Chapter 10: : Chapter 10

Theo lives in Cole Valley, an upscale neighborhood in the middle of San Francisco. His street is quiet, lined with single-family homes, shaded by tall trees shimmering in a gentle breeze. Sutro Tower stretches at the top of the hill dead-ending the street, glinting in the setting sun.

It’s not what I expected for him. I assumed he’d be in some fancy apartment, not shacked up in a home that looks unassuming, at least from the outside. It’s Victorian style, painted slate gray with a brick façade. Near the arched doorway, bougainvillea crawls up the wall.

I park in front of his driveway as directed, a relief since there’s no street parking to be found, then grab the canvas bag packed with my laptop, the map, and a spiral notebook crammed with s.

My camera’s in there, too. I grabbed it impulsively, shoved it into the bag before I could think too hard about why I wanted it.

My gaze travels up to the second-floor bay windows, spilling out golden light.

I’m nervous, and I’m pissed that I’m nervous, and I’m pissed that I’m wearing a dress, too. It’s a casual black cotton one, but it skims my body the way I’d want a man’s hands to. I thought about Theo’s hands when I put it on, and I want to be pissed about that, too. Instead, I’m confused. What am I supposed to do about an attraction to a man I don’t even like?

I stride up to the front door, knocking briskly. On the doorjamb is a Ring camera. I stare at it when he doesn’t immediately answer, knocking again.

Theo’s voice calls out from the Ring, “I didn’t realize we were dressing up tonight, Shep.”

“Don’t take it personally. It has everything to do with not wanting to put in the effort to wear pants.” I knock again, just to be a pain in the ass. “Will you open the—”

The door swings open, and there he is, phone in hand. He puts his mouth up to the speaker, his eyes on me, the tiniest smirk pulling at his lips. “It’s nice.”

His voice echoes all around—here in front of me, through the Ring. It sets my teeth on edge, that backward velvet feeling vibrating through me.

I run my gaze from the top of his tousle-haired head, down his shirt-and-Levi’s-clad body, all the way to his bare feet. When I get back to his face, I widen my eyes in mock amazement. “I’m sorry, did you just compliment me?”

“Don’t take it personally,” he echoes. “I tell my accountant he looks nice all the time, too.”

“It’s a slippery slope to earnest compliments, Spencer.”

He tilts his head, appraising me. “I don’t expect you to let me get that far. You’ve never been one for accepting my compliments.”

“You’ve never been one for giving them to me.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening.”

“Trust me, I was.”

I want to snatch the words back immediately. The truth is, I was always plugged in to everything Theo said and did back in high school; I wanted to say and do it better. I remember every bit of praise he ever gave me, however grudging, because I ate it up like candy.

I don’t know how to exist in an earnest space with Theo, but he saves us both, stepping back to reveal a staircase that ends at a landing. His teasing expression smooths out into something careful. “I’ll get some practice in on Isaiah, then, and get back to you. In the meantime, come in.”

I take the stairs with Theo right behind me. There’s an awareness between us as we walk up together, his quiet footsteps falling in sync with my sandal-clad clacking. I swear I feel his eyes everywhere, but when I look back, his gaze is focused over my shoulder.

I don’t know if I’m disappointed or not. And if I am disappointed, what does that mean? I want him to look at me? To touch me?

Maybe being in Theo’s house alone with him was a bad idea, but I need to numb myself to his irritatingly strong magnetic pull if we’re going to travel together. So I straighten my shoulders and keep climbing.

“Stop breathing down my neck.”

“I’m not breathing down your neck. I’m .”

I exhale sharply. “Do it less, then.”

“Breathe less?”

“Yes, breathe less, Spencer, that’s exactly what I mean.”

An amused huff hits the nape of my neck, but Theo doesn’t say anything else. In the resulting silence, my keystrokes on my laptop sound like thunderclaps.

We’re set up at the kitchen island post-dinner, and Theo’s been curved over me for the past ten minutes, watching as I add to our itinerary. Distracting me.

As we ate on the back patio earlier, I eyed Theo between our fits of sparring, wondering what his life looks like. Not the one printed in or any of the myriad industry rags he’s mentioned in, his life inside this house when he’s not Theo Spencer, CFO. It was jarring to realize I actually want to know.

I refuse to think too hard about why that is.

Once dinner was over, we moved into the kitchen to get to work. I emptied out my bag, popped open my laptop, and let Theo spread out the map, trying not to notice the way his palms smoothed over the paper, how his thumbs circled the curled-up edges, coaxing them into flatness.

But I’m wine lubricated, and so is he. My eyes have been lingering, and over the past hour he’s been slowly swaying his way into my personal space.

Now I’m painfully aware of how close he is, the way his body lines up against mine. I’m tall, but so is he, and so his chest brushes right up against my shoulder blades, his jaw grazing against my ear every time he leans in to look at my screen. When he pressed up against my back, complaining about one of the hikes I put down for Yosemite, I nearly turned around. To push him away or pull him closer, I still don’t know.

But if he doesn’t stop breathing down my neck, one option is inevitable.

“I’m not going to type faster with you staring at the screen,” I say.

“Well, you sure as hell can’t type any slower.”

I turn my head until his face comes into my periphery, letting my finger descend onto the key.

“Let me guess, the next letter is ” he says dryly.

“Sorry, you’ll have to buy a vowel.”

“Pretty sure I can solve the puzzle, Shepard.”

God, he’s annoying, and yet I have to press my lips together so he won’t see my cheek rise in a smile. He’s close enough to catch the barest twitch. Which means he’s still too close I push my elbow into the hard slab of his stomach. “Seriously, I can’t do this with you up my ass.”

Theo’s wicked, smoky snicker winds its way down my spine as he steps away. “Let me buy you a drink first.”

“It would take more than one, trust me,” I mutter.

We’ve got a robust plan filled out on an Excel spreadsheet now, although it took an exorbitant amount of back-and-forth to get there. Our first stop in Yosemite is fully booked via the Where To Next site, as is our overnighter in Las Vegas. We’ve plotted out our Utah and Arizona stops, too.

“We should do an Airbnb outside of Zion,” I muse, clicking through the site.

“Sure, whatever.”

“I bookmarked a few options. Do you want to look?”

He shakes his head, leaning an elbow on the counter as his gaze roams over the mess I’ve made. “You’re the boss here.”

Something like purpose flares in my chest. I am the boss, at least in this little corner of my life, and getting to fill that role over Theo feels unsurprisingly good.

Still, he’s playing typical role to perfection. “Funny, since you’ve fought me on every decision so far.”

“Not every decision, but we’re not camping with an octogenarian.”

I sigh, toggling over to an adorable cabin outside the park. “I know I’m going to pick a place, and you’re going to bitch about it when we get there.”

Theo lifts a lazy shoulder. “You know my requirements.”

“Yeah, yeah, enough rooms and beds for all,” I mumble, exiting out of the site. I’ll figure it out later.

Theo’s quiet while I color code some columns. It’s almost . . . nice. It’s so nice, in fact, that I get suspicious as I finish up and save the document, then shut my laptop. I dart my eyes sideways, trying to look at him without him me looking. But his attention is on something else, anyway.

“Why are you staring at my camera?”

“Because you brought your camera,” he says.

“And?”

He rolls his eyes. “

I’ve gotten the impression that’s not something you do.”

I open my mouth to brush it off, to deflect or make some pithy remark about how he’s taking notes on me. But something about the way he’s looking at me—challenging, but without judgment—has me holding back a verbal bite.

Instead, I eye the camera, frowning at the smudge of dust marring the mode dial. I thought I wiped it off earlier.

My eyes slide from the reminder of my neglect to Theo. “I’m thinking about documenting our trip.”

His brows lower in confusion. “I thought that was a done deal. You and my granddad are going to pal around with your Canons or whatever he’s using these days.”

“I meant like on social media. TikTok.”

“Oh,” he says, surprised. “You’re going to post more videos?”

“I . . . maybe. The one I posted is still popular. People want an update on us.” Theo straightens, and I hold up my hands. “I’d do a mix of stills and video, landscape stuff. I wouldn’t put you and Paul in it, other than potentially narrating his and Gram’s story as we go. I can give an update without even including you, actually.”

Theo’s mouth curves microscopically. “By all means, pretend I don’t exist.”

My gaze skims over him from head to toe before I can stop myself.

.

“What will you get out of the TikTok thing?”

I square my shoulders, considering the question. “To tell a story, I guess. To remember it. To feel like the photos I’m taking serve some sort of purpose. To see if people even care.”

He nods, and we get caught in a moment where there’s no snark or deflecting. It lasts a second, maybe two. As long as it would take me to press my finger against the shutter release. As long as it takes me to capture an image forever.

I break away first, blinking down to the counter. “We never talked about how weird it must’ve been to see your granddad in some random video.”

He snorts out a laugh, sliding a hand along the marble counter as he moves closer. “It was pretty bizarre. I signed up a while ago because we have a big presence there. Eventually I got sucked into this vortex of, like, an hour of mindless scrolling before I went to sleep every night. The night I saw your video, I’d taken a sleeping pill. Thought I was hallucinating.”

I fiddle with my earrings. “I’ll bet you never imagined it’d play out this way.”

“No.” His voice is quiet as he watches my fingers. “I definitely didn’t have this on my bingo card.”

I clear my throat. “So, are you cool with me documenting some of the trip?”

He blinks and rocks back on his heels, running a hand through his hair. “That’s fine. Granddad will be into it.”

My chest warms at the thought, and I see a sudden snapshot of my Sunday morning explorations with Gram. She’d find the most picturesque places—Muir Woods, Cowell Ranch Beach, Land’s End—and watch me take a million pictures with a smile. We’d exchange our latest secrets over lunch, which, post-college, were either juicy details about my dating life or my anxiety over never accomplishing anything worthwhile.

We’d sit together at her iMac after lunch, which she only bought because I’d mentioned once I wanted a desktop but couldn’t afford it. She never touched it except when I was uploading my photos or looking something up for her. We’d sit side by side, and she’d watch while I edited the best shots and ordered prints for her.

“Looks like you’re accomplishing something to me,” she said once, pointing to the screen.

“You’re biased,” I scoffed.

She shook her head. “You’re already doing great things, Ellie. You’re young still and figuring out what that looks like. Give it time.”

She always told me how my photos painted stories without words, and that’s what I’m attempting here. Paul’s potential excitement feels like that memory revisited. Like an accomplishment in its own right.

“Shepard.”

I startle out of my thoughts to find Theo watching me. It’s clear by the volume of his voice he’s been trying to get my attention, but his expression isn’t irritated. I couldn’t give it a name if I tried.

I rub at my aching chest. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Are you taking pictures tonight?”

“Oh.” I look over at the camera. “No.”

He nods his chin in the same direction. “Then why’d you bring that?”

The challenge in his voice is back, as if he knows I packed it to use it, only to chicken out.

“Just in case you had some photogenic spot in your house where I could set up an impromptu shoot.” My eyes roam around the sparkling room. Behind the massive, empty dining room table there’s an honest-to-god fireplace. “Unfortunately, no dice.”

Theo isn’t impressed. “You’re going to have to pick it up at some point if you want to do this.” He motions to the map. “Why not now?”

My heart beats faster. It’s a mix of fear, anticipation, and grief, a rejection even as my mind imagines the shot: the map spread out on the counter with Theo’s hand pressed over it. I’d take only half of his hand in frame, get the tension in his wrist, the blanching of his knuckles and the way his fingers web out over Arizona and New Mexico. When I retouched later, I’d make sure the veins traveling down his hand looked like its own roadmap.

But I can’t do it. Not yet, and not with Theo watching me.

“I haven’t taken a picture in six months. Since my gram died. I—I’m not ready.” The confession slips out too easily. His expression goes infinitesimally softer, like he’s gone slightly out of focus behind my lens.

That was too much. I look at the clock on his microwave. It’s nearly eleven. “I should go.”

He doesn’t say anything, though he looks like he wants to, and I’m grateful for it. While I stuff my things into my bag, Theo folds the map up with careful hands. I pull my bag straps apart so he can tuck it safely between my notebook and laptop.

Neither of us speak as we make our way to the door. I take one last greedy visual sweep of his house. It really is beautiful, if very quiet.

Theo gets to the front door first and opens it, silently stepping back to let me by. He’s distracted, his gaze far away.

“See you next Friday.” I doubt I’ll see him before we leave for Yosemite.

But Theo catches my wrist before I can get too far. His grip is startling—not too tight, and incredibly warm. I swallow a gasp.

“Listen, I—we should be on our best behavior for this trip.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I just said.” Some of the attitude is back. I’m relieved, honestly; things were getting too cozy. “You and I tussle a lot, but this trip means so much to my granddad. He’s excited to do this with you, and I don’t want us at each other’s throats ruining the experience.” I open my mouth to prove his point, but he holds his hand up.

in my face. “For him you. I know it means a lot to you, too.”

This silences me, but only momentarily. “All right, best behavior. Got it.”

The hand in my face slips down into the space between our bodies, hovering near my waist and brushing against my forearm. He clearly doesn’t know how long his fingers are. “Truce?”

I laugh. “

Are we eleven?”

Theo rolls his eyes, and this time the graze of his fingers against my skin is purposeful. They skim down my wrist, wrapping around my hand. He manipulates his hold on me until we’re engaged in a handshake.

“I’ll make an effort to put up with you if you’ll do the same. It’s two weeks in close proximity. I don’t want it to get weird.”

I eye him, utterly aware of his skin against mine, of the flex of his fingers as they wrap more solidly around my hand. Thank god it’s dark out; I can feel how pink my face is, but he can’t see it.

“History isn’t on our side, Spencer.” My voice comes out softer than I planned.

His reply is equally soft. “We’re not the same people we were in high school.”

“Trust me, I know.” He appraises me, my subtext obvious. “You’re right. It’s fine. We can fake liking each other for two weeks. For Paul.”

Theo lets go of my hand, smirking. “No one said anything about liking, Shep.”

, I remind myself sternly as I make my way to my car.