He fell onto Jack, smearing come over both of them.

“I told you. I told you, not to make promises you can’t keep.”

Theo was shaking. Jack held him and kissed his ear and he might have been sorry for making such an awful mess of things but fuck, that had been absolutely incredible, and it was true that for those few blinding seconds he’d never loved anything the way he loved Theo.

And that was just the way it was.

That was maybe the way it had always been.

“So what’d you think?” Theo’s voice was calm, almost bored, as he rolled off and stared at the ceiling, still panting. “Is the great Jack Gardner a bottom after all?”

He turned his head, looked at Jack, mouth mocking but eyes soft.

“Oh, I dunno.” He nudged Theo’s shoulder. “I may need to try it a few more times. Just to be sure.”

Theo wrinkled his nose, one of those hidden smiles at the corner of his mouth. And he closed his eyes and sighed. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

“Oh, nice.”

“Now be a love,” his voice caught, “And bring me my fucking champagne.”

In the morning—after three more rounds, and he’d had to tap out after the second, sore and stretched and dripping but fucking reborn—they checked out of the hotel with all of Jack’s belongings.

“You sure?” Jack walked close to Theo on the sidewalk, stumbling only a little but relishing in it.

“Yeah.” Theo lit up a cigarette, shoulders tight. “I just don’t want to get used to it.”

He passed a cigarette over to Jack—who nearly missed him, in the click and whoosh of the lighter—saying, “And I love you too, you horrible motherfucker.”

Chapter Twenty

Theo’d never expected to be in the headmaster’s office again.

Though knowing the wild streak of impulsiveness in his son, he probably should have.

Charles Humperdink was burdened with a terrible name, a persistent clumsiness, and horrible anxiety. He was a legacy—his family had practically founded the school, hence the buildings bearing his surname—but he earned every good grade, working silently where others complained and bragged, and it was no surprise at all, really, when he was named the youngest headmaster in Gwynns’s history.

He may have wobbled a bit on the way to the podium as his posting was announced. But he was smarter than most of their classmates, and worked harder, and was kind to all of the students where former headmasters had been cold. Gwynns was changing under his guidance; it was a more nurturing place. And Charles was nurturing by nature—even when they were children and Theo was at his nastiest, Charles had offered compassion.