And Theo read them stories, so many stories, because he wanted to teach them to dream—

And Alexia, so much stronger than he was, sat him down and said, firmly, lovingly, “It’s time.”

And on many of those days, he didn’t think about Jack, really.

It was a lie, but a necessary one.

He didn’t know that on all of those days, Jack was thinking about him.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jack Gardner had always wanted Theodore Beaumont.

And, as much as he hid from it, raged against it silently, locked it up in a dark bedroom with the cold and the spitting rain and the moldy crumbs—he knew exactly when wanting Theo shamed and bloody and broken had revealed itself as wanting to hold him and never let go.

Because Theo had been shamed, bloody, broken, lip split and barely breathing, and all Jack had thought was no, no, please—

I can’t live without him.

He had left him in that locker room—ran away, panicked, terrified of his own capacity for violence and the sudden knowledge, the true root of him, the explanation, the reason he kept going, day after day, Theo, hated, beloved, beautiful as he was baptized by his own blood. It was a hideous kind of love, nothing warm or soft about it. It wasn’t like the love he had for Meg, who was sweet and kind and a little acerbic and a lot stubborn, a girl who loved him back, who made him feel good about himself, and who felt like family already.

Jack felt a shard of something digging into his knee, probably cutting him. He stayed still, hardly breathing.

He couldn’t help but remember that boy in the locker room now. Theo sat, hunched over himself with his elbows on his knees, those long legs folded up, and he held the still-burning butt of a cigarette. A bottle of Bushmills sat next to him, not quite half gone. And he looked the same to him—all the years were meaningless, the laugh lines, the hair lightened by age—he was his Theo, the person he knew, down in his soul, he needed more than he needed air.

The person he’d injured, terribly. More than once.

The person he’d always, his whole life, woken up wanting to see, and the person he’d cleave to until he closed his eyes for the last time.

“You what?” Theo’s voice was like gravel. He stubbed out the cigarette. Cleared his throat.

“Beg. I’m here to—”

“Fuck off.”

“No.”

Theo stared, running his eyes from the top of his head to his knees. “You’re bleeding, Gardner.”

Jack looked down. The blue-and-white china had indeed cut him, and he was bleeding—maybe more than a little. “That would explain the pain, then.”

He stayed kneeling.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Theo took a swallow of whiskey. “Get up.”