“Deal.”
He casts his eyes to the ceiling like he’s looking for inspiration on where to begin. “Uh—okay, well. In a nutshell, I grew up in a dysfunctional home. There was a lot of fighting and cheating happening between my parents. My dad slept on my floor a lot and openly spilled their baggage when he really should have shut the hell up about it.” Will’s tone is hard as granite on that last sentence, and before I realize what I’m doing, I roll over to face his abdomen. Maybe it’s because he gave me permission, maybe it’s because something about me feels free with Will—I don’t know—but I don’t hesitate before looping my arms around him.
He doesn’t stop brushing his fingers through my hair and across my neck. Doesn’t make me feel like this is anything out of the ordinary. My arms around him feel as natural as breathing.
“Go on,” I urge.
“If you saw me back then—in high school and before—you wouldn’t recognize me,” he says with a sad sort of smile. “I wore polo shirts, Annie. And glasses. And I never socialized, ever.”
“Wait…” I squint up at him. “Do you ever wear glasses now?”
“Only at night after I take my contacts out.”
My ovaries quake at this news. It’s too much to handle, so I swallow, make a noncommittal hmm sound, and then wait for him to continue.
“I busted my ass all through school because I thought”—he adds one short laugh—“I thought it would help. I hoped that if I could be the perfect son for them, if I could help take care of my brother and make sure that we never added additional stress, then…”
“Then they’d be happy.”
“Exactly.”
Our eyes connect and his words resonate somewhere deep inside me. “I relate. Although in a slightly different way. Because for me, it was that I was trying to keep life stress-free for my grieving siblings.” My gaze moves to Will’s shirt as I feel painful tugs of my past against my heart. I’m not sure I’ve ever said that out loud before—or even realized that it was true. But now I feel almost outside of myself, as I watch a younger Annie try to pick up the pieces for her siblings. Cutting her hands in the process and never telling anyone she’s bleeding.
I don’t realize I’m frowning until I feel Will’s thumb brush against my brows, relaxing them.
“It sounds like we both put our needs in the back seat during critical times in our lives.”
And yet we’re both seeking different paths to soothe ourselves. He doesn’t want anything to do with relationships, and I want the ultimate one.
I blink back up at him. “So did it work? Did your perfection pay off?”
His jaw flexes against memories. “No,” he says quietly. “I graduated as valedictorian and got into MIT, but Dale and Nina were still toxic, surprise, surprise. They couldn’t do anything right in each other’s eyes, and as a result, Ethan and I couldn’t do anything right either. I think they deeply resented their lives. So to answer your question, no, they were not affectionate.”
“I’m sorry, Will. You didn’t deserve that from them.”
“Yeah…well, it all worked out, so it’s fine. After my graduation ceremony, I came home, and my mom was crying because my dad found out she’d cheated again, and then”—he frowns at the wall—“she screamed at me for not taking out the damn trash that morning. So I snapped. I packed a bag and I left. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Instead, I stayed in a hotel for a week and then joined the military. I felt awful for leaving my brother behind like that, but I needed to get out, and the Air Force was giving away free T-shirts outside the grocery store.” He smiles self-deprecatingly.
“Wow.” I try to process everything he just said, not fully being able to imagine that kind of life. And to be honest, if I were in Will’s shoes, I can’t say I would feel differently about relationships either. It would be difficult to jump into one when he’s seen so much pain around the one relationship that was supposed to be stable for him.
“The really sad part is, my parents are doing better now, because after my brother and I were out of the house, they finally got a divorce. They said they had always stayed together for us—and we should be grateful they gave us that time as a complete family unit. How messed up is that?”
“That’s rough. Do you ever see them now?”
“Occasionally, but not often. I don’t have any desire to hang out with them for a full weekend and pretend that my childhood didn’t nearly destroy me. And I’m not brave enough to actually fight with them over it either. So I just avoid them.”
“I don’t blame you, Will. I wouldn’t want to either.” My eyes trace the lines of his face, and I feel a protective anger rise up toward anyone who would ever dare treat him like he wasn’t the most wonderful person in the world. Like he wasn’t precious and valuable. “How long were you in the military?”
“Six years active duty, two in the reserves. I served as a Security Forces specialist.”
“You didn’t like it?”
He shrugs lightly. “Sort of. It was mentally and physically draining, and it left very little room for living life outside of it. I was ready for something different by the end. I have a friend who introduced me to the agency I’m with now, and I started training with them while I was in the reserves. The rest is history. I already had plenty of hand-to-hand combat training from my military career, but with the agency I was also trained in evasive driving and other various weaponry courses.”
“Does that mean you carry a gun?”
“Not to guard celebrities. Mainly when protecting politicians or people with a high-threat level. You have to have clearance for it.”
Suddenly I think of Will in one of those high-threat-level jobs and having to use a weapon or be faced with someone else using one, and my arms instinctively tighten around him. “Have you ever regretted not going to MIT and choosing a different career path?”
There’s a loaded pause that I don’t miss. “I don’t think I like the word regret. Every choice I’ve made has been valuable in some way or other. And the fact is, if I had gone to MIT back then, I probably would have kept striving for academic perfection and returning home when I shouldn’t. But the military forced me to get that space I needed—if that makes sense. It was somewhere my parents and their drama couldn’t easily reach me.”
My eyes drop to his arm. His flowers. I trace my finger over the petals. “So you were hiding in the tree from your parents.”
“Yes,” he says as his fingers trail down my neck and to the exposed skin where my pajama top has gaped open over my shoulder. His touch grazes my book tattoo and I feel the smile in his fingertip. “So does that answer all your questions, Miss Inquisitive?”
“Not yet.”
He groans.
“Tell me about your brother. What’s he like? Is he antirelationship too?”
“My brother used to feel like I do. Against the entire idea of marriage and like we’re better off without it…until recently.”
“What happened recently?”
“He met someone and just got engaged.” He pauses, and we only stare at each other for a minute—unspoken thoughts and feelings running like currents through the air. “I’ve been avoiding his calls because I can’t bring myself to tell him I’m happy for him. Does that make me the shittiest brother in the world?”
“No. I think it means you have a lot of hurt still, and I’m willing to bet he probably understands.”
Will grins and pushes a piece of my hair back from my face. “You see too much good in me, Annie. There’s a very real possibility, you know, that I am just a very selfish asshole who uses women and lives according to my own whims just because I like life better that way.”
I hum lightly and close my eyes, feeling exhaustion press over me again. “That’s what you’d like me and everyone else to think.”