Outside was a spitting autumn rain, ozone, that smell of concrete, and they were damp, but the music here was so scalding that he almost felt steam rising from him. That chilled place had begun to boil, at least for the moment. He was syrupy, occupying this space, sliding into hot water, piano and cello and upright bass.

He felt that warmth gather low in him. He couldn’t stop; he was alive, awoken.

Soon he would see him.

He hadn’t known that the absence of something could hurt like this, like a crucial part of a symphony unplayed.

Meg’s eyes had opened, and she was watching him, and she saw it all on his too-naked face, and she pitied him. She didn’t have it in her to be angry, not really, because he’d stuttered it all out, all of it, in that horrible conversation when he’d spilled himself to her. And she—she understood it all, even this lie he had told, because she did love him. But he had hurt her, and here they were, in a usual place, doing this usual thing, and all he could think about was Theo. And she knew.

Theo lived in his head—the Theo from the nightclub, and from their bed; the Theo who almost broke his nose, and the Theo who kissed him. But it was another Theo who was so dangerous, because it was a man he claimed as his own now, in this new life, a Theo who was a father, a Theo he could go to the symphony with. A Theo borne entirely of his imagination, a fantasy, a silvered scar faded with time. It was that Theo, a golem, who’d broken up his marriage.

He had no idea if that person existed at all.

Beethoven eased into him, as seductive as the heavy beat of the dance floor. He lost himself.

He dreamed.

Music blasted into the toilets, pounding into his chest.

Jack was still, trying not to reach out, trying not to touch that place—that imperfection—trying not to run his fingers over newly discovered roughness.

Theo was so close, smelling like alcohol and sweat and vanilla.

“Like what you see? This is all you.”

Theo’s face had always been perfect, but now—now there was a silvery scar bisecting his upper lip, and Jack remembered with a visceral pull that horrible fight, the most profound act of brutality he had ever committed.

And now, here in this shadowed bathroom, lights flickering, he saw the results of his anger—that silvery scar on Theo’s lip, and he knew that he’d be wearing Jack’s mark as long as he would bear the tattooed wings he’d spotted at Pride on his back. Jack’s violence would always be a part of him.

Something in Jack’s jeans twitched.

What the fuck.

Theo’s eyes widened. “You do, don’t you? Like what you see.”