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He squints into the dark. “If I get stuck, you’re legally obligated to drag me out by the feet.”
I bite back a smile. “That’s optimistic. Have you ever read The Cask of Amontillado?”
He snorts, an amused, exasperated look on his face. “Noted.”
Then he exhales, braces a hand against the frame, and starts to crawl through. The muscles in his back shift under his shirt as he wedges himself into the opening. It’s unbelievable how much space he takes up. I feel claustrophobic just watching him go.
Dust rains down from the low ceiling with each move he makes. He pauses halfway, glancing over his shoulder at me. “You coming, Jennings?”
I’m already turning on my phone flashlight. “The spirit is willing, but the slight fear of enclosed spaces is sweating through its shirt.”
Theo huffs out a laugh, then turns just enough to look at me over his shoulder. “Be brave for me, Jennings.” He leans in. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
That hits me exactly where it shouldn’t.
He disappears into the dark, and I hover at the threshold for a beat longer. A beat where I could call him back, tell him to forget the whole thing, pretend we aren’t standing on the edge of something we can’t undo. Both in this moment and metaphorically speaking.
But the truth is simple. I’m ready. Ready to follow him to wherever this tunnel leads. Ready for him. Ready for whatever comes next now that I’ve stopped pretending I’m not already halfway gone for this man.
So I follow.
Because hesitation hasn’t done a thing for either of us besides make us both fucking miserable with want. And whatever it takes to get to where we’re going, it’s him and me together.
The tunnel isn’t big enough for a normal person, let alone Theo.
He grunts the whole way through, one shoulder scraping against the top, the other twisting at an unnatural angle as he awkwardly belly crawls toward the other end. Dust rains down, coating his hair and shoulders.
“Remind me,” he says, his hushed whisper echoing off the narrow walls, “why I’m the one going first.”
“Because while I was debating whether or not we should go at all, you, quite literally, dove in head first,” I say, shining my phone flashlight into the crawlspace from behind him. “And because your ego wouldn’t fit otherwise.”
He opens his mouth, ready with another quip, only to inhale a mouthful of dust. The sound he makes is somewhere between a cough and one a wounded animal would make.
I smother a laugh, crawling after him. My knees protest every step of the way, repeatedly catching on the uneven floor.
“I see a dead end,” Theo says ahead of me. “Probably another false wall.”
Every movement he makes forward, a new cascade of dust drifts into my face, and I consider adding “death by asbestos” to my cause-of-death predictions.
“You’re doing great back there,” he calls sarcastically.
“Shut up before I punch you in the ass.”
“You’d have to reach me first. My shins are definitely longer than your arms.”
“Don’t tempt me. I’ll try it and probably cave this whole place in during the process.”
He snorts. “You’re one to talk about being fucking tempted.”
It’s ridiculous how a few simple words make me feel like I’m losing my damn mind.
Finally, the space ahead brightens with a thin seam of light. Theo pushes on the panel, and it gives with a muted creak. After shoving aside a tapestry hanging loosely over the opening, we spill out gracelessly into—
A closet.
A perfectly ordinary, linen-scented, embarrassingly small closet.
Theo blinks, crouched awkwardly beside a stack of neatly folded towels. “Well,” he says, looking entirely too composed for someone coated in the remains of a hundred years of bad ventilation, “this wasn’t in the architectural plans.”
