“The way you ran from me,” he says simply.
I ease out of his embrace and roll over on my side.
He presses his palm to my shoulder. I close my eyes.
“What if I say ‘sunset’?” My voice is a whisper.
His fingers tighten, then relax. “If you need to.” He reaches over me and takes my hand, then twines his fingers with mine. “Or you can just hold tight.”
I don’t know where to begin, so I start with the easiest. “I never slept with Ollie,” I say. “Not the way you understood me, anyway.”
He is silent, and so I continue, telling my story to the night sky and to Damien. “It was about a week after Ashley’s birthday, a few years after the suicide. I’d mostly stopped cutting, but sometimes—well, sometimes I needed it. But I was getting better. Ollie knew. And Jamie. And they were helping me.”
“What happened?”
“I got drunk. I mean wasted drunk. My mom had called and given me some head trip. I missed Ashley something fierce. And I was dating this guy. Kurt. We’d been going out for months, and it had taken me a while, but we started sleeping together, and he would tell me how he didn’t mind the scars, that I was beautiful, that it was about me, not my scars or my tits or any of that stuff. Just me and him and our connection. And I believed him and, honestly, the sex was good. We had fun together.”
I suck in a deep breath to give me courage to continue. “But this night, we both got wasted. Honestly, I don’t even know how he managed to get an erection. But he did, and we did, and afterward he looked at my legs and he”—my voice breaks with the memory—“he told me I was lucky I had a pretty face and such a sweet * because I was one totally screwed-up bitch, and my scars made him want to puke.”
I take deep breaths, keeping my eyes on the sky and my fingers tight in Damien’s hand. Even now, the memory makes me feel sick. I’d trusted Kurt, and he’d completely ripped me apart.
“I went to Ollie,” I continue. “He knew about my scars and he was my friend and I knew he was attracted to me. And I tried to seduce him.”
“He wouldn’t sleep with you,” Damien says.
“He wouldn’t fuck me,” I clarify. “But he took off my jeans and he told me that for some of those scars he remembered what I’d been through, and he told me that he thought I was strong. That he didn’t want me cutting anymore. That I was better than my mother and I needed to forget assholes like Kurt and finish school and get the hell out of Texas. Then he held me until I fell asleep.”
I manage a watery smile. “I thought he got me through it. Guess I still have some issues to work through, huh?”
I’ve put a light note in my voice, but Damien doesn’t respond to it.
“Damien?” I roll over to look at him, then immediately sit up. He looks angry, like he’s barely holding in his fury. I take his hand. “He’s ancient history.”
“He will be if I ever meet the fucker. What’s his last name?”
I hesitate. Considering Damien owns half the universe, I think better of saying it. “No. It’s all in the past. I’m over it,” I lie.
He eyes me but I look back blandly. “What about the other men you’ve slept with?”
I frown, surprised by the question. “There haven’t been any others. Just my first when I was sixteen—some prep school idiot my mom fixed me up with. And then Kurt.” I shrug. “It’s okay, though. I mean, I dated and fooled around, but mostly I’ve been focused on school. I haven’t been sitting in an ivory tower wondering why no one’s unlocking my chastity belt. And I own a really nice vibrator.”
The last makes him burst out laughing. “Do you?”