“Is there anything I can do, or?—”
“No.” His word is once again very sharp, but I know he’s not trying to be cruel. Rune scrubs at his face. “I don’t want to sound like a dick, but the shit I’m dealing with…” He trails off and doesn’t speak again.
I almost laugh. “You know I can take it, right? I understand more than you think.”
“Really?” He gives me a side-eye, and I figure, hey, if I’m going to ask him to open up, I can do that too.
“Look, my mom was really young when she had me. After a while, she ended up meeting and dating a guy named Jimmy.”
Rune bites his lip. Something about the name Jimmy tends to invoke that reaction in people.
“My grandparents had taken me on a vacation, and when I got home, my mom had moved him into our place. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and my mom slept on the couch, and I had the bedroom for a long time. Then I walked in and found allmy stuff in the dining room. She hung a shower curtain on the wall so I could have privacy.”
“Jesus,” he whispers.
I shrug. “She became different after that. I didn’t understand what was going on at first. When I asked her, she said it was her turn to be selfish for a while. And the next thing I knew, mom had one baby and another one on the way. She and Jimmy moved into a new house, and they put me in the attic.”
His eyes go wide. “The attic? Like where the rats live?”
I grimace at the memory. “No rats, but it was unfinished and not insulated, and full of little nasties that still give me nightmares. And you know some of the rest.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs softly.
I shrug. “It’s hard to talk about, but I wanted you to know that when I say I get it, I mean it. Whatever you have going on, I can probably understand at least some of it.”
He bites his lip, then lets out a puff of air. “I have a son.”
My entire body jolts. A son? No one—and I mean no one—knows this. Maybe Camilo, since he pretty much runs this place, but I know for a fact that Easton doesn’t.
And if anyone else does, they’re amazing at keeping this secret.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” he begs. “Not even Easton. I know you two are a thing?—”
My face goes suddenly hot. “Oh no. No. Seriously, we are not a thing. Just best friends,” I assure him, and for a second, he looks oddly relieved. “I won’t tell him about this. I swear.”
He eyes me for a second, then nods and leans back, tugging on a strand of long hair that’s escaped his hair tie. “He’s an amazing kid. He just turned twelve. My first-ever girlfriend and I weren’t careful. She had a bunch of health issues and didn’t think she could get pregnant, so when she missed severalperiods, she didn’t worry too much. But apparently we should have worried.”
“Shit.”
Rune laughs. “Yeah. His name is Elio. Great kid, but, uh…he’s also medically complicated.” He doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t ask him to. “My parents had the resources to help, hers didn’t. She had big dreams, and mine were smaller and I wanted to be a dad, so I took the parent role, and she moved abroad.”
“Oh,” I breathe out. I have no idea what to say.
He waves me off. “It works for us. She’s amazing, and Elio loves her. Raising him gave me time to really look at myself, and I realized that while I’m definitely bi, I prefer men. I thought dating would get less complicated once I understood myself, but it turns out you’re not exactly a catch when you’re a single dad with almost no free time.”
I grimace. I don’t understand turning someone away because they have a kid, but I also don’t know jack shit about dating. “Sorry.”
He waves me off. “It is what it is. But when I met my ex, I was so distracted by the thought that someone wanted me, that when he pushed for marriage after six weeks, I agreed.”
“Oh, Rune.No.”
“Yeahhhhh.” He rubs a hand down his face. “It wasn’t my finest moment. Getting rid of him has been…hard. He disappeared for a while to dodge my attempts to serve him with divorce papers, but he’s back now.”
“Is he…does he…hurt you?”
Rune sighs heavily. “Not in the way you’re thinking. He knows all my soft spots and knows how to poke at them for the maximum amount of pain with the least amount of effort. But he’s also lazy, and he won’t keep this up forever. My plan is to wait him out.”
“Tell me he’s not around your son,” I say.
