“Stop.”
The word comes out harder than I intended, but I can’t listen to another second of her believing the poison I put in her head.
I cup her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me.
“I was wrong,” I say roughly. “I was a cruel, stupid bastard, and I was wrong.”
“Cavin—”
“No, listen to me.” My thumbs brush away her tears. “Everything I said to you, everything I did—it wasn’t about you. It was never about you.”
“Then what was it about?” Her voice is small, broken.
I close my eyes. This is the part I’ve never admitted to anyone. The part I’ve barely admitted to myself.
“I didn’t hateyou,” I say quietly. “I hated what you had that I didn’t.”
I can still see her, still feel the rage boiling up inside me at her self-satisfied grin, still feel the rough hand of the headmaster grabbing me by the collar before he called my father.
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“You made me soangry.Everything came easy to you.”
“Everything?” she repeats, shaking her head. “Are you mad?”
“Everything academic.” I force myself to meet her gaze. “And I’d get the belt if I didn’t pull good marks, because failing at St. Albert’s meant I wasn’t fit for my family. Because here… this is where we were forged. Where boys became men. Where you proved you were McCarthy enough.”
“Don’t I know it,” she whispers and looks away.
I go on. She needs to know. I’ll give her the truth because, goddamn, the lass deserves it. “And you were so—you didn’t care what anyone thought. You didn’t try to fit in or play the games everyone else played. You just showed up as yourself, completely yourself, and I?—”
I break off, but she’s waiting.
“I couldn’t do that,” I continue, the words coming harder now. “I had to be what my family needed. What the life demanded. Hard, mean, dangerous. I had to prove myself every fucking day, prove I was tough enough, ruthless enough, that I belonged in this world.”
“So you proved it by tormenting me.”
“Aye.” The admission tastes bitter. “You’d walk in here with your books and your quiet voice and your complete disinterest in impressing anyone, and it made me feel?—”
“What?”
“Jealous.” The word comes out barely above a whisper. “And ashamed. Because I wanted that freedom to just exist without performing, but I couldn’t have it. So I made you pay for it.”
I force myself to keep going, even though every word feels like pulling out my own teeth.
“You were brave in a way I couldn’t be,” I tell her. “And I hated you for it. Hated that you could be yourself when I had to be what everyone else needed me to be. So I did what a dumbass with too much testosterone and too little common sense does. Tried to make you as miserable as I was.”
The silence stretches between us, heavy and suffocating.
“That’s not an excuse,” I add quickly. “There’s no excuse for what I did. I was a coward and a bully, and you deserved none of it. But it’s the truth. You were everything I wanted to be and couldn’t, and I punished you for it.”
Another tear slides down her cheek. I catch it with my thumb.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and my voice breaks on the words. “I’m so fucking sorry, Erin. For every cruel word. Every time I made you feel small. Every time I?—”
She kisses me.
It’s sudden, desperate, and for a second, I’m too stunned to respond. Her hands cup my face, and her lips meet mine, silencing me.
