30. CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY
CONNOR
Marcus’s head appears around the corner as I step into the entryway, his brows pulling together when he sees me. His eyes drop to his watch before coming back to my face, and I immediately regret not waiting at least another ten minutes before coming back.
“Theo took you home, right?” he asks, pushing fully into view and leaning one shoulder against the wall. “Didn’t just leave you on the side of the road or something?”
“Yeah, he took me home,” I answer too quickly, Marcus’s eyes narrowing on me.
“It was too quiet,” I add with a shrug, my solution to sounding suspicious being to just keep talking until I make it worse.
Marcus hums, tilting his head, studying me close enough that standing still gets harder by the second. His gaze moves over my face, and I have the ridiculous urge to wipe a hand across it, like Theo might have left something there Marcus could read.
I don’t want him to fucking touch you.
Heat crawls up the back of my neck at the memory of saying it with Theo pressed against me, his face barely an inch from mine.
What the fuck was I thinking?
“You look ill,” Marcus says eventually.
I glare at him, grateful for the interruption even if I want to punch him for it. “Thanks.”
His mouth twitches as he lifts his hands in surrender. “Wanna watch a movie?”
Marcus has been asking me some version of that my entire life.
When I was twelve and sick enough that Mum kept me off school, he spent the day complaining about every film I picked while watching them anyway.
When I was fourteen and pissed off enough that I didn’t want to talk, he threw a blanket at my head, sat down beside me and never asked me to.
He’s always known when to just be there.
I want to say yes so badly it almost comes out.
I want to drop onto the couch beside him and let some shit film fill the next two hours, let Marcus talk over half of it and complain when I tell him to shut up, until my head is full of something other than Theo standing outside my flat asking me not to let him go.
Except Marcus is the one person I absolutely cannot sit beside right now.
Not when every time I look at him, I remember exactly whose best friend I had my hands all over a few nights ago.
Not when Theo is probably on his way to Tristen. My stomach lurches so violently I have to swallow against the nausea.
“I’m good.” I lift the textbook slightly, forcing my fingers to loosen around it. “Need to study.”
Marcus watches me for another moment before nodding. “Okay.”
Marcus doesn’t move, and when I make the mistake of looking at him again, the teasing has disappeared from his face.
“Sure you’re good?”
My knuckles blanch around the edge of my textbook. “I’m good,” I lie.
I move before he can keep looking at me like that, squeezing his shoulder as I pass. “Just been spending too much time around you and your obnoxious friends.”
Marcus snorts and shoves lightly at me. “The only obnoxious one here is Theo.”
My stomach sinks at his name, but I manage a laugh and keep walking. “Yeah, right. Look in a mirror sometime.”
Marcus chuckles behind me, but when I glance back, the smile has already faded from his face. He’s still watching me, brows drawn together in a way that makes my skin prickle because Marcus noticing something is wrong is the absolute last thing I need right now.
I turn into the kitchen before he can decide to follow me and drop my textbook onto the table. I came back here to study. That’s it. Something normal that I actually understand, with answers that don’t change depending on who’s asking.
I pull out a chair and sit, reaching for my phone before I’ve even opened the textbook. The time flashes across the screen, and I stare at it before putting it back down and dragging my notebook closer.
It’s still open exactly where I left it, neat lines of writing covering the page, but I make it through the same sentence twice without absorbing a single word. By the third attempt, my pen is tapping restlessly against the paper and my eyes are already drifting back towards my phone.
I grab it.
Two minutes.
Two fucking minutes since I last checked.
“Jesus Christ.”
I flip it face down and shove it across the table, irritation crawling hot beneath my skin because I don’t even know what I’m waiting for. Theo isn’t going to text me. There’s absolutely no reason he would when he’s currently on a date with Tristen.
My pen stops tapping, and I grit my teeth, staring harder at the page.
I don’t care.
Theo can take Tristen home if he wants. He can fuck him, let Tristen put his hands wherever the fuck he wants, let him get his fingers beneath that stupid shirt and undo every button I-
Crack.
My thoughts cut off as my pen gives beneath my hand, and when I look down, the plastic casing has split between my fingers, ink slowly bleeding across the side of my hand.
“You good?” Marcus calls from the living room.
I stare at the broken pen and the ink smeared across my fingers before tossing the pieces onto the table. “Yeah. You got a pen?”
There’s enough silence from the other room that I already know the answer.
“Do I look like I have a pen?”
I roll my eyes and grab a tissue, wiping at the ink staining the side of my hand. “Fucking useless.”
“Check Theo’s room.”
My fingers still against the tissue, my eyes drifting towards the stairs despite myself. Theo’s room. Of course Marcus would send me there.
I’m already heading for the stairs, because Theo has pens and Marcus literally just told me to check his room. It’s quicker than tearing apart every drawer downstairs looking for one, and that’s the only reason my feet are carrying me up there.
By the time I reach Theo’s door, my hand sits on the handle for long enough that I get annoyed with myself and shove it open.
His aftershave hits me immediately, stronger up here, mixed with detergent and whatever else makes Theo’s room smell so distinctly like him. My lungs pull it in, and I stand there with my hand still wrapped around the door handle, chest tightening around a breath that doesn’t want to come back out.
It’s a room, one I’ve been in plenty of times, and the pens are sitting exactly where I knew they would be on the desk. I take a step towards them, already reaching for the nearest one when my eyes catch on the bed instead and my jaw clenches.
The duvet is rumpled, and Theo is back in my lap with his forehead against my shoulder and his voice rough against my neck.
I tear my eyes away, refusing to look at the bed again as I cross the room.
Which would be easier if the rest of the place wasn’t just as bad.
There’s a hoodie thrown over the back of his chair, one sleeve practically touching the floor. Clothes spilling out of a drawer he couldn’t be bothered to close. Loose change, receipts, and random shit scattered across his desk around a mug I’m fairly certain has been sitting there since last week.
The mess makes my fingers itch to fix it, but I ignore it. I turn to leave with the pen already clenched in my hand, only for my eyes to fall to the bed again.
I can still feel the weight of him completely loose in my arms while my fingers moved through his hair.
He trusted me enough to fall asleep like that, and I waited until he was out before slipping from beneath him and leaving without a word.
The memory keeps me rooted there, staring at the sheets while the edge of the pen digs into my palm, until somewhere between telling myself to leave and actually doing it, I cross the room and sink onto the edge of the mattress instead.
I lean forward with my elbows on my knees and scrub both hands over my face, trying to make sense of something that stopped making any sense days ago.
I fucked Theo. Twice. Let him fall asleep against me, and panicked so badly that leaving felt easier than staying there long enough to understand why I hadn’t wanted to move in the first place.
Then I looked him in the face and called it a mistake.
Even thinking the word now makes me feel sick. It felt wrong when I said it, sounded worse out loud, and the way Theo looked at me afterwards has been stuck in my head ever since. But what else was I supposed to call it when I’m straight?
I let my hands fall and stare at the floor between my feet, because that explanation would be a lot more convincing if I wasn’t currently sitting on another man’s bed while he’s out on a date, unable to think about anything except what he might be doing with someone else.
I push the heel of my hand into my eye until colour bursts behind it, but it does fuck all to stop me wondering what Theo’s doing right now.
He’s probably with Tristen already, although maybe they’re still at the bar.
Maybe the date is shit. Maybe Tristen is boring as fuck, and Theo’s sitting there wondering why he bothered going in the first place.
I cling to that.
Except the date might not be shit.
My eyes drift towards Theo’s bed as the thought takes shape, bringing with it an image I really don’t need of Tristen touching him. Hands on Theo’s waist, mouth against his, fingers slipping beneath the shirt I buttoned less than an hour ago and undoing every single one.
And Theo would let him.
Fuck, Theo might want him to.
That’s the part that turns my stomach, because now I can see Theo leaning into it, letting Tristen pull him closer while his mouth parts beneath someone else’s. His hair getting messed up beneath someone else’s hands. Those green eyes going heavy in that way I know too well.
I shake my head, breathing hard.
I’m the one who left. I’m the one who looked Theo in the face and called what happened between us a mistake, then stood outside my flat tonight and still couldn’t give him what he was asking for.
I don’t get to sit in his bedroom now and be angry because he might have gone looking for it somewhere else.
Theo can do whatever he wants.
The problem is, knowing that does absolutely nothing to stop the sick feeling spreading through my stomach when I look at his bed and imagine Tristen there with him.
And maybe that’s because it isn’t really Tristen touching him that’s getting to me.
It’s the thought of Theo looking at him the way he looks at me.