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“I … I was out with my mates. I … didn’t want to be in the house because one or the both of them would be high on something. My dad could get violent, so I tried to stay away. I wasn’t … I wasn’t there to protect her.”

“Forde.” I pushed up off the couch to go to him, totally forgetting about my foot, and I yelped as I put pressure on it.

He cursed, wiping at his cheeks. “Sit, baby.”

I fell back onto the couch, feeling useless. “Then you need to sit next to me.”

Forde gave me a trembling smirk as he moved from his seat.

I reached for his hand, threading my fingers through his. “I’m so sorry.”

He covered our hands with his free one, rubbing his thumb over the top of mine. “My dad went to prison. I don’t know what happened to him because I don’t want to know. My aunt came to get me and … fuck, Cameron, from the moment she showed up, she acted like she was terrified of me. Like she was doing a duty against her will.”

I’d always disliked Forde’s aunt and uncle. “She’s a miserable cow.”

“Aye, she is that. She and Roddy warned me that I wasn’t to tell anyone. That everyone would see me for what I was, the son of a whore and a killer.”

I gasped in outrage. “How dare she!”

Forde shot me an affectionate look, but it laid on top of a deep sadness that I’d always known was there. He’d just never trusted me with it before. “The reason I’m telling you this is that they made me believe I was tainted by my dad. That I had that in me too. Roddy … Roddy thought smacking me around would beat it out of me.”

Horror suffused me and I slid closer to him, my fingers tightening around his. “Why didn’t you tell us? We would have gotten you out of there!”

“Because,” Forde said, tugging me closer, expression distraught, “I was a kid who let them fuck me up. I was worried they were right. That I’d hurt the people I love. That I wasn’t worthy.” Forde held my gaze now as he smoothed his hand down my wrist. “I thought I would taint you somehow.”

Understanding dawned and suddenly the room swayed around me as years of memories played back at a different speed than they had before, sounding completely different now.

“That night on my birthday … we’d spent the whole summer flirting, and I tried not to, but I convinced myself flirting with you was harmless. But it wasn’t. Because by the time that night came around and you …”

Blood whooshed in my ears as I murmured, “Came on to you.”

Forde flashed me that crooked grin. “Aye, well, I couldn’t resist. I wanted you so much. So, I let myself forget that I wasn’t good enough for you, that I’d hurt you. But after we had sex, I immediately felt selfish and ashamed for taking something that shouldn’t have been mine to take.”

“But that wasn’t up to you.” His words pricked my irritation, which tugged me out of the overwhelming tidal wave of looking at our history through a new lens. “You didn’t take anything. I wanted to have sex with you. You.”

“I know that now.” Forde curled his hand around my wrist, pulling me closer. The calluses on his palm were rough across my skin and I shivered with awareness. “At the time, I just felt like a selfish creep. I thought I could keep you in my life in the way that seemed allowable. Like, I didn’t deserve to be with you, but surely, I could be your friend.” His beautiful dark eyes searched mine, a mirror of my own anguish as I considered the years we’d lost because of his feelings of unworthiness. It was heartbreaking. “You acted like you were okay with it, and I thought so little of myself that I was convinced it was because you could never love me like that. That it was merely attraction. Every time I felt it between us, the memory of that night, how good the sex was, how we felt together, I thought that was all it was. Just a memory. A wanting for something that felt good.”

Even as I flushed with arousal at the deep rumble of those words, I was indignant too. “Was that all it was for you?”

“No,” the word escaped him in hoarse, emphatic denial. “I thought that’s all it was for you. There wasn’t a moment, Cameron, when I didn’t want that with you again. But I’d convinced myself that my aunt and my uncle were right about me. I kept waiting for the fucking awful day you’d meet someone that you wanted a life with.” Forde tugged me closer, our faces almost touching as he searched mine, as if desperately seeking answers only I could give. It made my heart race out of control. “That day never came. The guys never lasted long, and I hated myself for how relieved I was … then you started seeing Greig.”

I flinched at his name, turning away.

Forde let go of my wrist to cup my face, returning my focus to him. “I wasn’t a prick about him because I was trying to mess with your head. Or that I thought he was too young for you. I know I said that, but it wasn’t true. He bothered me more than any of the others because he was only a few years older than I was when we slept together. And I don’t know why, but I suddenly knew that I’d fucked up. All these years and I hadn’t turned into my dad. I’d shut out all the times I saw the hurt on your face when I left a bar or a party with another woman.”

Tears blurred his vision. “I pretended it wasn’t real. That I was imagining how you felt about me. But that night we spent together … I could have chosen a different path. I could have admitted that you were everything I’d ever wanted, and our lives would have been so different. I knew it deep in my bones. So, I was jealous of Greig because he still had his whole life ahead of him, that chance not to fuck it up. And maybe, maybe he would recognize what he had in you and maybe he would get to live his whole life with you … and he’d have that chance because I threw my chance away.”

His thumb wiped my cheek, sweeping away the tears silently falling down my face.

“It only took a few sessions of therapy for my therapist to help me figure that out. That’s why I was an absolute prick to you about him. I don’t want you thinking I knew something you didn’t about that guy, okay?”

I nodded, my throat too thick with emotion to speak.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you. When I finally realized how much of a wedge my shitty attitude had driven between us, it was too late. You left.” His gaze dropped to my mouth as he brushed a tear away from my top lip.

My body was taut, held in this strange, heightened place of arousal that was intensified by too much emotion. So much emotion. I shuddered with it, and Forde’s gaze heated. His voice was gruffer now as he continued, “I was so scared you weren’t coming back. There was this guy who volunteered at the LSLS for a while, and he told me about his mental health challenges and how much therapy saved him. How it changed his life. And I’m not a complete moron. I knew that my childhood had fucked me up more than I wanted to admit. That it ruined my chance at the life I really wanted. With you.”

Part of me couldn’t believe the words that were falling from Forde’s lips.