After Ben (27 page)

Six missed messages since leaving the office.

He didn’t need to read them. They were all from the same person, and they would all say the same thing.

Theo deleted them, then pulled a box of files from the trunk and headed on in. He made it through the apartment complex doors, shuffling the box from side to side to press the elevator button, then fumbled awkwardly for his keys when he reached his own front door.

This time he didn’t lean on the buzzer.

He knew he was on his own.

Maybe, he thought, as he shoved the box of files onto his desk, he should be grateful to Morgan. Reliving loss for a second time had hammered home so completely the fact that Ben was gone. Although doing the same shit twice—having exactly the same reaction when he thought he would never have contact with Morgan again—filled him with guilt, it did highlight the fact that Theo could move on. Not yet, because Morgan would take some getting over, but one day, maybe, with someone who was real.

What he felt for Morgan might have been imaginary, but it starkly highlighted shit he hadn’t dealt with after Ben died.

Ben hadn’t ever been concerned about their age gap. Nine years was nothing as far as he was concerned. If the subject ever came up, he laughed. It was a trifling difference in his opinion. Besides, he was energetic and fun loving. Why should a number define whether their relationship would work?

That was the issue he found so hard to articulate, to Maggie, to his Dad, to anyone: Ben hadn’t had the slightest concern about the difference in their ages. But he hadn’t been the one who had to live on, when living seemed impossible. He hadn’t had to wade through waves of despair that just kept on fucking coming. Fuck, no. He’d eaten whatever he liked, taken no exercise apart from dancing, and saluted Theo’s arrival home every single day with a huge glass of red wine.

Oh, he quit smoking cigarettes, but he still smoked cigars with their friends, and they were with friends all the fucking time. He lived to enjoy himself, and fuck the consequences. Fuck them.

This last week without Morgan had made Theo look at the age gap between him and Ben, and blame Ben for leaving him drowning. Considering, even for a split second, becoming involved with someone so much younger—potentially pushing him into such deep, dark water one day—made him so fucking anxious.

What if Theo died and left someone behind?

What if he died, leaving someone with even a fraction of the sadness he lived with?

Theo would never willingly, purposefully, heartlessly put another human being in the same situation. He was pissed that Ben had, and that emotion wrecked him. It wrecked him.

He missed him so much, but now he was angry too.

That anger mixed in his head with the guilt he felt for missing Morgan. His Morgan. That loss was brand-new. It all swirled together, confusing him, making him crazy.

Emptying his box of files with shaking hands, Theo powered up his laptop, hoping to hide in his work for a while. His e-mail loaded first, the page full once again, as it had been all week, with messages from Morgan. One by one he methodically moved them, unread, to a folder.

His phone chimed.

MORGAN: I miss you so much.

Theo hit delete.

Chapter 15

A
IDEN
D
ALY
pretty much blocked the light when Theo opened his front door the next morning. He hadn’t used the door buzzer. No, he thumped on the door, making the mirror on the adjoining wall shake, then stood with his arms crossed, light filtering through his curls, looking like some huge, dark, vengeful angel.

Theo stepped back into his entranceway as Aiden took a step forward, hands sliding to his hips, expression malevolent. There was nothing amiable about this man; he looked so much more than pissed. When Aiden opened his mouth to speak, Theo almost expected to see sound waves—like a sonic boom over still lake water. Instead, he whispered, making Theo lean forward just a little, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“One chance, Mr. Anderson. You have one chance to make things right.” He looked over his shoulder before speaking again. “Dad said you were one of the good guys. Don’t you fucking let him down.”

He stepped back before Theo could think of a single word to say, revealing Evan standing a few feet behind him. Theo blinked as the brothers spoke quietly with each other for a moment, Evan’s face tilted up, weak winter sunlight slanting through his hair, haloing him. He looked like a slim teen, dressed as he was in pale ripped jeans and a baby-blue hoodie. It saddened Theo to see that he obviously wasn’t dressed for work.

He watched as Evan’s bruised-looking eyes—shaded underneath with much darker gray than usual—slid toward him, then away again before he shrugged. Aiden watched his brother step into Theo’s apartment, then nodded curtly before walking away.

Both Theo and Evan exhaled at the same time.

“He didn’t want me to come.” The blond’s voice was clipped, restrained, as it had been at the start of their first meeting at Theo’s home, when he interviewed for the intern position. “He’s a little overprotective.” Evan looked Theo over, like he did at the office whenever Theo wore the wrong combination of stripes, plaids, and paisley. “Why are you wearing that?” Discussing fashion was completely beyond Theo right then. He stared down at his perfectly white button-down shirt teamed with a charcoal gray business suit. Even his tie was plain and gray. The kid had chosen the whole outfit, saying it was idiot proof. What could be wrong with any of it, and what the hell did it matter anyway?

Even with his head blurry with exhaustion, he was pretty sure that Evan hadn’t come to his home at early o’clock in the morning to discuss his lack of interest in clothes. As bad nights’ sleep went, the last night had been extreme. He kept picturing Joel walking toward the elevator, clutching the box of his belongings—coffee mug, spare shirt, iPod, comb—as Theo watched his every move. The kid had looked dazed, so dazed, as if he couldn’t understand Theo’s words. Or believe them. He’d stopped at the elevator, turning to Theo, asking yet a-fucking-gain just what it was that he’d done. Theo remembered shaking his head. That seemed to be all he could reliably manage when it came to explanations lately.

“Is it because I’m with Evan? Is that what this is about?” he’d asked.

Theo shook his head.

“What then, Theo?” he demanded. “I mean, why? I don’t get it. It must be Evan. Were you lying all those times you told me he was too young for you?”

Theo shook his head so hard he almost felt his brain rattle.

Joel had stepped up toward him, and if Theo had cared he might have been worried, because the man shook with shock and anger. “He’s with me now. Don’t you try anything, not a single fucking thing. You’re right. He is too fucking young for you.” Joel dropped his box and moved as if to storm back into the office, his face stark with anger-fueled anxiety. Theo grabbed his elbow, using the kid’s forward momentum to swing him around.

He tried to find his voice, and when he finally did, it sounded like it belonged to a stranger—harsh and loud.

“Don’t talk to me about whether I’m too old for anyone, Joel.” The elevator opened and he half walked, half shoved Joel into it, picking up his box and thrusting it into his hands before the doors shut. “Apart from Morgan, that is,” he added. “You can fucking talk to Morgan about how I’m too fucking old all you fucking like.” He lay in bed all night replaying the words, thinking that he probably could have slotted in a few more fuckings if he’d had time to think things through.

He pictured Joel’s confused expression, over and over and over, as he asked, “Morgan who?” before the elevator doors finally slid shut.

The following morning, “Who the fuck is Morgan?” was Evan’s second question for Theo, right after he asked, “Why are you wearing that?”

Theo stood in his entranceway, wondering if he were still in his extended, night-long, anxiety-filled nightmare. In that almost-dream, Joel’s first words to Theo after he fired him had been filled with concern. Not for himself—never for himself. And not for Evan; that concern came next. No, Joel’s first words had almost made Theo take his own back.

Theo had called him into the office, filled with icy fury that Joel knew the kid who had fooled him so completely. Theo was devastated, and lurched from feeling let down to feeling completely incandescent when he saw Joel with Evan. If Joel could meet Theo’s eyes knowing what he did—that he kept from him—who knew what lies he’d spun Evan?

The Daly kid had been through so much already.

Too much.

Not only had he had to contend with a crappy start to life, shoved from an abusive foster home to a group home, but he’d settled into what looked like a perfect family, only to be the one to find his dad’s body. Death was ugly enough when it was expected; Theo couldn’t even imagine how the kid had dealt with his adoptive father’s suicide.

Thinking that Joel might be a liar, there was no fucking way he could bear to see him anywhere near Evan, not while he had a say in anything.

That had all made perfect sense to Theo in the harsh light of day.

During the night, Joel’s voice echoed in his mind relentlessly. It shook as he asked, “Theo, are you all right?” after he’d just been fired. That phrase, and hearing his confused tone as he asked, “Morgan who?” made Theo feel desperately tired.

When Evan stepped right up to Theo in his own entranceway, his face white and angry, asking again, “Why are you wearing that? Where are you going?” only this time grabbing his tie, shaking it just as a puppy would, Theo blinked.

“To work. I’m going to work.”

His confusion and tiredness almost overwhelmed him when Evan shook his head, flicking strands of silver blond hair from his eyes. The kid sighed, then bit his lip and echoed his boyfriend from the day before.

“Theo, are you all right?” His gray gaze softened. “You do know it’s Saturday, right?”

Theo shook his head.

He was starting to think he didn’t know a fucking thing.

“I
F
YOU
don’t sit still, I will cut you.”

Theo sat on a kitchen stool, towel wrapped around his shoulders as Evan snipped away at his hair. He wasn’t entirely sure how they had progressed from their awkward standoff in the entranceway to him sitting half-naked in his kitchen. Evan was like a force of nature. To be honest, he didn’t seem all that small anymore. The longer Theo sat as still as he could, the more space Evan seemed to take up. He filled Theo’s head.

Once he admitted that he didn’t even know which day it was, Evan had taken him to his room, pointed at his bed, and told him, “Sit,” like he was a dog. So he did. He sat and watched as Evan pulled shirts and slacks from his closet, wrinkling his nose the whole time.

“Where do you keep the clothes you wear on the weekends?”

Evan huffed a little when Theo pointed at the clothes he had already dumped across his bed. He watched as the blond looked through the pile once more, grumbling under his breath as he did so. Theo was almost certain he heard a “No wonder you can’t get a boyfriend.” If he hadn’t been feeling so miserable, he might have smiled. While Evan did his thing, shaking out shirts and holding them up to the light, he asked Theo so many questions that he started to feel a little lightheaded.

Laying back against his pillows, he gave Evan heavily edited highlights of the last few months, skipping the parts where he’d got off—coming harder than he could ever remember—to the typed instructions of some fucking kid. He did admit to building a friendship based purely on Internet argument and his own imagination, and he accepted completely that he’d been dumb to build an idea of a person—a partner, maybe—in his head around words typed into his chat box.

When Evan slumped down onto the bed beside him, asking what the fuck any of this had to do with his boyfriend, Theo shrugged.

“Morgan told me that he knew Joel. That’s when I realized I was probably around twenty years older than him.”

“Well, Joel doesn’t know him. He doesn’t know anyone called Morgan at all.” Evan jutted out his jaw, challenging Theo to disagree with him. Theo had absolutely nothing to say. He closed his eyes as Evan insisted, saying, “He really doesn’t, Theo. He’s been racking his brains all fucking night.” He shook Theo’s knee until he opened his eyes. “Why did you give Joel an intern spot, Theo?”

Theo thought hard before answering. “He seemed like a good person.” Evan agreed, bangs falling into his eyes as he nodded.

“He is a good person. He’s amazing; he really is. He’s been worried sick, and pissed. Joel’s kind of hot when he’s pissed.” Theo watched as Evan shivered involuntarily before adding, “But most of all, he thinks he’s done something wrong, and he doesn’t have the faintest idea what. It’s not right, Theo, or fair. You should tell him about this Internet guy.” Theo closed his eyes again, sighing. “If you don’t, I will. If someone is saying they know him, and that’s left you thinking he’s an asshole, then he has the right to defend himself, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he?”