Theo wondered, despite himself, what he looked like. He slammed the paperweight on the desk. “It’s what I would do. If this,” he gestured at the room, the drawers of the desk pulled out, ruination everywhere, “Were happening to you.”

“I know.” Gardner’s nostrils flared. “I’m not like that.”

“No?” Theo licked his lips. “You sure?”

He stalked forward, stopping a foot away from Gardner, who was for some reason breathing heavily. His muscled chest rose and fell, and his skin was flushed.

“Isn’t this just what you’ve always wanted? To see me—to see us brought low like this? After everything I’ve—”

Gardner started to lift a hand. Theo could smell his skin.

It seemed terribly important that he not touch him right now.

Theo leveled his best—okay, not his best, but he was trying—glare.

Gardner dropped his hand, started to cross his arms, thought better of it, and made fists at his sides. Giving no quarter. “I—no, Beau.” His voice cracked, “Theo. I—I never wanted—”

Theo snorted, moved away. “I doubt that.”

He leaned back against his father’s massive desk, crossing his ankles and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Why are you here, Gardner?”

Gardner gritted his teeth. He looked angry, which was deeply insulting. Theo thought that if anyone should be angry, it should probably be him. “Oddly enough, I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to see if you were all right.”

“All right?” He laughed. “Yes, absolutely. Fantastically all right. Never been better.”

“And I wanted to...”

“What?”

“Fuck, Beau. I wanted to apologize.”

Silence. Jack looked pathetic, as if Theo had bullied an apology out of him, which he was sure he hadn’t. Jack ground his toe into the carpet, angry and red-faced. Theo’s lip tingled, not quite healed.

“Are you going to?” Theo tightened his fists in his pockets, fingernails digging into his skin.

“Theo—”

“Don’t say my name.” Theo felt his face thinning out the way it did when he was threatened and trying to scare people away. It was an uncontrollable reflex—he had been trained to be like this. “Don’t bother apologizing, either. I don’t have enough energy to care.”

Gardner looked away, humiliated, then squared his shoulders and regarded Theo with his typical mulish stare, which Theo had once thought was a sign of stupidity but now realized, much to his shame, was a show of strength. Theo felt stripped down, naked, assessed for flaws. There was something about his eyes, the way they cut into him, which didn’t feel—didn’t feel bad.

Fuck, he hated him, and why had he ever found him—

“Fine. Beau. Whatever.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “This was stupid.”

“A new sensation for you, I’m sure.”

Gardner slumped, defeated, and started to turn away.

Theo didn’t want him to go. God, he wanted—