I know we do.
But he has to understand that I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell him that…
I take a few fearful breaths as my stomach churns. Bile rises up my throat but I somehow manage to whisper a lone word. “I’m…”
Before I trail off.
Before I have to swallow and breathe out.
I can’t say it. I can’t. Ican’t.
I…
And he breathes out too.
As he studies my face, as he probably studies the fear on my features.
He grinds his jaw again before exhaling a resigned breath and filling the silence. “First, I want you to know that I’m clean. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
It takes me a few seconds to really get his meaning.
When I do, my cheeks get even more heated because I didn’t think of that.
In everything, I didn’t think of that at all.
“Yes,” I whisper.
A grave look enters his eyes. “I mean it. I’m clean. I haven’t had sex in a long time. I wasn’t lying when I said…”
“You said what?”
Another tic of his jaw. “When I said you haunt me. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve tried. But I…” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in the past two years, either drunk or angry. At the shitty job, at my fucking father. So yeah.”
My heart twists at the shitty job.
The thing he has to do because he made a deal with his dad. For me.
God, what a sad, awful pair we make.
“So you… d-didn’t?” I whisper, the only thing I can do at his big revelation.
He swallows. “No.”
Oh God.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t. Like me and I…
"I –"
He doesn’t let me speak though. “If I wasn’t clean, if I didn’tknowthat I was clean, I never would’ve fucked you raw. Nothing you could’ve said to make me do that. To put you at risk like that. I want you to know that.”
I nod. “I know. I know you wouldn’t have.”
Iabsolutelydo know.
I know his crazy protectiveness. His crazy need to keep me safe.
