Jack was hot, through every cell, and his nails were cutting into his palms, and the anger let him pretend that his heart wasn’t breaking.

Like this wasn’t his fault.

“You need to shut up, about me and about my—my family. You said it yourself, your family definitely fucked you up, so how dare—”

He wanted to hurt Theo right back, slicing him open. Theo just laughed.

“That’s how I know what I’m talking about. I never got a real hug, either.” He met Jack’s eyes, and Jack could tell that it was probably the last time he’d see him so raw, so open.

So breakable.

“But I was willing to try. With you. I thought—”

“What?” Jack’s voice cracked, almost desperate.

“You said you loved me, you son of a bitch, and I fucking believed you.” Theo was all white now, ghostly. “And I had never—not to anyone—” He shook his head, yelled, “Fuck! You’re just like everybody else. A user. Just like my fa—”

His voice broke with grief. He stopped himself, closed his eyes, and opened them with a sneer fixed firmly on his face.

“So go on, use Margaret and her family up until they hate you, just like your fucking mother did. Just don’t ever, ever come crawling back to me to make you feel better about your miserable life.”

Theo turned, staring back out into the street. And then without deigning to look over his shoulder, he spoke, quietly, the last words that Jack would get from him for nineteen years.

“I’m not your whore anymore. Get the fuck out of my apartment, Gardner.”

Jack stood, picked up his suitcase, crossed to the door, and closed his eyes in shame when he heard a broken voice behind him.

“You’ve taken everything I had to give.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Fuck!”

That was a Ming vase he’d just shattered against the wood-paneled wall of his study. Quite a lot of money to throw away, but at the moment, he could not have cared less.

Once he’d walked out of Jack’s building, he’d found the nearest corner shop and bought a pack of menthol cigarettes. Then, after a fast and angry internal debate, he’d gone into a liquor store and bought a bottle of whiskey, and then he’d come home, and he’d started throwing things.

He was too old for this.

It felt fantastic.

He wanted to die.

“Theo—what—” Mother entered the study, looking at the destruction with wide eyes. He wondered if she cared more about him or about the things he had bought for her.

It wasn’t fair. He knew she cared now, but he had a whole lifetime of carrying her apathy, and right now that bitter burden was a comfort.

He lit up a cigarette, took a shot straight from the bottle. “I’m not in the mood for company, Mother.”