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Jack held his breath, counted down from five, and reminded himself that Ewan was a brat, and therefore some brattishness was to be expected. Jack didn’t have to respond to it. In fact, not responding to it might be the best way to contain it.
So far Ewan had been alternately sullen and silent, except for the part immediately after work when he’d tried to tell Jack that he’d be fine and he didn’t need Jack’s help, actually. Jack had asked him if he’d spoken to Nate. Ewan had shrugged, which Jack took for a yes. He’d asked what Nate had said.
“That I should go with you,” Ewan admitted, looking grim about it.
Jack had arched an eyebrow at him, the one that usually got Channon to sit up straight. It did not have the same effect on Ewan. “So what are you going to do?”
Ewan had rolled his eyes in a way that would have gotten Channon a rough smack on the rear at the very least. “Go with you, I guess?”
So here they were at Nate’s kitchen table, eating Indian takeout. Ewan had ordered something called phaal that Jack had taken a polite spoonful of and was now ignoring completely. He was secure enough in his masculinity not to need to prove it by burning out his taste buds, thank you very much. He’d settle for Vindaloo.
Now he considered Ewan, wondering how best to go about prying him open. What would tempt Ewan to talk about his ex?
“Why do I remind you of him?” Jack asked. It wasn’t just a tactic—he was morbidly curious.
Ewan looked up, his expression guarded. “You just do.”
“You must have specific reasons. Do I look like him?”
To this, Ewan shook his head, snorting derisively. “Naw. You’re a handsome fucker.”
Which meant that this ‘Gary’ was not. Jack wondered if he ought to be flattered. “What attracted you to him in the first place, then?”
Ewan tipped his head back with a groan. It looked like he was rolling his eyes again, but Jack realized that, instead, he was blinking hard. He wondered if Ewan was in fact having an emotional reaction.
“He said I couldn’t handle him,” Ewan confessed to the ceiling. “I wasn’t gonna back down from that.”
“And could you?” Jack asked, watching him closely.
Ewan exhaled and tipped his head to the side, avoiding Jack’s eye. “I don’t know.” He made an angry sound and jammed his fork into his rice. “I thought I could take anything. I did take it. Everything he dished out.”
And yet, Jack thought, part of Ewan hadn’t wanted to, or had only done it to prove something. To Gary, or to himself? It wasn’t clear. And it still wasn’t clear what part of Gary he saw in Jack. “Even when you didn’t like it?”
“I wasn’t supposed to like it,” Ewan spat. He glared at Jack. “Right? Isn’t that the whole point?”
“He was a sadist, then,” Jack said evenly, ignoring the outburst. “He enjoyed the fact that you didn’t. That was what was in it for him.”
“Aye,” Ewan said, still glaring daggers. “He liked taking ugly things and breaking them.”
It struck Jack that Ewan might really think of himself as ugly—a toxic, little, radioactive thing that had deserved to be broken.
Jack had never thought of him that way. Ewan was striking, strange, not conventionally attractive. But he wasn’t ugly. And for all of his irritations, Ewan did not deserve to be broken like that. Even if he had been ‘ugly’ (whatever that meant), no one deserved that.
“How did it end?” Jack asked, feeling on the precipice of something.
Ewan’s mouth twisted. “He got a job in Norway. Took the collar back and left the country.”
And left Ewan behind. It was clear that Ewan felt he’d deserved that too. “He’d collared you?”
“I was his slave,” Ewan said with bitter relish. “I’m lucky he didn’t brand me.”
He sounded so hurt by this, as if part of him had wanted that brand. No, he’d wanted to belong to his Dom, to be precious to him. To be owned and cherished, in a very particular way.
It made sense. Jack understood now why Ewan hated him so much.
“What he did to you. You think I’m doing the same thing to Channon.”
He watched as Ewan’s face gave him away.
