Name. Easy enough.Social security number.Okay.Address—There I got stuck. I didn’t have an address. Not one I could call my own. Admitting to squatting at the same address as the shelter was probably bad. I didn’t actually live at Theo’s. I hadn’t had a long-term address since…was it Albuquerque?
I shoved my chair back and stood. “I don’t think this is going to work.” I ducked out of the room, hurried through the lobby, and pushed out the door to the street. The cool air was a relief on my face.
I heard footsteps behind me and didn’t turn. The steps slowed, stopped. I already recognized how Theo moved, but I couldn’t find any words, just waited for him to speak.
“I’m sorry.” His voice came soft and low.
His apology, when I was the one who’d walked out, made me look around. “What? Why areyousorry?”
“I feel like I pushed you into this. The shelter’s Arthur’s dream, and turning my grandparents’ legacy into something useful, with a side order of giving them the bird, is mine. We didn’t ask yours.”
I shrugged.
“What do you actually want?” Theo eyed me steadily, his head tilted.
I want you.That realization dug its way out from where I’d buried it.I want to be useful, I want to mean something in the world, and most of all, I want you.I’d finally found a guy who looked at me like I was worth keeping, who let me help and support him sometimes, a guy who didn’t walk away after fucking me. Theo was special. I wanted his blond curls and his sad eyes and his smiles that turned his face bright, his caring heart and his thoughtful silences and his love of books. No one had ever made me feel like Theo did, like there was more to me than the drifter with the cat, good for a fuck or a laugh now and then, but forgotten the moment a guy walked away.
I couldn’t have him forever, of course. And the more entangled with him I got, the harder it would be to let go later. “What about you?” I countered. “You live in San Diego, you work there. How are you going to help with the shelter? Like, Skype meetings?”Wouldn’t that be fun, seeing Theo on a library screen somewhere, knowing he was fifty miles away? Not.
“I’m staying in Gaynor Beach for now,” he said. “Looking for my next project here.”
“And the one after that?”
“Hopefully.” Theo took a step toward me. “I never really liked the big city. Yeah, the opportunities are better in San Diego, and maybe there’ll be times when my next project isn’t right here in Gaynor Beach, but I’m thirty. I have a boring condo down there I don’t care about, that’s just a place to store my stuff. I want a home.”
Thatword stabbed me in the gut.Yeah, I want a home too.I could pretend I loved the free roaming life, seeing the country, nothing to tie me down, but I’d spent enough time in dirty buildings, fixating on every word on the page of a novel so my mind wouldn’t wander to a picture of a cheerful room and a couch for Mimsy and a man on that couch, looking at me… “I’ll be leaving, though. I always do.”
“Do you think you’ll ever find a reason to stay?”
“You’ll want a permanent guy someday. Someone who matches you.”
Theo looked sad. “I’ve had guys similar to me— twinks like I was when Rob said goodbye, and others who moved in my current circles. Every time, they dropped me for someone less complicated, more fun, more interesting, more willing to give them the moon. Maybe I’m just not worth staying for.”
“No!” I couldn’t let that stand. “They were all idiots. You are so worth it.”
“Then why are you planning to leave me too?” he asked, the words barely above a whisper.
The question brought me up short. “We’re not that. Not really together, I mean.”
“We’re not? We share a bed, a house, seven dogs.”
“For two days! That’s… it’s convenient. It’s temporary.” My heart sped up. I couldn’t afford to believe anything else.
“So living with me is just convenient for you?”
I flinched at the glitter of challenge in Theo’s eyes. “I meant it was for you. So I can take care of Foxy.”
“Shane.” Theo moved closer. “You are the farthest thing from convenient, and I never want you to move out. This morning, waking up and seeing you in my bed? It was like all my past dreams clicked. I wanted to get on my knees and beg you to stay and make you breakfast and offer you a hot shower and… whatever. Anything I could give you that might make you decide I was worth taking a chance with. Any effort, any change you wanted, so you wouldn’t leave. That’s not about beingconvenient.”
My chest went tight till I couldn’t breathe. Hope and panic warred inside me. No one ever wanted me like that. Not even my parents. Not to where they wanted to give me more than they could ever get back. “You’re nuts.”
“Maybe. But it’s a kind of nuts I think I’ve needed for a long time.” He reached out slowly and pressed his fingertips to my chest over my heart. “You don’t need to help with the shelter. Or anything else. Just give me a chance.”
My pulse roared in my ears. A big piece of me wanted to grab my pack and Mimsy and run, to hit the road, where the pains of living rough were familiar and expected, and wouldn’t rise up out of nowhere to cut me off at the knees. Theo could hurt me worse than I’d ever been hurt. But I realized then, with a certainty that took my breath, that if I ran, I’d never find anyone better than Theo. I could spend my life alone, but that wasn’t what I’d dreamed of, in quiet, private moments. And if I didn’t take a chance now, for this man, I never would. I forced the word, “Okay,” past the tight lump in my throat.
“Really?” Theo’s eyes went bright as the sun overhead.
“I’ll try. I might be terrible at… at whatever people do long term, but I’m willing to give it a shot. With you.”
