Chapter 22 Here. Now. Always. #2
She never has quite been able to capture the roundness of his vowels in the loops she’s been playing in her head for the last four months. The sound of them now has that old ache ripping open in her chest faster than she thought possible.
“She gave me your address,” Theo continues by way of explanation. His hands fidget in the pockets of his jacket, nervousness flickering across his face as he rocks back on his heels. “Do you mind if I come in?”
“Right,” Sage stammers, immediately stepping back and opening the door wider so he can pass.
Theo steps past her, and Sage takes a moment to close her eyes and breathe as she shuts the door before turning to face him. He’s stopped just inside the entryway, his eyes scanning the small space as he bites the inside of his cheek.
Seeing Theo in her apartment is nothing like seeing him in the cottage in Skye, even if he looks every bit LA in his white T-shirt and faded jeans.
There’s four months stretching between them, and it makes Sage simply stand there and watch as he takes in her place—her velvet navy couch and TV stuck on Keanu’s face and chronically open windows that take up the left-hand wall, a small writing desk shoved beneath them.
Slowly, he turns to her, his hand withdrawing from his pocket. He holds up a folded square of paper pinched between two fingers.
“Got your letter.”
“Oh.”
She wants to say more, but her heart is clogging her throat, and she doesn’t quite trust her vocal cords to push past it.
Writing—writing has always been the way Sage gets out of the tangles in her head. Maybe, she thought, it would work for the tangles in her heart, too.
She’d sent it weeks ago—overnight, because she needed to know when it arrived.
Theo glances down at the paper, a wry smile twisting his lips. “I can’t say I expected fan mail from you.”
And because Sage is Sage, she can’t very well leave that alone.
“Would we call that fan mail?”
Theo’s eyes flick up. “You sent it to my publicist.”
She did.
“I did,” she confesses. “I didn’t keep your address. Jan’s care of was the only thing I could find listed.”
“You’ve heard of phones, yes?”
“I am familiar with the concept.” She folds her arms across her chest and resists the urge to dig her nails into her biceps.
He’s smiling at her, but there’s something beneath it that’s telling her they can only take this bit so far.
So she sucks in a breath and holds his gaze and says, “I couldn’t call you.
I made sure I couldn’t call you.” She waits to make sure he understands before continuing.
“And I felt like a DM was … not the right medium for what I had to say.”
Not that she’d expected him to see it even if she had.
He hasn’t posted anything since December.
Nor has he been photographed. Not since the red carpet on New Year’s Eve.
She’s embarrassed about how many times she’s looked at those photos.
But they were easier to see than the ones on her phone, easier to look at Theo Sharpe than Theo and acknowledge that she’d lost them both.
Theo is silent for a long moment before he nods, a muscle in his jaw flickering as he glances back down at the paper. “It’s a beautiful letter,” he murmurs. The corner of his mouth twitches up as his eyes meet hers once more. “Anyone tell you that you should be a writer?”
She laughs. It’s soft, and breathy, but it’s a laugh all the same, and it makes Theo smile.
“You know, I think I have heard that.” Sage swallows. Tightens her hold on herself.
“I needed you to know that you were right,” she explains, because she owes him that. At the very least, she owes him that. “About me. About my need for validation, and approval, and … a whole host of other things.”
There’s the barest self-deprecating laugh on her exhale—a habit she hasn’t quite been able to kick, therapy or no, and Theo clocks it immediately.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said that night.” He takes a step toward her, his eyes wide and serious and still so damn blue. “About abandoning your family. About using Noah to pick up the slack. I was angry, and scared, and … god, it’s so overdue, but I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Sage.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“It wasn’t. But it is now.” She means it. She’d forgiven him months ago. “I said some equally horrific things. I was dismissive of what you and your dad have been through, and I had no right—”
“You told me exactly what I needed to hear,” he interrupts.
“I’m still sorry. I should have never treated you that way.”
“We … we ended our business relationship, actually. I signed with a new manager a few months ago.”
“I know,” Sage admits softly.
“You know,” Theo parrots, and it’s not a question, and he still isn’t able to hide the emotions in his eyes, because there’s something shining there, something that looks like hesitant hope.
He takes another step forward as he rubs the back of his neck. He shakes his head. “I should have told you about the film. There’s no excuse. I can’t tell you how much I regret my actions.”
Sage nods, her weight shifting between her feet.
“I … I need you to respect me in my work. It’s important to me.
” The words still feel awkward on her tongue despite the practice she’s had these last four months in asking for what she needs.
But she’s working on caring about the opinions that actually matter.
Theo’s is an opinion that matters.
She wants to matter, too.
“I do,” Theo assures her. “I swear I do.”
Sage’s inhale gets caught somewhere in her chest, but she forces herself to breathe through it.
Theo is here.
Theo is here, and Sage has no idea why, but she can’t … she can’t not tell him, face-to-face. Can’t leave him to wonder—if he even does wonder.
So she does what she does when there’s something before her she wants.
She jumps.
No parachute.
“It wasn’t you I was writing off,” she admits shakily. “It was myself. It was always myself. And … I’m sorry that I put that on you. Because you are …”
She trails off, her throat bobbing as she searches for a way to make him understand.
“I don’t know that they’ve made words to describe what you are, Theo,” she finally says. “Good, and kind, and funny, and talented, and still willing to see the brightness in life even after what you’ve experienced. And it’s still not enough—all of that still isn’t enough to describe you.”
There’s a stinging sensation in her eyes, and she blinks against it, not because she doesn’t want him to see, but because she wants to see him as she tells him this.
“I told you to go after what you wanted, but I … I wouldn’t let myself do that very thing. And I clung to any excuse that wasn’t the truth, which was that … I didn’t think I was worth it.”
For a long moment, Theo simply stares at her.
“Christ, Collins,” he finally mutters, his polished vowels scraped rough. “You’re still bloody impossible.”
Her lips part, but before she can even find the words to respond, he’s in her space, his hands cupping her cheeks as he says, “You have always been worth it to me.”
Sage sucks in a stuttering breath.
“I …” Her throat bobs. “I didn’t …”
“I want you,” he cuts her off. “And not just the perfect version of yourself you think you have to present the world, but you. I want you at seven am when you haven’t had caffeine and a wrong word might just be my death sentence, and when it’s an ungodly hour but your brain won’t turn off so you’re glued to your computer like you’ll die if you don’t write another word.
I want you when you’re jittery and when your brain lies to you and fills you with anxiety and when you tell me the same stories over and over again because you’re passionate and excited.
I want you on the days you can’t get off the couch and on your vibrant ones when you can’t turn off and I want you whether you’re in LA or Skye or London or on the bloody moon, because I fucking want you. That is what I’m doing here.”
Sage doesn’t realize she’s crying until his thumbs swipe the tear tracks on her cheeks.
“I want you,” he whispers again, his voice cracking slightly as he pulls her even closer. His eyes bore into hers, certain and searing, and it’s the way she’s imagined she’d look at him if she ever got to see him again.
If she ever got to tell him that she’s in love with Theo Sharpe as much as she is with Theo.
If she ever got to tell him that she wants him, too.
In New York City, in Portree, in London, in LA. It doesn’t matter where.
“I am tired of not letting myself have the things I want,” he breathes, the confession an exhale of air across her lips as he presses his forehead to hers. “Aren’t you?”
Sage has always been a lover of words. But this time, there really aren’t any that are adequate. So she uses the next best thing.
She pushes up on her toes and presses her lips to Theo’s; it’s the only way she knows how to say yes and please and stay.
And he understands exactly what she’s trying to convey.
He wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her against him fully, his lips soft and warm and devastating as he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her.
She pulls away only to take a desperate breath, and then she’s lost in him again—in the way his hands fit at the dip of her waist, the way his tongue brushes against hers, the way the sound of longing shudders through his chest and catches at the back of his throat.
She uses the edges of his leather jacket to drag him from the living room to her bedroom. His touch is gentle as he pushes her down onto the bed, his eyes bright as he stares down at her for a long moment.
“I want you, too,” she whispers, just so he can hear it aloud.
Here.
Now.
Always.
She kisses the words into his skin, traces them from the freckles on his shoulders to the ridges of his abs to the trail of hair that leads to the waistband of his jeans as she helps him tug them off.