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“I hate it, but this feels good,” he says with a crack in his voice. “Knowing I make you feel good. That’s what I need.”
I slide my hand to cup the side of his neck. “You feel just as good with a condom, sweetheart. Where is this coming from?”
He shakes his head and slips himself off my lap, curling up under the covers and facing the wall.
“You know better,” I say, rolling to be his big spoon and wrapping an arm around him. “I need to know what this is about.”
“It isn’t about anything,” he croaks. “I wanted to have sex and was too horny to think straight. It happens. You did it too.”
“I did. And I’m sorry I let it slip my mind. You deserve better than that. But Shiloh.” I move my arm up his chest and rest my hand over his heart. After a beat, he covers it with his own. “So do I.”
He tucks his chin down to his chest and doesn’t speak, but his fingers play over mine in soft, stroking patterns until his breathing evens out, and it gently falls away.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I do this to everyone. I hurt anyone I get close to. It’s why this would never work.”
Even though his words make my heart rate fly through the roof, I’m slow and gentle when I guide him onto his back and rest my hand on his cheek.
“What would never work?”
His eyes land on mine, and his shoulders sink. “You love me.”
I brush a few stray curls out of his face. “I do.”
“I don’t want to love you,” he says, and I try to keep the heartache off my face. “And that hurts you.”
“I’m a big boy. I can handle a little pain.”
“But if I did love you, it would be so much worse. You have to know that.” His voice starts to rise, an edge of panic creeping in. “I’m like a fucking thorn bush. Barely touch me and you’ll come away with scars.”
“I’ll take them, Shiloh. Every scar. Every nasty word. Anything you can throw at me, I’ll take. Because I love you so fiercely, want you so wholeheartedly, that keeping you would make it all worth it.”
His lip wobbles, and I place a chaste kiss against it.
“All I do is hurt people,” he whispers as I pull away.
“No.” I brush my finger across where we kissed. “All you do is hurt yourself. And that kills the people who care about you.”
He’s going to break. I can feel it. And maybe not in a way I can put him back together.
“What happened to send you here, sweetheart?”
There’s defeat in his eyes, a sadness so deep and binding I can’t believe I didn’t see it in him before now.
“Atty and Blair are doing Christmas without me.”
He says it in such a small voice, like a dejected child afraid of getting in trouble. Like he knows how ridiculous he sounds and hates every bit of it.
“You’re allowed to be hurt. You’re allowed to miss him.”
It’s like being given permission breaks the damn. Pain radiates off him like heat on concrete.
“How can they just leave me?” He sits up abruptly and wraps his arms around himself. “Atty is my best friend. Blair is my brother. They’re all that I have.”
He doesn’t stop me when I draw his face to my shoulder, cocooning my body around his as the stitched together pieces of his heart twist and turn at the seams.
“How long until I’m just a footnote? Until they realize not including me is so much easier than the bullshit I keep putting them through?”
“Shiloh.” I twist my fingers in his hair, but I don’t tug. I just hold him.
