A tear sliddown Audrey’s cheek.
“Oh my god, Theo.”
She covered her mouth and sobbed.
He wasalive.
It was a miracle he was, and she’d never been so thankful for anything in her entire life.
She could have lost him before she even knew who he was to lose.
The thought terrified her.
He nodded and swept the tear away with his thumb before wiping his own aside. “I know. I was incredibly lucky.” His own lip quivered, and he drew in a deep breath to steel himself for the rest.
“Somehow, the tree branch I was impaled with through the windshield missed anything vital, and I’m just left with the scar from it now. Same with my shoulder—that was from a bit of metal shrapnel and glass that had to be dug out, but I don’t have lasting damage there. My face and arm and hip weren’t so lucky.” He shook his head. “We hit that semi head-on going way faster than we should have been—way faster than the speed limit.
“That part really was an accident. My dad’s foot probably froze up on the accelerator when his arm went numb. But the impact was almost squarely angled toward him, once he jerked the wheel backto the right. He took the brunt of it.” He cleared his throat and wiped more tears from his eyes. “But it didn’t stop the Thunderbird from spinning and tearing through the guardrail before tumbling down the side of the hill into the trees. The steel on my side crumpled and imploded from the impact, crushing my hip and ripping me open from eye to waist.
“It also sliced through some of the nerves in my arm, broke my face, and nearly cost me an eye.” He bit his lip and tried to grin crookedly at her, though it was a piss-poor attempt. “It’s actually a really good thing I have such a heavy, Neanderthal brow. It saved my eyesight, if not my good looks.”
Audrey sniffed and brushed some of the hair away from his face. “I beg to differ. You didn’t lose any of those.”
Theo huffed, but his face fell again. “I caused a helluva scene. If I hadn’t snapped, maybe my dad wouldn’t have had a heart attack. He wouldn’t have had to come get me, and maybe we could have staved it off. My mom should have called the police. I was beyond reason.” He wrung his hands together, rubbing at his knuckles and picking anxiously at his fingernails. “But doing that would have caused the exact kind of scandal they’re afraid of. And anyway, my dad was closer. He was big and tall and strong, like me. I’m sure he was the only person she could think of to help.
“I ruined everything, Audrey. I tore my family apart. I assaulted my uncle, insulted my mother, I might as well have killed my father.” He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “I can’t even really do the art I was so protective of anymore, the whole reason for the fight in the first place—at least, not like I used to. And I just wanted to do something good.” Another tear slid down his cheek. “I wanted to do something good, something beautiful, something that made an impact, and Iwas. I was doing it, and I was doing it really well. Making an actual difference, bringing awareness to issues, raising money for good charities.” Theo’s face twisted in disgust, and he tugged at hishair with trembling fingers. “And now here I am, a crippled shut-in, and a failure of an artist.”
The bitterness in his voice broke her heart, and she grabbed his hand to stop him from hurting himself.
But he didn’t quite seem to notice.
His eyes were empty and unfocused.
“My dad is dead. I watched him die, the car he loved so much a smoldering wreck in the aftermath. It was totaled, nothing but scrap. I sold the shop and the rest of his cars to pay off his debts, but I also just couldn’t keep it after that. I couldn’t keep hardly anything. Anything except…” Theo glanced over at the neon sign buzzing near the kitchen, and now Audrey knew why he’d clung to that piece of his father.
He’d probably made it for him.
“And now I’ve tanked my relationship with my mom as well. My uncle was always a dick, and I only regret beating the shit out of him because of everything else that happened afterward, but I also hate myself for it. I think about it every day, howgoodit felt bashing his face in, and it makes me sick to my stomach. It was ugly.Iwas ugly. An absolute monster. Does it make me a bully—just like him?” Theo finally looked her in the eyes again, desperately searching her face. “I let his words get the better of me. I failed to control myself. I gave myself over to my basest impulses, threw all my values and ideals aside, and took my anger out on him, just like he always did to me. That makes me just as much of a piece of shit as him, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It sounds to me like you were pushed to your breaking point—and that you snapped. I’ve been there before myself.”
He startled and blinked at her in surprise. “Have you really?”
Audrey nodded. “It was in high school. There was a girl there, Abby, and she bullied me relentlessly. I was used to it—I got a lot of shit for being a foster kid. Empathy takes some people a while tolearn, I suppose.” She drew in a deep breath. “Halfway through junior year, she tripped me outside while I was carrying my lunch tray. I was on the subsidized lunch program, and I only got one meal ticket a day. We had food at Gladys’s house, but she was fostering a bunch of kids, and there was barely enough to go around. I was hungry. I needed that lunch. And when I fell on top of it in the mud, I looked up at her—and she was grinning down at me, pleased as punch. So I gave her one.
“I lost it. She was a lot bigger than I was, but I jumped her straightaway and beat the shit out of her. Had to be pulled off of her and restrained by a security guard.”
Theo’s mouth cracked into a weak, but wicked grin. “That’s really hot.”
She huffed in amusement. “I love that you think that, darling.” She tucked some of his hair behind one of his massive ears, gently tracing the curve of its shell with the tips of her fingers. Now that she knew what had happened, she was all the more thankful for every bit of him she could love.
She loved his ears. He listened to her so well with them.
And they were adorable.
To think that he hated them…
It made her ache.
