Page 102 of Make Me Mean It

He hums, and when I glance back, he’s already coming towards me with his shirt hanging open.

I stay where I am as he closes the distance, pulse picking up with every step until he’s right there, and I can feel the heat coming off his bare skin.

“What’s up?” he asks, shrugging his shirt from his shoulders and tossing it towards the laundry basket.

I should go shower, but I’m still standing there watching Theo turn away from me, the same question that’s been eating at me since we left the alley refusing to stay buried.

“Do you regret it?”

Theo pauses with his back half turned, and the sharp breath he takes is small enough that I might have missed it if I wasn’t watching him so closely. By the time he looks at me, the surprise is already disappearing, his features settling into careful indifference but not quickly enough.

“Fucking hell.” He drags a hand over his jaw. “Are you seriously asking me if I regret sleeping with my best friend’s straight kid brother?”

My back goes up. “I’m not his kid brother-”

“You might as well be for how fucking off limits you are.”

I stare at him, frustration prickling beneath my skin, because he’s talking about Marcus and rules and every reason this was a terrible idea, when none of that tells me whether he’d take back what happened between us if he could.

“Whatever. That’s not what I meant anyway,” I say, looking away.

Theo hooks his fingers into the waistband of his jeans and stops. I’m still watching his hands when his brow lifts, and heat burns up my neck as I finally meet his eyes.

“Okay,” he says slowly, and the button pops open beneath his fingers. “Then what did you mean?”

“You said you don’t, uh-” I wet my lips, trying to get the question out while Theo’s gaze drops straight to my mouth. “Take?”

He exhales through his nose and pulls down his zipper, and despite myself, my eyes follow the movement. By the time I manage to look away, his jeans are already sliding down his legs.

“I don’t,” Theo says, stepping out of them.

There’s no hesitation in the answer, but he won’t look at me when he says it, and that’s all I can focus on. I need to see his face. Need to know whether the words match whatever is happening behind them.

“Okay?”

I grab the bottom of my shirt and pull it over my head, throwing it towards the laundry basket, and Theo’s eyes finally come back to me. They trail lower over my chest before his nostrils flare and he forces them back to my face.

“Then why?”

His shoulders tense. “Why what, Connor?”

The irritation in his voice catches against my own, already stretched thin from trying to get a straight answer out of him.

My hands go to my jeans. “Why did you let me fuck you?” I tear the button open, holding his gaze now. “Why did you get on your knees for me? Just-” I shove the denim down my hips. “I don’t fucking know, Theo. Take your pick.”

Theo swallows, throat moving beneath my stare before his expression closes off and he turns away.

“Fuck.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Drop it.”

“No,” I say.

Theo goes still with his back to me, but I move closer anyway.

“I don’t know how.”

I hate how that sounds. Hate that I’ve just handed him something I can’t take back, but I’ve spent the entire drive trying to shove this somewhere it won’t bother me, and I’m still fucking here, needing to know why it was me.

Why he let me.