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Shaking my head, I attempt to deny that’s what I’m feeling. I know he’s strong. I know he survived. It’s just that I can’t stand the circumstances of his life and the way they shaped him.
“It’s easier if you pretend it’s someone else’s story, Em. It helps to imagine another person in that place, to pretend you’re only watching. I promise you, it’s so much easier.”
A wracking sob rattles through me, but I find the ability to speak. “Is it over?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it go on?”
“Until our last year of law school.”
I spin to face him. And really, the only reason I’m able to is because I take him by surprise.
Our breath collides together, our mouths so damn close that we both go perfectly still.
We shouldn’t be like this.
But then rules have never mattered to us.
“All that time?”
He presses his forehead to mine and nods.
Seven years after I walked away from them. Seven years that I could have done something to help them endure it.
I’m so full of anger that I’m practically vibrating, my nails digging into my skin from clenched fists, my teeth grinding together because there’s not a goddamned thing I can do to fix this.
“Easy there, killer,” he murmurs as he brushes my hair from my face. “It’s over now, and you don’t have to fight this battle for me.”
Except, I do.
I will.
And I am.
Even if he doesn’t know it.
It’s a damn good thing everybody believes I’m weak, that they don’t know the violence this man taught me.
I shut my eyes, but the tears just keep falling. He chases every one with his lips. A hundred kisses to stop my pain, a quiet moment that breaks us both.
He can kiss me for the next fifty years, and he’d never catch every tear that falls. There’s simply too many of them. A constant, unbearable storm.
Ezra shifts his weight until my back is on the bed, and he’s almost on top of me, his hand coming up to toy with my hair, our eyes peering through the shadows to tangle and dance together.
“There’s your first piece,” he says on an exhalation of breath. “In the interest of friendship.”
I laugh softly at that.
As if we could ever just be friends.
We were never friends, not since the night we admitted our secrets.
I have loved this man to the depth of my soul ever since.
It only reminds me why this moment is so dangerous. It reminds me that we shouldn’t be laying like this. Shouldn’t be so close. Shouldn’t be touching because I’m not sure either of us are strong enough to stop.
I thought I was strong enough once.
