“Shh.” I press a soft kiss to his forehead. “Just breathe for a minute.”
He’s breathing, but way too fast, so I hold him close and remind him over and over to breathe, that I’m here, that he’s safe and no one will hurt him. All the while, I silently curse Steve. Wherever he is now, I hope to God he’s alone and miserable, that he hasn’t gotten his hands on anyone else.
Eventually, Michael exhales, and the shaking slows. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”
You’re not the one who should be sorry.
“You all right?”
He nods, and as I carefully release him, he settles on his back. “I guess I wasn’t ready for that after all.” He stares up at the ceiling. “Weird. Everything’s fine, and then suddenly it’s not.” He’s breathing more steadily now, but his heart’s still going a hundred miles an hour.
“We can go slower.”
“Question is, how slow?” He turns to me and scowls. “I mean, the thought of you fucking me has had me so turned on all day, I couldn’t concentrate at work. Didn’t raise any red flags in my head. Didn’t make me feel panicky or anything. I just…wanted it. But then when we tried…”
I grimace and kiss his cheek. This really is going to be a minefield, isn’t it?
Michael sighs. “I don’t know what will be a problem and what won’t. For all I know, you could fuck me into oblivion, tie me up, slap my ass, and I’ll be fine, but then one kiss in the wrong place, and I’ll fall apart.” He combs through his hair with shaky fingers. “What the fuck is the matter with me?”
“Nothing’s the matter with you. You’ve been through hell. That’s going to leave—”
“It’s been five years.” He rubs his eyes. “Damn it. After the other night, and talking to Dr. Hamilton on the phone today, I felt good about everything, you know? Felt like I could handle anything. But I should’ve listened to you. When you hesitated.”
“You didn’t know what was going to happen. We’ll get there, Michael.”
“Do you know how frustrating that is?” He covers his face with his hands, then lets them drop onto the bed. “I wasn’t this wound up when I was a virgin.”
“Of course you weren’t.” I touch his arm, and when he doesn’t recoil, I move my hand to the middle of his chest. “Nobody had hurt you then.”
He closes his eyes and shudders.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you now,” I go on, “but it’ll take time for your mind to catch up with that. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
He sighs. Neither of us says anything for a while. Eventually, Michael breaks the silence. “Can I ask you something kind of weird?”
“Sure.”
He opens his eyes and stares unfocused up at the ceiling. It takes him a good thirty seconds to finally ask, “When did you know Steve was…”
“An asshole?”
“Yeah. That.”
“Why?”
Michael shrugs. “Just curious.” He turns toward me. “I guess I’m trying to figure out how long I was the clueless idiot in the gilded cage.”
“You weren’t an idiot, Michael. He manipulated you in the beginning, and he scared you in the end. And he fooled us all. Early on, we all liked him.”
His eyebrows jump. “You did?”
“Sure. He seemed like a nice guy. Charming as all hell.”
“Yeah, he was.” Michael sighs, sinking back against the pillow. “And he wasn’t always a total asshole. We even had some good days right there toward the end.”
“Really? Even after everything he’d done?”
“Stockholm Syndrome will do that to you,” he mutters. Then he shakes his head. “Honestly, he was a terrible person, but he could be a good guy at times. You know how some people are perfectly nice most of the time, but sometimes they’re just insufferable because they’re in a bad mood, or they’re drunk, or whatever?”
“I do, and most of those people don’t do the things Steve did.”
“No, but he was kind of like that. To an extreme. Both extremes, actually. He was really good at making up for it when he was an asshole, and I stupidly ate it up every time.” He laughs humorlessly. “If I had a nickel for every time he convinced me he’d changed.”
“Like I said, he had us all fooled.” I absently run my fingers up and down Michael’s arm. “The closer you are to a situation like that, the harder it is to see the truth. Especially when you’re being played by someone as manipulative as he was.”
“There is that.” He inches closer to me. “The fact that that he wasn’t all bad all the time makes it worse. I mean, sometimes…” Michael moistens his lips. “Even now, I have to admit there were times when he was genuinely a good guy. Like when my mom died. He was a fucking saint.”
“That doesn’t negate the other things he did.”