เข้าสู่ระบบ"Hurts you? He will. He'll try. That's what he does." Theo's voice was steady, certain, the voice of someone who'd survived his own damage and knew the terrain. "But you're not nine anymore. You're not seventeen. You're a man who faced down a board coup for the person he loves, who lets me put my socks in the wrong drawer, who made kimchi jjigae for breakfast—" A wet laugh. "—okay, I made the kimchi jjigae. But you ate it. That's growth."Kieran laughed — broken, tearful, real — and pressed his forehead against Theo's."Come with me.""To Boston?""To Boston. To the hospital. To whatever this is." Kieran's hands found Theo's waist, gripping hard. "I can't do this alone. I've done everything alone my whole life, and I'm done. I want you there. I need you there.""I'll be there." Theo kissed him — soft, fierce, a promise sealed. "I'll always be there."They drove to Boston the next morning.Kieran's driver took the sedan, and they sat in the back — Theo's hand on Kieran's thigh, thumb d
The phone call came at noon.Kieran was in his home office — a glassed-in corner of the second floor that looked out over Central Park — when Margot's name flashed on his screen. Not unusual; she called a dozen times a day. But something in the timing, in the way the phone had rung exactly once and stopped — as if she'd rehearsed the moment — made his stomach tighten."Margot.""Kieran." Her voice was careful. Too careful. The voice she used when delivering news that couldn't be softened. "I just received a call from a law firm in Boston. Whitmore & Associates. They're representing your father."The world went very quiet.Kieran hadn't heard the word father spoken aloud in eleven years. Not since he'd stood in a courtroom at nineteen and legally emancipated himself from the man who'd spent his childhood teaching him that love was conditional, affection was leverage, and the only person you could rely on was yourself.Richard Voss had been a venture capitalist — successful, ruthless, l
Moving in, Kieran discovered, was an act of war.Not with Theo — never with Theo, who unpacked his books with the quiet reverence of a curator installing an exhibition and folded his clothes into Kieran's closet like he'd always been there. The war was internal, fought in the space between Kieran's ribs, every new object that entered the penthouse a small invasion that his control-freak instincts registered as a threat.Theo's toothbrush in the bathroom — electric blue, bristles still damp from that morning. A row of spices on the kitchen counter — gochugaru, sesame oil, things Kieran couldn't pronounce. A record player in the living room, because of course Theo had a record player, and now the penthouse that had been silent for years hummed with Chet Baker and Nina Simone and artists Kieran had never consciously listened to but was already learning to love.It had been eleven days. Kieran was losing his mind."You're staring at my sock drawer again." Theo appeared in the bedroom door
The bedroom was different from the rest of the penthouse.Theo stopped in the doorway and stared, and Kieran watched his face cycle through surprise, fascination, and something that looked almost like tenderness.The walls were dark — not white, not grey, but a deep navy that absorbed the city light from the windows and gave the room the feeling of being underwater. The bed was enormous, dressed in charcoal sheets that looked like they'd never been slept in. But the surfaces — the nightstand, the dresser, the windowsill — were cluttered, in a way that contradicted everything the rest of the penthouse proclaimed.A stack of books with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. A watch with a scratched face, too old to be current, too worn to be decorative. A photograph in a simple frame — a woman, dark-haired, fierce-eyed, holding a toddler on her hip. A ceramic mug with a chip on the rim, clearly handmade, clearly loved."You keep it all hidden," Theo said softly, moving into the room like h
The pipe burst at two in the morning.Kieran's phone rang once — Theo's name on the screen — and by the second ring he was already out of bed, pulling on clothes, because Theo never called at two in the morning. Not once, in five months of whatever this was — love, they called it now, the word still new enough to make Kieran's chest flutter every time it left Theo's mouth — had Theo called him in the dead of night."Hey." Theo's voice was strange — not panicked, exactly, but thin. Forced-casual in the way that meant the opposite. "So, fun fact: apparently buildings from 1904 have pipes that are also from 1904.""Where are you?""In my apartment. Standing in four inches of water. Watching my bookshelf slowly become a boat." A pause, and then the forced lightness cracked: "Kieran, the water is everywhere. I don't — the super isn't answering, and I turned off the main valve but it's still coming, and I don't know what to—""I'm on my way. Don't touch anything electrical."He drove too fa
"I'm not asking you to be." Theo pulled back just enough to look at him, thumb sweeping across Kieran's cheekbone. "But I need you to trust me. Not just that I won't go back to him — that was never in question — but that I can handle this. That we can handle this. Without you spiraling into some protective frenzy where you try to control every interaction I have.""I don't control—""You fired a vendor last month because he flirted with me at a lunch meeting.""He was inappropriate.""He complimented my tie." Theo's tone was fond despite the words. "Kieran. I love that you're protective. I love that you care. But if every man who looks at me becomes a threat in your mind, we're going to spend our relationship fighting ghosts instead of building something."Kieran closed his eyes. Theo was right — of course he was right. Theo was always right, in that infuriating, luminous way that made Kieran want to argue and agree simultaneously."I'll try.""That's all I ask."The trying lasted app







