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“Probably,” I said. Which was sad because I liked being fucked over the counter.

“All right, come on,” he replied. Pushing away from the counter, he took my hands and walked back toward our room. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Or,” I began suggestively. “We could just move this to the bed… where you can warm me up… naked.”

“I heard that!” Jude yelled from his room.

“Killjoy!” I shouted back, rolling my eyes. Laughing under his breath, Rhodes tugged me out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

“Quiet now, little wolf,” Rhodes murmured with that sexy grin of his. “I can’t fuck you senseless if you spend all night arguing with my brother.”

“I want that,” I whispered eagerly.

“Good, then get your ass in our bedroom before I change my mind,” he ordered.

That was all I needed to get moving. I slipped past him and hurried toward the bedroom with Rhodes following. He shut the door behind us. Somewhere on the other side of the house, Jude shouted something muffled that I couldn’t quite make out.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t help how it made me break down laughing all over again. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the lingering adrenaline, or simply being home, but standing there with Rhodes while Jude bitched at us through the walls, I felt ridiculously happy.

CHAPTER 89

Rhodes

Iwoke up reaching for Theo, but my hand found cold sheets instead. That pulled me awake faster than any alarm could have. I lay there staring at the space beside me as my mind did what it always did: it began cycling through all the places he could’ve been—bathroom, kitchen, living room, backyard. Maybe Jude had woken him up. Or maybe he couldn’t sleep.

I stopped myself before the list got any longer. There was no reason to go through all the possibilities. I just couldn’t help how my brain worked sometimes. I climbed out of bed, found comfortable clothes, and grabbed my phone. It wasn’t six yet. Fuck. I ran a hand over my face. It was going to be a long day.

Floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I made my way out into the hallway. I only made it to the living room before I found Theo. He was curled up in a chair, holding a mug of coffee in both hands as he stared out the window. There wasn’t a damn thing to look at out the window—the dark December morning made sure of that—which meant he was stuck inside his head, and that worried me.

“Hi,” I said softly. Theo startled slightly before looking over. A tired smile pulled at his mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” I told him. I crossed the room and sat on the couch opposite him. Part of me wanted to go straight to him, pull him out of the chair long enough to drag him into my lap, and just hold him through whatever was bothering him. But everything about his position in the chair told me he needed space, so I gave it to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Theo’s gaze drifted back out the window, and I waited. I let Theo have the silence he needed to work through whatever was going through his mind. Eventually, he exhaled slowly.

“I think I’m just…” he faltered as his thumb moved along the rim of his coffee mug. “I think I’m just stuck on the conversation with my parents.”

I simply nodded. That made sense. The shock was wearing off. What remained afterward was usually worse—the part where your brain stopped reacting long enough to start examining every word, every look, every moment you wished you could change.

“My dad said something, and I don’t know,” he continued, staring down at his coffee. “I just can’t get it out of my head.”

“Do you want to tell me?” I kept my voice deliberately neutral, even as something inside my chest tightened. Theo had told me just enough to understand what had happened. His parents knew he was gay, his father rejected it, and his mother told him to leave. That had been more than enough for me to know how they’d hurt him.

But that was all I knew, and it hadn’t been enough to stop me from wondering exactly what had transpired or what was said. I hadn’t asked because I wasn’t going to make Theo relive something simply because I hated being left in the dark.

“He basically told me I wasn’t gay because there was no way I was stupid enough to choose it.” His voice cracked slightly. “Not after everything he’d done for me—everything he’d put into my football career. He said there was no way I’d jeopardize my chance at the NFL over some trend.”

I said nothing. At least four parts of that statement made me want to tear it apart. Being gay wasn’t a choice. It sure as hell wasn’t a trend. Theo didn’t owe his father heterosexuality because the man had driven him to practice and paid for football training.

Unfortunately, buried beneath all that bullshit was the one thing I couldn’t dismiss.

“He’s not entirely wrong,” I said, hating the words as soon as they left my mouth.

Theo’s head snapped toward me, his expression hardening immediately.

“What do you mean? It’s not a—”