lifted both hands and framed my face, putting his in mine and growling, “Do not say that shit.”
“You are so blind,” I mocked. “So fucking blind. I’ve fooled you. But it’s not surprising seeing as I’ve spent twenty-seven years fooling myself. I can’t get out of it. I can’t find my way to a different life. Straight up, Mag, listen to me. I like you. You’re a good guy. So listen to me. You need to get out now. Save yourself because there’s no saving me. They’re gonna drag me down, and if you’re anywhere near, they’re gonna take you with me.”
“Find somewhere else to be,” he rumbled, not at me, I knew, because the guys moved, though apparently Mag’s pancakes were really that good because they didn’t leave.
They went to his room and shut the door.
“Look at me,” Mag said.
I turned my gaze from watching his bedroom door close to his face.
“I like you too, Evan, and I’m not blind to shit,” he declared.
“You need to let me go.”
I meant his hold on my head and just…
Me.
He did not let me go.
He made a speech.
A speech that was such, I hung on every word.
“We’re gonna sort this shit out and then we’re gonna date in a way you put a bag with clean panties and a nightie in my truck ’cause you’ll be spending the night. That is, before you got your stuff at my place, and I have mine at yours. I’ll make you breakfast. You’ll make me dinner. You’re gonna get your goddamn degree. You’re gonna find a job you dig. You’re gonna build the life you want, Evan. Don’t know if I’m gonna be a part of that. Just know, as of now, I feel the deep need to explore that possibility. And this is not a damsel-in-distress situation where I’m blinded to dick, intent only on saving the little woman. It’s because you like my eyelashes, you give a shit about the planet, you knew your brother was gonna get your ass in a sling but you moved to protect him anyway, you got no issue making the first move to go after what you want and you make fucking great bacon cheeseburgers, even without Worcestershire sauce.”
“You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met,” I whispered.
“And this is a bad thing?” he did not whisper.
“Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?” I asked.
He slid his fingers back into my hair and curled them around my head.
“Trust me,” he stated, his tone now guttural, and those two words landed like punches in my gut, sharing inexorably that this conversation just took a dread turn. “This goes the way I want it to, there’ll be a time I got no choice but to land my shit on you. I’ll fuckin’ hate it, only slightly more than you will when you hear it. This is not the test of us, Evan. That will be the test of us.”
I stared in his intense blue eyes.
And got it.
“Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria,” I said softly.
“You know what a rape house is?”
Oh no.
No.
That was when I lifted my hands and grabbed his head.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Well, I’ve seen one.”
“Danny,” I breathed, my eyes stinging, the tears coming.
“So, you want it straight-up, Evie?” he asked but went on before I could answer. “Your brother and his shit is chump change to what I’ve seen men do to women.”
“Honey,” I whispered.
“And I’m gonna fuckin’ get you clear, Evan, are you hearing me?”
I nodded.
“And you are not fucking trash. I know trash. And that is not you. And not simply because, in every instance I ran up against trash, it had a dick. But that does include your fucking brother.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” I said soothingly.
“Don’t talk that shit to me or anyone ever again, Evan. Yeah?”
I repeated my nod.
“We done with your episode?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You have ’em whenever they come. Let ’em fly. And I’ll talk you down. You still with me?”
“Yes, Danny.”
With all that was happening, it was more than the fact I was a crier that I couldn’t stop it.
So the tear dropped from my eye to run down my face.
Mag shifted a hand and caught it with his thumb, then spread the wet over the apple of my cheek.
“Now, I’m making pancakes,” he declared.
A sharp giggle escaped me that wasn’t humor, as such, even if it kind of was.
“Okay,” I replied.
He started to move away but then didn’t and both his hands shifted so he could rub his thumbs over the apples of my