Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Cameron
The smell of coffee hit first.
I blinked awake to the sound of the kettle clicking off and the faint scrape of a mug against the counter. Morning light spilled through the half-drawn curtains in pale stripes, turning the living room gold. My head felt foggy, my body, heavy. For a second, I forgot where I was.
Then I saw the sketchbook on the coffee table and remembered everything.
Worse still, I remembered last night. And that included the lube I’d left standing on the floor next to the sofa.
Heat crept up the back of my neck. I didn’t dare move.
Maybe if I stay perfectly still, time will reverse itself, and I can go back to the moment when I decided I needed to have a wank and tell myself not to be so fucking stupid.
No such luck. Theo’s footsteps crossed the small kitchen, muffled, steady, and confident, as always.
I cleared my throat. “Morning.” I reached down to where the lube sat, but reversed the motion when Theo turned, mug in hand.
“Morning.”
The word came out even. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans. His face was calm, but his eyes held a shuttered, guarded expression, as if he’d built an even higher wall between us in the few hours since we’d last spoken.
I sat up, the blanket sliding off my chest. “You’re up early.”
“I didn’t sleep much.”
Shit.
“Same here.”
The words hung there, charged, until Theo looked away and filled another mug from the kettle.
I watched Theo’s precise motions. I wanted to say something light, something normal. How’s the weather? Got a rehearsal today?
Anything but the truth pulsing between us.
Theo handed me a mug without meeting my gaze. “Sugar’s on the counter.”
“Thanks.” I wrapped both hands around it, praying for the heat to ground me. “You working today?” So what if it was Sunday? Theo probably worked every day. He was that kinda guy.
“In a bit.” A pause. “What do you have planned for today?”
“I thought I’d take my sketchpad down to the river. Maybe my watercolours too.” I gave a weak smile. “Figure I should pretend to be productive.”
Theo nodded. “Good plan.”
The silence that followed was unbearable. Every clink of a spoon felt amplified. I could feel Theo across the room, steady, tense, perfectly composed, and it made my own heartbeat louder.
Finally, I couldn’t bear it a second longer.
“Are you all right?” I blurted.
Theo’s hand paused mid-stir. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You seem…” I hesitated, fumbling for another word that wasn’t distant. “…quiet.”
Theo gave a short laugh, not unkind but brittle around the edges. “I’m always quiet.”
“Yeah, but this is Olympic-level quiet,” I said. “Like, ‘someone swore in church’ quiet.”
That earned me a flicker of a smile, but it didn’t last. Theo set his mug down carefully. “I just didn’t sleep well, that’s all.”
My chest tightened.
Can he tell? Does he know?
The thought made my pulse jump and my stomach twist.
Of course he knows. There’s a bottle of lube sitting on the floor. And Theo doesn’t miss a thing.
Theo leaned back against the counter, his arms folded. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need,” he said, his tone professional, neutral. “I want that to be clear.”
It felt like a boundary disguised as kindness.
I swallowed. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
We both sipped our coffee. The sound of the city waking up drifted faintly through the window: traffic, distant horns, footsteps on wet pavement. Ordinary noises, trying to make the room ordinary again.
Which was never going to work.
Theo broke the silence first. “Did you sketch until late?”
I nodded. “I couldn’t switch my brain off.”
Theo’s eyes lifted for half a second, and I caught the faintest trace of colour in his face before he looked away again.
Something inside me twisted, but whether it was from embarrassment, guilt, or maybe even a flash of recognition, I couldn’t tell. I only knew the space between us felt raw. I reverted to my instinctual behaviour the way I always did when my emotions threatened to spill. I went with humour.
“You know, your sofa bed’s comfortable but it squeaks like an old movie prop.” My heartbeat raced. “If you hear weird noises in the middle of the night, that’s probably it.”
Theo froze for the smallest fraction of a second. Then, slowly, he looked up. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Probably?”
I didn’t break eye contact. “Almost definitely.” Then I grinned, leaning into the performance. “Unless you’ve got ghosts, of course. Then it’s fifty-fifty.”
Theo let out a breath that was half laugh, half sigh, and some of the tightness left his shoulders. “Good to know.”
I took a sip of coffee, and we stood there for a moment, neither of us smiling but no longer drowning either. The air felt easier to breathe. The quality of the silence had altered. Now it felt more like the space between two people learning each other’s rhythm.
And I want to learn his.
I glanced at my sketchbook on the coffee table. “So… when we first met, you were all about the music. Gary used to say you always carried a notebook with you, one lined with staves for writing music.”
“Harmony made sense when nothing else did.” Theo smiled.
“While other kids played outside on bikes or on their PlayStations, I was the kind of kid who sat alone in his room layering vocal tracks into GarageBand.” I frowned, and Theo chuckled.
“It’s software for creating music. Dad gave me his old Mac when I was thirteen, and I got Mum to download it for me.
” His brow furrowed. “Dad was so pissed off when he found out.”
“Is it true you got into trouble in high school for writing music in the middle of a maths lesson?”
Theo grinned, and his eyes lit up. “Oh, come on. It was a really boring lesson. I had to do something.”
That grin eased the tightness in my chest.
Thank God. Maybe we could get through the next two weeks after all.
I could listen to Theo’s lilting accent all day. “He said you were born in Edinburgh. How come you ended up in Manchester?”
“My parents moved there when I was twelve. Dad opened up a new firm of lawyers.” He grimaced. “We lived in Mere. I don’t think that counts as Manchester, more like Cheshire.”
I widened my eyes. “That’s a pretty swanky area. Isn’t that where all the rich footballers live nowadays? I went to a wedding there once at the Country Club.”
“I know it well.” Theo snorted. “Mum spends most of her time there.”
“So how come you ended up working in IT?” I bit back a smile. “That’s streets away from composing.”
“Music was what I always wanted to do, but my dad believed it wasn’t a career, only a hobby.
While I was studying at the Royal Northern College of Music, we didn’t talk much, but once I graduated and chose to study IT, that seemed to bridge the gap.
” He pulled a face. “That was close enough to ‘respectable’ for him.”
“That’s bleak.” I paused. “But kind of brave, too.”
Theo appeared faintly amused. “Brave?”
“You still sing. You still make the thing you wanted, even if you had to sneak up on it sideways.”
Theo studied me for a moment. “You have a strange way of looking at things.”
“Art school,” I said, tapping my temple. “It comes with the degree.”
Something eased in Theo’s face, just a fraction. It gave me the courage to keep going. “Were your parents strict?” That was the impression I’d gotten from Gary.
Theo lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I’d say structured.”
“Which is code for strict.”
“They liked order.” Theo’s lips twitched. “My mum liked image even more. My dad preferred silence to confrontation. Between them, I learned to stay quiet and look tidy.”
“I bet that was fun.” My heart ached for him.
Another shrug. “It was… efficient.”
I smiled at the understatement. “When did you finally escape from their clutches?”
Theo laughed. “Yeah, that was how it felt. College. That was the first time I didn’t have to ask permission for my own life.”
I paused again before asking in a soft tone, “Did they know? About you?” I didn’t need to elaborate.
Theo’s gaze drifted toward the window. “Not then. I told them when I reached twenty-one. They were polite about it, and distant.” He swallowed. “A combination they’ve perfected.”
I felt a flicker of anger on his behalf. “Their loss.”
Theo met my eyes, something unspoken in the look. “That’s generous.”
“But true.”
The silence that followed felt weighted, somehow fragile. I wanted to reach across to him, to close the gap somehow, but I stayed where I was.
Instead, I asked the question that had been sitting in my chest since I’d moved in.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Theo’s hand froze halfway to his coffee mug. “Why do you ask?”
I tried for lightness. “Let’s call it research. Maybe I’m writing a thesis on emotionally unavailable men.”
Theo’s laugh was quiet but genuine. “Then yes, once.” He hesitated before adding, “His name was Luka.”
I waited.
Theo set the mug down, turning it slowly between his fingers. “We met in a college choir. He was all charm and chaos. The kind of person who walks into a room and bends gravity.”
I tilted my head. “And you orbited?”
He shrugged. “For a while.” Theo’s voice was even, but underneath it, I sensed the rhythm of old hurt. “He liked passion, as long as it belonged entirely to him. When it didn’t, he withdrew it like punishment.”
The muscles in my jaw tightened. “That’s awful.”
“It was… educational. It taught me control is safer than emotion.”
“Except control’s lonely.”
Theo looked at me then, really looked, and for a heartbeat I felt so fucking seen, in a way that robbed me of air. “It can be,” he said quietly. “But it’s predictable. Predictable is easier to survive.”
My throat ached. “You don’t have to survive me.”
Theo’s eyes widened slightly, and I realised what I’d said. Heat rushed to my face.
“I mean—” I stumbled for humour, desperate to lighten the air. “—unless you count my cooking, which has been known to end lives.”
Theo’s mouth curved. “Good to know. I’ll consider myself forewarned.”
The tension eased, and I breathed a little easier.
Think before you speak next time.