“And you have it all figured out?” Shank asked, the condemnation gentle but definitely present.
Allie pulled her legs up and hooked her heels on the edge of the couch before hugging her knees. “Yeah, clearly not.”
Shank’s hair hung loose around his shoulders, and he ran his fingers through it. “That’s why he chased you so much, you know.”
“Because I’m an idiot who hasn’t figured out her own sexual identity?”
He laughed. “No, because you’re strong. You may not have known you had that sort of dynamic in you, but I think others did. Jacqs always liked strong partners—men or women. That’s why he made a fool of himself trying to get into your bed.”
“You don’t think...” Allie made a face as she imagined Jacqs wanting to be tied down or given an order not to move.
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not,” Shank said. “Just because he was attracted to your strength doesn’t automatically mean he’s—” Shank fell silent without saying the last word.
“You had better not say weak,” Allie threatened him. “You just held still despite all that lust, and trust me, most men are not strong enough to override the instinct to fuck.”
“I knew I was going to get sex. That made it easier.”
“But it didn’t make it easy,” Allie quickly replied.
“No,” Shank admitted, “it didn’t.”
“Exactly.”
They sat in silence for a time. Normally the silences between them felt comfortable. Shank would read. Because Allie always seemed to have cold feet, she would sit next to him and tuck her feet under his leg and review nav data. Now something dark strained against all that empty air. She hugged her knees a little tighter.
“This is the exact fight my mother and I had,” Shank finally confessed.
“What fight?” Allie tried to figure out if she had missed some vital part of their conversation because she was almost sure they weren’t fighting. They were more at the awkwardly staring at each other phase.
“She said I was letting Claire make me weak. She said that Lacroix were not weak—that Wichiyena are not weak.” Shank took a deep breath before continuing. “She said that if I did not find myself, I would need another manhood ceremony because Claire would have stolen all my... The word means something close to manhood or soul. Without it, I would be a monster.”
“I officially hate your mother.”
“You hated her before.”
“I hate her more.”
Shank shook his head. “Don’t. She was right. Claire was the first woman I allowed to see that part of me, and she needed to have a partner who was weak. She needed me to be weak.”
“Well I don’t, and that’s good because you couldn’t be weak if you tried,” Allie said firmly.
Shank twisted around and put his back to the arm of the couch so that he faced her. “The first man who truly touched your soul, who was he?”
“What?” Allie felt the rumblings of danger, but she didn’t know what Shank wanted from her or where he was going. It made her wildly uncomfortable. “Why?”
“Because I want to know, and I am asking you with respect.”
Allie frowned. Put like that, she couldn’t exactly tell him to mind his own business, especially not when he was sharing with her. “Honestly, it was Casey.”
“Tell me about him.”
“There’s not much to say. I grew up in a pretty small town, and there weren’t a lot of choices for experimenting. I had slept with a couple of the girls, but boys...” Allie thought back. Boys had been the different ones, the scary ones. They would get aggressive and hold her too tightly when they danced. When older girls had met in the school bathrooms with smuggled-in pictures of men and their cocks, Allie had been equally terrified and turned on.
“Casey was that invisible boy that none of us really noticed because he was perfectly average. He was great to have in a study group because he never let you down, but he didn’t come up with any of the good ideas either. He did sports but never played in real games because he wasn’t good. You know the sort.”
Shank just waited.
“I guess he was less threatening than the others, so I slept with him, and it turned out that Casey did have a skill; it just wasn’t one that showed up on the football field or in the classroom. More, he was really amazing even if his mother pretty much hated me. And I do see where you’re going. I’m not stupid.”
