When Theo kissed him, they clicked right into place—Theo’s smirking lips tilting, covering his, and it was like dancing, and running over the green field, and laughing in lamplight, and drinking hot cinnamon liqueur; it was bath oil and champagne; it was being so terribly young, and growing so beautifully old.

Jack Gardner had always wanted Theo Beaumont.

This time he intended to keep him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

There in the study, with Jack finally kissing him, this older man he had loved so fully and so foolishly when they both were young, Theo closed his eyes, and he was finally warm. His body was here, and yet he was eighteen, free, back in Cork, and he was so full of memory, the way Jack tasted, his scent, the small sounds of their paired brokenness, and the years meant nothing.

He was home.

Warmth glowed under Theo’s skin.

His body was long, muscles singing after his shift at work, everything stretched out from lifting and scrubbing, his mind buzzing with his new assignments, and Theo felt the quiet pleasure of working hard and being noticed. He fit here; he existed in a new way.

September was just a few days away. He had a sense of forward momentum which he, for the first time, participated in—controlled. No one dictated his path; even as he obeyed whatever demands Colin made of him, he knew that he did it for himself. For his own happiness and for his own survival.

And he had Jack.

Theo had fought against himself for so long.

This walk back to his apartment had become one of the best parts of his day. Cork was so temperate, a hint of heat and a breath of cool air, and he felt at home—if it rained his body sang a song of poignant melancholy, and if the sun shone to burn the sky he felt wild and loose like each cell could split, his body and soul breaking into a million small parts and flinging those parts into the universe. And if he let his awareness float, eyes unfocused, he could settle into a dream state which felt more real than he had ever anticipated. A dream of the man waiting for him.

He felt like one of those stories he had read to himself as a child. A lover; a god. An epic poem. A play.

Sometimes Jack would walk into the city, meet him at the door of the club, but—Theo liked this. The loneliness which came with the knowledge that the loneliness was temporary.