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“No one is telling you that you have to.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
I laughed. Genuinely laughed at that. “Nothing with you has ever been easy.” When I tugged one of my hands from his, I reached up to cup his bruised face. “You make things so hard and so utterly impossible sometimes. You find a nerve and you stab at it until you draw blood.”
“I never want to hurt you.”
“I know.” I did. Because even in all of his cruelties and vicious behavior, he still wanted to protect me. “It doesn’t make what you do always okay, though.”
“No.” He sounded so glum. “I suppose not.”
“You suppose not?”
He shrugged. “I’m a terrible loser. I want you—fuck I want to kiss you right now. I want to peel you out of that outfit and fuck you until we both feel better.”
No matter how hard I tried to compartmentalize them, the words affected me. “Ezra…”
“I promised,” he muttered, even as he leaned his damaged face into my hand and then sighed. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want more with you,Kotyonok. You and Adam…are the only two people I would choose over everything.”
He was breaking my heart. The loneliness rolled off him in waves. Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to his. It was a brief kiss. Just an offer of comfort, not passion. A touch, not a demand. A gift, not a prize. When I pulled back, he stared at me.
“Thank you for telling me,” I whispered. “I can fight better when I know what I’m fighting.”
“You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”
“He needs to know too.”
His head dipped.
“I think you should tell Adam.”
He didn’t look up at that comment, if anything, his shoulders hunched.
“He’s angry right now, but then so am I—and so are you.” That got his attention. “Keeping secrets is what got us here. You may not like Pretty Boy, but I trust him. And more, I know I can trust him because wearen’tkeeping secrets. Don’t keep secrets from us. You want to protect us, and I adore you for it, but we need to look after you too. We can’t if we don’t know what’s going on.”
While he didn’t respond, he did seem to be chewing on that. It was time to go, and when I rose, Ezra let go of my hand and cleaned up the water glasses. At the door, he paused and studied me.
“Did I really hurt you?” The question was out there for both of us. “If we’re not keeping secrets anymore—did I hurt you? At the apartment and on the island?”
“You said it was amistake,” I reminded him. The sting was still there even if I told myself it wasn’t. “That I was a mistake.”
He frowned.
“Yes, that hurt. However, I accepted that you would hurt me occasionally a long time ago.”
His frown deepened, but he didn’t say anything. What could he say? Honestly, I was out of words. Finally, he opened the door to where Karagiani waited. Time to go home. I needed to sort this all out.
Him. Adam. Milo.
I had a lot to figure out. My phone vibrated as Karagiani walked with me away from the office. The message was from Phillip—Bohdi. He wanted to talk to me.
Now what?
ChapterThirty-One
ADAM
The drive to Jamaica Estates took the better part of an hour. The first time I came to the Tudor-style house on the hill I’d been more surprised by the location than the house itself. That said, I waited for the gates at the base of the hill to open before I drove up. There was a call box, but someone was always watching their camera. At least as far as I could tell.
