Page 91 of Caden & Theo

Theo laughs quietly. “Yeah. Makes you feel it.”

He gets up at one point to grab us more drinks and a bowl of chips, and I watch him move—fluid and sure. Confident. It hits me all over again how much he’s grown into himself. Not justolder, but… more grounded. Like someone who built something after everything fell apart.

He hands me a bottle, and our fingers brush. Just for a second. But my chest tightens in response, heat rising up the back of my neck. I cover my reaction with a sip and glance around the room again, looking quickly away when I spot a photo of the two of us taken when I was thirteen and he was twelve. We’d survived whitewater rafting and were both wearing shit-eating grins like we were badasses.

We weren’t. We’d screamed and hung on for dear life over the rapids.

“I almost didn’t come,” I admit, voice rough.

He doesn’t turn to me, but I see the flicker of something in his expression. “I figured.”

Another silence.

“I didn’t know if you’d be attending the reunion at all,” I add. “Or if you’d want to see me.”

His jaw ticks, but he keeps his gaze forward, saying lightly, “But you’re still here.”

And that’s the most honest thing either of us has said all night.

We linger in the quiet. The kind that used to be easy between us, filled with shoulder bumps and knowing glances and shared CDs. Now it’s taut and cautious, full of all the unsaid things neither of us is ready to grapple with.

After a while, Theo leans back and stretches his legs out, one ankle propped on the other. His fingers still cradle the neck of his beer, and he rotates it absently like he’s not ready to let go just yet.

“You still in San Francisco?” he asks casually.

I blink. “Yeah.” I take a small sip, buying time. “Running my studio.”

He nods once, like that tracks. “I figured,” he says.

I narrow my eyes, curious. “You figured?”

He doesn’t look at me. He shrugs one shoulder, eyes on some vague spot near the TV. “You never really struck me as the ‘move back home’ type. Not after… everything.”

“Still,” I murmur, “bit of a shot in the dark. You keeping tabs on me?”

He huffs a quiet laugh and finally glances my way, eyes glinting with mischief. “You think it’s hard to find you online? Please. You’re not exactly subtle, Caden. The studio’s website basically treats your face like a branding strategy. I counted nine photos of you on the home page alone.”

There’s a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth now, and for a split second, I see him—the Theo I used to know. The one who used to tease me out of bad moods, who knew exactly how to press a button and then soften the blow with a smile. It’s like muscle memory: affection wrapped in sarcasm.

And damn if it doesn’t knock the breath out of me.

“I didn’t design the website.”

“Sure.” He smirks faintly again, but it fades quickly. A beat passes. Then he adds, quieter, “I saw an article a few years back. About a para-athlete you helped get back into competition condition. It mentioned you lived in Bernal Heights. That stuck.”

I stare at him. “You read an article about me?”

He shrugs again, but his ears flush a little. “I read a lot of things.”

I try to hide how much that gets to me. How much it means. Theo’s never really been one for idle curiosity. If he looked, he wanted to know. And not because someone like Cameron handed him updates, but because he went looking himself.

That knowledge hits somewhere tender.

The light outside has dimmed, the sky folding itself into that indigo softness that May evenings always bring in the South. A dog barks in the distance, sharp and brief. The scent of cutgrass lingers, mingling with the faint sandalwood from Theo’s cologne.

I look at him again. At the strong lines of his jaw, the quiet confidence in how he sits, even with the weight of everything unspoken between us. His profile’s sharper now. Still him, but more… settled. Like someone who built a life around the pieces he couldn’t fix.

And here I am, still holding the ones I broke.