“Empty,” I whisper.
I’m not entirely sure whether I’m filling in the answer for him or just describing how I feel, but Theo nods.
“Yeah.” His jaw clenches, and the hand resting on my hip flexes convulsively, digging into my flesh a little through the thin, soft material of my pants. “Ryland and Marcus are like brothers to me. More than fucking brothers. Better than brothers, because we chose each other. We aren’t in each other’s lives because of some accident of DNA or whatever. We’re in each other’s lives because we want to be. I’d do anything for either one of them. Lay down my fucking life.”
He stops, closing his eyes for a second as another tear slides down his temple.
“If someone told me where to go, what altar to lay myself down on to bring him back in one piece, I’d do it. I’d fucking run to do it.” His eyes open again, and the pain inside them burns so bright it nearly steals my breath. “But I don’t know where to go or what to do. I don’t know how to fucking fix this, and I don’t know how to live without him.”
Theo’s body shudders slightly, and I feel it in my own. His heartbreak is a visceral, palpable thing. I realize with a sudden rush of clarity that what he was doing yesterday—taking me to Doctor Adelman, making sure I took painkillers, bringing me a fresh change of clothes—was the same thing he did for his mom after his father died. He was trying to help me through it, to shoulder his own pain and help me bear mine at the same time.
And he’s known Marcus for most of his life. I’ve only known him for less than a month, even though it’s impossible to remember my life without him in it anymore.
My grief is eating a hole in my heart.
Theo’s must be a hundred times worse.
Bringing my hand up between us, I rest it against his chest. His skin is warm, and I can feel the heat on my palm even through his t-shirt. His heart gives a little stutter, pounding hard against his ribs as if in reaction to my touch.
I don’t think, don’t logically decide what to do next. I just reach out to the pain inside him, trying to soothe it and my own.
My head shifts forward on the pillow, and my lips press against his. The salty taste of tears lingers at the corner of my mouth, but it’s better than the taste of blood, and it’s tempered by the dark cherry and oak scent of him.
Theo reacts to my kiss immediately. His body doesn’t go stiff, exactly, but I can feel each of his muscles responding, coming alive under my touch. His lips move against mine, soft and unhurried, and his hand slides around to my lower back to pull me a little closer to him.
Our first kiss, in the alley the night Marcus beat the shit out of Greg, was hot and overwhelming, something that built from zero to one hundred so fast it almost scared me.
This kiss isn’t like that.
It builds slowly, achingly slowly, starting with little brushes of our lips and gentle swipes of our tongues, with breath shared in the space between us.
It’s… gentle.
This is the most gently I’ve ever been kissed, and it’s everything I need right now.
Theo rises up onto one elbow, rolling me onto my back and draping his upper body over mine as his tongue licks the sea
m of my lips. He pulls my lower lip between his, then releases it to pepper soft kisses to my cheeks, across the bridge of my nose, and along my jaw line.
I know he’s tasting salty tears just like I did earlier, and I get the strangest feeling that he’s trying to kiss the remnants of each teardrop from my skin.
With a soft noise, I turn my head and capture his lips again, sliding my tongue into his mouth as our kiss deepens.
It’s like we’re drawing the pain out of each other, exchanging pieces of our heartbreak through the connection between us, and although it doesn’t lessen the hurt, it diffuses it somehow, making it a little more bearable.
The slow, steady build of heat between us begins to burn hotter, and my chest rises and falls as I try to catch my breath. Theo breaks the kiss to glide his lips down the column of my throat, and my stomach clenches as my clit throbs. I roll us again, pressing him onto his back and draping my body over his, my legs straddling his lean hips.
Sometime in the middle of the night, he must’ve kicked off his pants to get more comfortable, and I can feel the growing shape of his cock through the thin material of his boxer briefs and my sleep pants. Resting my chest against his, I brace my hand on the mattress, my dark hair falling around my face like a curtain as I kiss him like I might never stop.
Honestly, in this moment, I don’t want to.
I want to keep rocking against him, tasting him, breathing him in. Stoking the slow-burning fire that flickers between us.
I want him to know that I’m still here. That he’s still here.
That we still have each other, and that we’ll get through this somehow.
He’s fully hard now, his cock throbbing between us, hitting the perfect spot on my clit each time I roll my hips against him and drawing little gasps of pleasure from me.