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“What are you thinking about so hard?” Emma asked, tilting her head against his shoulder to peer up at him.
He was so relaxed—for once—that he was able to just let himself talk. “Your present was the first one I ever got that was meant just for me,” he said, knowing he wasn’t explaining himself well. “When I was a kid in the group home, the house parents got all of us the same exact thing—one year, it was a package of socks, a Pez dispenser with a couple packets of those little rectangular candies, and a new flannel shirt for the boys. And if someplace like a church sent a donation, we’d all get the same stuffed animal or the same set of dominos or the same deck of cards.” He twisted a length of blond around his fingers, still blown away that he could just touch her like this. “You actually thought of our time together and came up with a gift that you knew would mean something to me, personally.”
She burrowed in tighter against him. “Can I ask why you lived in a home?”
Caine sighed. “You can ask me anything, Emma. I mean that. I’m just warning you that I’m gonna suck at answering. And shit’s gonna catch me off guard like…like it did this morning.”
“I want to know you, Caine, however you are.” She threaded her fingers between his and pulled his hand to her mouth for a kiss.
“How are you so fucking perfect?” The question spilled out of his mouth, but in truth it’d been playing on a loop in his head for hours.
“I’m not perfect, Caine. And I think you need to take me off of the pedestal I fear you’re putting me on. I haven’t done a great job of building any kind of community around myself since my grandmother died three years ago, and I’m lonely a lot. I have two really good girlfriends, but they’re both married, and one has a young son. There’s only so much I can lean on them.” She kissed his knuckles again. “I started a graduate degree in teaching four years ago that I haven’t finished because all those evening classes were part of the reason why I didn’t realize my grandmother was as sick as she was. And I could’ve been spending those hours with her. After she died, I couldn’t force myself to go back, so it’s like I doubly wasted that time, because in the end I didn’t have her or the degree. So I’m not perfect. As best I can figure, we’re all just trying.”
The words sank into his skin, as if they were looking for places they might stay within him forever. He wished they would. “Fair enough,” he said. “My mother died of a heroin overdose and my father decided taking care of a five-year-old was a pain in the ass. So I ended up in the system.”
Sadness hung on her pretty features, and he hated that he’d put it there. “Same age as my kids,” she said. “That breaks my heart. No wonder you’re so strong.”
Stunned, he shook his head. Half the time he felt entirely out of control. Half the time he threw up walls out of fear. And half the time he opted out of life before anyone had the chance to discard him. No matter that the math didn’t add up, it was just how he felt. “Eventually, I fell in with a man who wasn’t just willing to give me a job, but also to teach me and take me in. Jerry Tiller. I wouldn’t be whatever I am today without him.” Of course, he’d just skipped over all the most crucial years, but he couldn’t…not yet…
She searched his face, and her expression was so open to everything he was telling her. But she still didn’t know the worst of him, and all these hours of falling were going to hurt like hell when he woke up face-down on the concrete.
In the meantime, she kept surprising him. “And was Jerry your boyfriend?”
He blinked. Well. Okay, then. He supposed he should’ve expected that given the way he’d reacted to helping that shelter, except very few people he’d ever met were willing to confront the truth the way Emma did. And always in a way that made it safe to give that honesty right back.
“No,” he said, pressing a kiss against Emma’s soft hair. His heart suddenly hammered, because his next words weren’t ones he usually voiced. Or, like, ever. “I’ve been with men, Em, but I’ve never had a boyfriend. Mostly, I was just…” He shook his head, struggling to figure out how to explain his bisexuality to someone else for the first time. Hell, to explain it to himself, too. “My whole life, I’ve just looked for connection wherever I could find it. Does that…does that bother you?”
