They’d settled Will into his dorm room, posters on the walls, bookshelves jammed with science fiction paperbacks and thick textbooks and all that literature they were paying a ridiculous amount for teachers to shove into his head. Jack jogged back through campus, passing the old Japanese maple he’d climbed and hid in for so many hours as a teenager, and the running stream he’d fallen into while skipping study hall, and the lacrosse field where he’d shed so much blood. Parents and their children were still milling about, and despite the long years between his youth and adulthood, Jack was full of excitement and dread and that old longing, a kid at the candy store, a child without a home. He barely looked around him, eager to get into the dorms and out without being noticed, and he ran right into the back of another parent.

Juniper. Sandalwood. Vanilla.

Fine, combed wool. Ice-blond hair.

Oh, shit.

He was going to throttle Will.

Theo Beaumont turned, elegant, still. He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit, tie loosened around his neck and top button undone, a gold watch, shined shoes. Jack suddenly felt underdressed and unfashionable, just as he had twenty years ago.

He’d spotted him in the distance—of course he had—while getting Will into his dorm, though he’d tried not to think about it; he had a son, too, in Will’s year, with the same chilly looks but a big toothy grin. They’d been filling out forms at the reception desk, designer luggage handed over to be carried up by school staff, and Jack had turned away, face hot. He didn’t want—he had really tried not to look—he forced himself not to even though, God, he needed—

Now Jack couldn’t look away. Theo’s hair was long again, no longer asymmetrical and uneven, and his skin was still flawless, enriched by the few fine lines showing the decades between that summer after their senior year and today. His eyes held a hint of warmth—maybe he’d been softened by fatherhood, by marriage—but they were gray and frosted as he regarded Jack. Despite the subtle differences, he looked—it was still him, unequivocally. Still Theo—still so beautiful.

Nothing had changed.

Jack hadn’t talked to Theo in nineteen years.

And everything had changed since then.

“Gardner.”

“Um, hi. Sorry, I—” Jack felt like he’d been hit with a blast of ice. He was frozen to his spot, here on the red brick lane, in the shade of pear blossom trees, the thick wet scent of Baltimore in September.

He looked so much the same. He even smelled the same.

Jack was, very quickly, losing the plot.

Theo rolled his eyes. “Is there a reason you’re holding a Gwynns jacket?”