24. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THEO
Cold brick bites into my palms as I shove both hands against the wall and drop my head between my shoulders.
Breathe.
Fucking breathe.
My lungs don’t seem interested. Every breath comes back too fast, scraping against my ribs while my pulse pounds hot and vicious in my throat. I dig my fingers into the brick until the rough surface catches the splits across my knuckles and tears them wider.
I push harder, grinding already-raw skin against the wall until pain shoots through my hands and up my arms. Blood slicks beneath my fingers, but I barely feel it when I can still see Connor lifting that glass to his mouth.
Still see Darren’s hand covering the top of it earlier, knowing what he’d planned to do while Connor sat there completely unaware.
My palms slam into the brick again.
“Fuck,” it tears out through clenched teeth as another jolt of pain runs up my arms.
Still not enough.
I’m burning up despite the cold air hitting the sweat at the back of my neck, too much adrenaline still trapped beneath my skin with nowhere to fucking go. My hands twitch against the wall, wanting to hit something again, and I curl them into the brick instead.
Because apparently beating Darren half to fucking death didn’t do the job.
The door bangs shut behind me, and footsteps cut across the pavement in my direction. They keep coming, closing the space I came out here specifically to fucking get, until my jaw locks and my palms press harder into the brick.
“Go home.”
“Can’t,” Connor says.
I push off the wall, turning straight into him, tipping my chin down to meet his eyes, a small crease forming between his brows while he looks over the blood on my face.
Having no survival instincts at all, he pushes closer, thumb brushing under my jaw before falling away again. “You drove.”
His cologne hits me with the movement, clean and familiar beneath the stale smoke clinging to my clothes.
“This isn’t one of those times where the stubbornness is cute.” I force the words through my teeth. “Go back to Marcus. Go home. Go anywhere that’s not fucking here.”
Connor’s shoulders square, his chin coming up, blue eyes locking onto mine with that stubborn fucking look I know far too well by now.
Usually I like this version of him. The one who digs his heels in when I push, who gets that little crease between his brows and looks at me like he’d rather choke than give me what I want.
Not tonight.
“Enough,” he bites out. “You don’t get to order me anywhere.”
I catch his wrists and turn us, driving him back into the wall. His breath punches hot across my cheek with the impact, but I’m already following him in, dragging his hands above his head and holding them there as I crowd him against the brick.
“Then fucking listen.”
Connor yanks against my hold, every movement pressing more of him into me until I’m aware of too fucking much.
“This isn’t a fucking game, Connor.” My fingers bite into his wrists. “Don’t come out here and act like he didn’t just-”
The rest catches in my throat as I see that fucking glass at Connor’s mouth again, Darren standing there watching. I’d barely made it in time, my hand hitting the glass when the rim was already against his lips.
If I’d been any farther away-
My stomach turns.
“Like you weren’t almost-”
I can’t fucking say it.
Connor’s head drops back, his chest brushing mine, his breathing getting faster now. I can feel every one of them with how close we are.
“You don’t get to intimidate me into leaving.” His wrists shift beneath my hands, but he doesn’t fight me. “You won’t hurt me.”
My grip loosens around his wrists, some of the anger going out of me in one breath because Jesus fucking Christ. He’s standing here after everything he just watched me do, and somehow that is the one thing Connor seems completely certain about.
“That’s a lot of faith you’re putting in me right now.”
Connor tests my hold with the slightest pull, and I let him go. His arms slide down between us, brushing my ribs, but instead of ducking beneath my arm or putting any distance between us, he stays exactly where he is, close enough that every breath still presses his chest into mine.
“You won’t hurt me,” he says again, and there’s no challenge behind it this time. No stubborn lift of his chin or dare in his eyes. He says it like it’s a fact.
I’m standing inches from him with someone else’s blood drying across my knuckles, my own smeared over my mouth, adrenaline still pounding hard enough that I can barely keep still.
Connor watched me beat the shit out of someone.
He followed me out here anyway, let me pin him against a wall, and now he’s looking at me with more certainty than I fucking feel.
I don’t know what he sees when he looks at me, but I’m starting to hate how badly I want to.
“You don’t fucking know that,” I snap, sucking in a breath and getting nowhere near enough air.
Stepping back, cold air cuts into the space that opens between us, but Connor’s eyes follow me. Another step puts enough distance between us that I can’t feel the heat of his body anymore.
“I don’t know that.”
I roll my tongue over the split in my lip, waiting for some hesitation. Anything that says he understands exactly how little faith he should be putting in me right now.
Connor’s eyes flick between mine before falling to my mouth.
“I do.”
I go to put another step between us, but Connor follows, fisting my shirt and hauling me back until every inch of distance I just put there is gone.
I stumble into him, his palm flattening over the rapid beat of my heart.
“You won’t hurt me,” he says. “You can’t.”
I shake my head, catching his wrist to pull his hand away, but Connor only fists my shirt tighter and follows when I shift back.
“Stop.”
“You won’t fucking hurt me, Theo.”
Hearing my name in his mouth freezes my hands around his wrist.
Connor stares up at me, blue eyes moving over my face while his palm stays planted against my chest, feeling every frantic beat I can’t hide from him.
“You’re angry because someone else tried to.”
Connor’s eyes drop between us, and some of that certainty finally cracks. His throat moves around a swallow, fingers bunching in my shirt until his knuckles press into my chest.
“I trust you.”
For once, I’ve got absolutely nothing. Just Connor’s hand against my chest and the immediate certainty that he shouldn’t trust me fighting its way up my throat.
My mouth crashes into his, the split in my lip tearing open with the pressure, but Connor is already kissing me back and whatever sense I had left is broken by the first rough drag of his mouth against mine.
I crowd him back into the wall, his fingers knotting in my hair, pulling. The sting across my scalp only makes me press closer, my body pinning his while his mouth opens beneath mine.
This is fucking stupid.
His teeth catch the split in my lip and pain tears through it, dragging a hiss from me. Blood floods my tongue, metallic and warm, but I only kiss him harder, chasing his mouth until Connor makes a sound against mine that goes straight through me.
His mouth moves against mine again, and all I can see is that same mouth against the rim of the glass, seconds from swallowing whatever Darren put in it.
I tear myself away.
Cold air hits my wet lips as I force myself back, putting enough space between us that I can actually think again.
“I can’t,” I rasp.
Connor stares at me, his lips parting.
“Not after-”
I can’t finish it. The image is already there again, sitting behind my eyes until my stomach turns.
“He spiked your fucking drink.”
“I know.”
Connor sounds steadier than either of us has any right to be, but his hands tell a different story. They’re still twisted into the front of my shirt, a tremor running through his fingers.
Every bit of heat left in me turns cold.
Connor Reid, who needs everything exactly where he expects it, is gripping my shirt with shaking hands.
“I want this.”
I take a step back, the air punching out of my lungs, but Connor’s fingers come with me, fabric pulling taut between us until I look down at his fists and then straight back at him.
I need a reason not to believe him.
I look for one. His eyes, his pupils, the way he’s holding himself. Anything off. Anything that gives me an excuse to put him back inside with Marcus and walk the fuck away before I make this worse.
“Connor, I’m-”
His mouth cuts me off, swallowing whatever warning I was about to give him, and a groan rips from my chest as my eyes close. His mouth moves over mine with none of the hesitation I was trying so hard to find, tongue dragging across my lips until I open for him.
“Just shut up,” he gets out against my mouth, his breath uneven before he plants both hands against my chest and shoves.
“Christ,” I hiss, my back hitting brick, Connor following me in.
“How much have you had?”
I push away from the wall, but Connor puts his palm flat against my chest, pinning me straight back against it.
My breath catches with Connor’s palm planted directly over my heart, every frantic beat thudding straight into his hand. There’s no way he can’t feel it.
“Nothing.”
I stare at him for a second. “Nothing?”
Connor’s brows pull together. “I didn’t fucking drink it, Theo.”
His eyes are clear and fixed straight on mine. No haze. No delay when he follows me. Nothing loose or unfocused about the way he’s standing there with one hand still planted firmly against my chest.
He’s shaken, not drunk.
And when my eyes meet his again, the uncertainty I find there has nothing to do with whether he wants this.
It’s everything that wanting it means.
“I just-” Connor’s fingers flex against my chest. “I need-”
He stops, lips pressing together as he looks away, and the hand against my chest curling into my shirt.
I watch him fight with it for another second before my hand comes up, settling against his cheek.
My thumb drags slowly over his cheekbone, and Connor’s eyes lift back to mine.
“Tell me.”