Soundtrack for this chapter:
First—Cold War Kids*
When You Were Young—The Killers*
Can't Help Falling in Love—Ingrid Michaelson (cover)

13

Jules

Theo and I ordered far too much food at Aroy. Massive plates of satay, steamed dumplings, Pad Thai, and tamarind duck filled the center of our table. A few times, my eyes caught the bright yellow hue of the daffodils Theo brought for me, and each time I was reminded of the fact that after Will and I were married, he never once brought home flowers.

My parents and Will were still the main obstacles blocking my way to a real relationship with Theo; I didn't feel like it was fair to him to allow him to call me his girlfriend, or for me to call him my boyfriend, when I was technically still married. Even so, I felt like I was too deep to reveal to him that I was still married. He'd learn I'd been dishonest with him, and I worried that he would only look at it like I had led him on under false pretenses, like I wasn't serious about building something with him, or like I didn't care about his feelings. I cared about his feelings more than I cared about my own; that was precisely why I couldn't tell him.

Something happened to Theo in his past, something massive. I hadn't yet figured it out, but there was a deep pain behind his eyes at times, and I was still of the firm belief that ignorance was bliss, and what he didn't know couldn't hurt him any further.

When it was time to settle our check with the waiter, Theo didn't protest when I took out my wallet and asked if we could split the bill; that meant more to me than he could ever know. With my parents holding such heavy control over money that was once mine, and with Will constantly reminding me I'd never be able to afford the legal battle he'd be sure to pursue, handling my own money, the money I made purely from my own work, was something that was of the utmost importance to me. I'd never let someone control my finances again.

Theo slipped an arm around my shoulders as we walked from the restaurant to his car. It was cold in the crisp October air, but Theo was more than enough to keep me warm.

"I'm excited to see you play tonight. It'll be a different experience now that I know you."

"I'm excited for you to hear what we have to play. You were kind of my muse for some of the songs selections I sent the guys."

"Just 'kind of'?" I nudged him with my shoulder.

"Didn't want to inflate your ego too much. But you already know how often I think of you, Jules."

Before he opened my door, Theo let his head hover over mine, his lips so close I could almost feel the energy and desire bouncing back and forth between us. There was a question forming in his mind, but I didn't wait for him to ask it.

I closed the little space that was left between us and let the overwhelming emotions that coursed my veins when I was with him lead my movements. His mouth worked against mine in the sweetest way as his hands caressed the sides of my face, and my own hands came to rest on his hips. I felt a slight sting build in the very back of my eyes, and in my heart I knew that that was what real love felt like. The thought both terrified and excited me, and rather than dwell on what I was supposed to be feeling, I just let myself feel, and it felt more right than anything else I'd ever done.

"I..." shoved the words back down my throat. Not yet, Jules. Too soon.

With one last sweep of his thumbs over my cheekbones, Theo's lips set a final kiss on my forehead before opening my car door.

He drove us to a bar called Lounge 32 down in Back Bay. It was a swanky little place decked out with red velvet booths and moody lighting. A massive stage was set to the left of the bar, and beyond a small standing area were a few high tops. When we walked in, my eyes were drawn to a couple sitting at one of those tables; the woman had long auburn hair, and the man could've been mistaken for Theo.

Hand in hand, Theo led us to the table, and I hopped up onto one of the seats.

"I believe everyone has had a chance to meet each other prior to this, right?" Theo looked around the table.

"Sure have." I turned to Dan's girlfriend, Marnie, "I promise not to make you work on your night off."

She waved a playful hand between us. "No problem. Though with the way this one talks about you, I'm sure he'd get to you before I could if you were in need." She winked at Theo as the tips of his ears turned a slight shade of pink.

"Well, now that things have been made sufficiently awkward, I'm going to head backstage to change and help set up. See you all in a bit." Before turning from us, he leaned forward and kissed the top of my head, eliciting far more butterflies in my stomach than I thought it could handle.

Dan and Marnie seemed to exchange some form of nonverbal communication between them as they both looked at each other, and then at me.

"So...things are okay between you and Theo?" Dan's voice sounded as if he were trying to be conscious of his word choice.

"Oh, yes. Things are okay. Both of us seem to be dealing with a slight learning curve."

He laughed, and it helped bring the little tension there was down to nothing. "Theo likely has more learning to do than you. He means well, though. I know he does."

"I know he does, too." We exchanged smiles as the lights dimmed around us and Theo's tapping drumsticks counted the band in.

Whenever Theo's head wasn't banging along to the rhythm he was beating out on the skin of his drums, his eyes were locked on mine. It wasn't hard to identify which songs he'd chosen with me, with us, in mind. The song they started with was about feeling like you've finally met the person you've been waiting your whole life to meet and never wanting that person to let go. They then moved into a more lighthearted piece before following it with a song about being vulnerable and opening yourself up to the possibility of getting hurt by someone, purely for the reason that that person makes you feel like you are moving so quickly that you can barely keep your feet grounded.

They played a few more head bangers before their last song, which had more of an effect on me than any of the others. It was about accepting your past and moving on from it and opening yourself to something new, even if that meant having to take things slow. On Theo's final bang of his drums, I felt a single tear roll down my cheek.

Just as his kiss had filled my stomach with butterflies, the songs he played filled my heart with love, and I knew being unable to vocalize that feeling was going to be absolute hell.

After the band's final bow, all of the members crashed down from the stage, and Theo carved a path through the crowd right to me. Before any words were spoken, before I could give him an ounce of praise, his lips were on mine. When he pulled back, his brows furrowed as they noticed a streak on my cheek left by the rogue tear. His thumb slid across it.

"Why were you crying?"

I cleared my throat. "You were just, like, really good." A small roll of my eyes clued him into my true feelings, and he kissed the top of my head.

"I'm glad you liked it." He fidgeted with his hands for a moment. "It wasn't, um, too much?"

I shook my head. "Just enough."

He smiled, then pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down. Watching Theo interact with Dan was a trip. Their mannerisms were so similar, and at times they'd made the exact same face in reaction to something one of us had said. I had to imagine that Theo's deployment probably shook Dan up the most. In my mind, I pictured those two scars on Theo's chest, two scars that held what were likely Theo's deepest secrets. I was having a difficult time deciding how much I wanted to know about them.

Just before the bar was about to close down, I felt a warmth encapsulate my knee, and Theo, with eyes a little tired, raised his brows at me.

"About ready to head out?"

I nodded at him, and once outside we said our goodbyes to Dan and Marnie as they headed to Marnie's place to spend the remainder of the night.

The T station was lit up less than a hundred feet from where we were standing. Theo turned, looked at it, then turned back to me. His right hand gripped the back of his neck, and I could see his muscles straining under the swirls of ink on his arm.

"I hope this doesn't come across in a way that makes you uncomfortable, but I'd really prefer it if you didn't take the subway alone this late."

I studied his eyes. "I don't want to take the subway either."

"Okay. Great. Glad we both agree on that. You want me to drive you back to campus?"

I shook my head at him.

"Er, you want me to take the subway with you?"

"You're too kind to me, Theo. Can I stay at your house tonight? I want to talk about some things."

"Good things? Bad things?"

"Things that I couldn't tell you until now."

As if taking a blind leap of faith, Theo took my hand and walked us to his waiting car. His house was quiet when we walked in, granted, it was well past midnight, but Theo seemed to sense my question.

"Aiden's rarely here on the weekends. Still thinks he's in college most nights."

Up in his room, Theo rummaged through his drawers until he pulled out the Celtics shirt that had somehow become mine and handed it to me. "To sleep in?"

"Thanks."

"I'm going to take a quick shower. Feel a bit gross from playing. I'll be back soon." He left a soft kiss in my hair before exiting his room.

While he was gone, I took a moment to explore after slipping out of my clothes and pulling on his shirt. There was a picture on his desk I'd been looking at the last time I was in his room alone, but he had come back abruptly and I felt like I was invading his privacy and I set the picture down without even asking him about it. I walked back over to his desk and studied the image.

One of the boys in the photo was Theo, though you couldn't see his tattoos as he was dressed in his field uniform; did he even have them back then? It was clearly a picture from his deployment. The photo was bright with sunlight, and a cloud of sandy dust seemed ever present in the surroundings. Theo stood between two other boys, their arms around each other. Boys. I guess, technically, they were men, but they all looked so innocent, so fresh. I was too focused on the image to hear Theo return to his room.

Instead, I felt a warm hand rest on my shoulder. "That's Gabe on the left, Jake on the right. They were both in my unit when I was stationed in South Carolina."

"You look so young."

"It was seven years ago."

"I know, it's just..." I couldn't place the right words to use. I set the picture down and turned to find Theo behind me, just boxers hugging his hips. His skin was still damp from the shower, and I'd missed him so much in the week we were apart, and the picture, and the pain in his eyes, and then my thumb was resting in the indented circular scar on his chest, the tips of my fingers grazing the incision line that wrapped around his ribs. I wondered how far it trailed across his back. My right cheek came to rest over top of his heart, while one of his arms wrapped around my back and his free hand cradled my head.

I listened as his heartbeat quickened, then slowed. The air in his lungs sounded tight as his chest rose and fell. I felt a little air escape his lips through a sigh before he gave me a small squeeze.

"The bump on your head is gone."

He was as good at avoiding conversations as I was. "You nursed me back to health well." I pried myself off him, but I didn't want to let go. Theo's hands came to either side of my neck and I moved my face towards his to kiss him again. Every grace of his skin against mine was electric; it raised goosebumps across my body and made the little hairs that covered it stand on end. Every time my body had this reaction, a little piece of my memories from my life in Savannah dissipated from my mind.

When Theo let me go, I grabbed at his hands and tried to pull him towards the bed, but his feet stayed firm.

"I need to grab a shirt."

I felt my eyes narrow at him of their own volition. "You're in great shape. I wouldn't be offended if you slept without one."

He shifted on his feet a moment. "I, er, I don't like to sleep without one."

Things clicked in my head and I let go of his hands, which immediately flew to the back of his neck as he stalked over to his dresser.

Feeling a little shame, though my counselor brain was firing all kinds of synapses, I climbed into his bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Theo joined me moments later, a white t-shirt covering his torso. He held the covers up over us, and I took it as my cue to snuggle up against him. He turned off the light on his bedside table, plunging us into darkness.

"Theo?"

"Hm?"

"Can I ask you something about when you returned from your deployment?" He tensed under me for just a passing second.

"Course."

"Did you...do you have PTSD?" The hand of his that had been tracing light circles on my back stopped.

"That's what the shrink at the VA told me." His voice was cold, but if he'd been suppressing that for seven years, one day it was all going to spew out in worst way.

"Well, if you'd had an intense experience, and I feel it's safe to assume anyone who has seen combat would consider it intense, I can see why someone qualified to make that diagnosis may suggest that you were suffering from it." I tried to pick my words as carefully as possible; I wanted to help him, not cause him further pain.

"She didn't know what she was talking about. She made me feel like she was putting words in my mouth whenever I answered one of her fucking questions. She wasn't there. She never choose to put her life on the line for her country. She never had to give up a damn thing. How could you know how I felt?" His skin actually rose in temperature as his heart pounded in his chest.

"Okay. I'm sorry I asked; that was a very personal question, and I shouldn't have asked it. For the record, I never meant to insinuate that I knew how you felt, and I'm sorry if that's how it came across." That was one of the things they always stressed in grad school. Know when to back off, know when to stop pushing your client, and always be the one to apologize first. But Theo wasn't my client; Theo was someone I was falling in love with.

His breathing returned to normal, and his fingers resumed their drawings on my back. "Sorry, Jules. I, I didn't mean to say "you"; I meant that shri...counselor. I know you're just curious. I've lot going on up there, and maybe...maybe in time you can help me sort through it all, just, not tonight."

We laid in silence for a bit, Theo's chest rising and falling under my cheek, before he brought us back into conversation.

"You said you wanted to stay over so we could talk about some things. What did you want to talk about?"

"I want to start by saying that I really couldn't talk to you about these things until now. I don't want you to feel like I was purposely concealing this from you when you were somewhat part of it." The irony of concealing information from him was not lost on me, and my heart beat pangs of guilt.

"You're being very cryptic. What is this about?"

"When you came over on Monday night, I was already on edge, which probably also contributed to why I reacted so strongly to our little disagreement. You know I went to see Katie that morning. My next stop after the hospital was a meeting with that detective who called me after the accident last weekend."

"Did you remember something about the car you saw?"

"No. Katie revealed something to me about that night."

"She was involved?" I could feel his heart pick up its pace again.

"Not her, her boyfriend. And that little shit made her promise not to tell anyone. She was so wracked with guilt that she couldn't sleep. She said that was why she took those pills."

"You didn't believe that, right?"

"I don't know; it's complicated. She's never tried something like that before."

"It only takes one attempt." There was a defensive quality to his voice, and it almost felt like an argument was brewing between us. He also seemed to feel like we were headed in the wrong direction because he changed our conversation back to the accident. "Did they figure out who was driving? Was it her boyfriend?"

"One of his friends. The kid confessed when they brought him in for questioning, so it's pretty much a closed case now, which is why I can tell you. Just don't say anything about Katie to anyone."

"Who would I tell?"

I didn't respond immediately. I wanted so desperately to confide in him, to hear him tell me what I needed to hear. "She's very upset with me."

He held me closer. "You didn't have a choice, Jules."

"I know. But she hasn't tried to contact me once since I left the hospital. She usually emails me twice a day, and now that she's in a facility—sorry. I shouldn't be talking about this."

"You can trust me. I'm not going to divulge your secrets if you share them with me. I have more respect for you than that."

And he was going to think I had none for him.

"Theo, I should—"

"It's late, like closer-to-the-morning-than-we-are-to-the-evening late, and you deserve my full attention. We can continue this with clear heads in the morning."

But I knew that by the morning, I'd lose the nerve to tell him everything.

***

I spent most of the next day lazing around Theo's house with him; the morning started with some dual piano playing, settled into catching up on some Saturday football on TV, and ended in the early evening with a homecooked meal we both helped prepare. Theo had to work the night shift, so on his way to the station he dropped me back off at Parnassus. As I was leaving his car, a tiny part of me regretted not having been able to get everything out to him; maybe it was for the best.

"Thanks for the ride. I'll see you soon?"

"Whenever you want. Just text or call, okay?"

"Okay." I started to back away, but then I felt his energy pulling me back to his car window. "Be safe." That was as close to I love you as I was willing to get.

He smiled. "You be safe too."

I never heard his tires start to pull away because he waited until I was fully in my building before driving off; had it been my parents or Will, it would have felt overbearing. But I didn't feel that way about Theo anymore, not after he'd been so willing to learn and grow with me.

Theo and I didn't get to see each other the rest of the weekend as he spent Sunday recouping from his overnight Saturday shift. But it was okay because we'd already made plans for a very fall appropriate date the following weekend.

Taking things slow with Theo (though I kind of already regretted telling him I wanted to slow things down) meant that we were going to see each other on weekends and avoid spending too much time together as we had during our first encounters, but that quickly changed when I was getting ready to leave work halfway through the week.

Wednesday evening, just as I was about to power down my computer, I clicked on my little email icon to check my mail one last time before leaving. There was a single new email waiting for me; it was from Katie Cassidy, and it was angry. Very angry.

A/N: Hi! How are you? I hope you're doing well :)

Question: What do you think of Sunday updates replacing Friday updates? I think having the weekend leading into an update, rather than following one, would give me more time to refine each chapter (as it is NOT EASY to write during the week when I'm working full time lol). Let me know what you think :)

Otherwise, please vote and comment and chat with me!

Was this my shortest author's note ever? I think so 😜

Have a lovely weekend!

-L