the couch, forcing my attention back to my notebook.
I manage three lines before my eyes lift again.
Theo’s head is tipped back, exposing the line of his throat while he laughs, and his shirt has risen higher while dancing.
Warm skin flashes beneath the hem.
There’s a narrow strip of his stomach on display now, tanned skin pulled taut over muscle, and every shift of his hips pushes the fabric a little higher. A dark trail of hair disappears beneath the waistband of his joggers.
I swallow, my mouth dry.
It’s too warm in here.
There are too many people packed into one room, and apparently nobody has considered opening a window.
“Take it off! Take it off!” Marcus starts chanting, my head snapping towards him.
It takes approximately two seconds for the rest of the room to pick it up, because apparently not one person in this house possesses an ounce of restraint.
The noise becomes deafening, fists pounding against walls and people shouting while Theo presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, visibly trying not to give them what they want.
His hands drop towards the hem of his shirt, and my pen stills against the page.
He’s actually going to do it.
Theo hooks his fingers beneath the fabric and starts dragging it upwards, slowly enough that I become painfully aware of every inch he uncovers.
More skin appears, the muscles across his stomach tightening when he lifts his arms, dark ink curling along his ribs. My eyes follow before I can settle them anywhere else, tracing the tattoos disappearing around his side and the hard lines of muscle beneath them.
The shirt disappears over his head, Theo flinging it blindly into the crowd, sending the entire room into hysterics.
I barely register any of it.
My pen is still pressed uselessly against the page while Theo stands there shirtless, and for some reason, looking away feels impossible.
Theo stands beneath the low lights, his chest rising with laughter, skin flushed from the heat, tattoos covering his arms and stretching across muscle whenever he moves.
He looks-
I don’t get any further than that before Theo turns, his eyes finding mine across the room.
His smirk falters, my stomach dropping when I realise exactly what he’s looking at.
Me.
Staring at him.
The amusement drains from his expression while his head tilts slightly, green eyes holding mine across the room.
I should look away, especially now that he’s caught me staring, but my eyes stay exactly where they are.
Heat crawls up my throat and into my cheeks, but Theo keeps watching me, and the longer he does, the harder it becomes to remember why I haven’t already dropped my eyes.
His chest rises with another breath.
Fuck.
His lips are parted slightly, metal catching beneath the low light, and the memory of rain shining across his mouth comes back so clearly that my stomach clenches.
I finally force my attention back to the notebook open across my lap, where my pen is still sitting uselessly.
I can feel every beat of my heart in my throat, and I grip my pen until the plastic creaks faintly.
This is ridiculous. It’s Theo, the same irritating bastard who’s spent weeks getting under my skin for fun, and more importantly, he’s a guy.
A loud, irritating, relentlessly inappropriate guy who has spent every interaction we’ve had deliberately trying to make me uncomfortable.
So why the hell am I still thinking about his mouth?
Another cheer tears through the room, Marcus shouting something I can’t make out over the music.
I keep my eyes firmly on my notebook, still feeling Theo’s eyes on me.