because he simply needed to say it out loud. To acknowledge it. Own it. Live with it. Once and for all.
“Shit,” Gavin breathed. “I guess we found the subtext.”
“Why would you think that, Mack?” Del asked.
Mack opened his eyes but saw nothing.
“Look at us.” That was from Malcolm, quiet and commanding.
Mack shook his head. He couldn’t face them right now. They’d take one look in his eyes and see right through him. The real him. See him for the fraud that he was. Nothing but a scared fourteen-year-old kid who hid in a closet while his father beat his mother. And then they would reject him too.
“Why would Liv be better off without the man she loves?” Del asked.
“Because she loved an illusion.” Shit. What was wrong with his voice? He could barely talk. “She loved a made-up man crafted from the pages of too many romance novels.”
“No. You were more real with Liv than we’ve ever seen you be with a woman,” Del said. “She fell in love with the real you.”
“Maybe that’s what really scares you,” Malcolm continued.
“I—” His voice officially failed.
“Mack,” Malcolm said softly, his fingers squeezing his shoulder with comforting certainty. “Tell us about your father.”
Mack closed his eyes again and tried to swallow, but once again something hard had taken up residence in his throat. “I’m so afraid that part of him lives in me. I think that’s why I changed my name.”
Jesus. The truth made him dizzy. He gripped the counter harder to stay upright. “I changed my name because I’m terrified that his blood runs through me. What if there’s a part of me somewhere that’s just like him?”
“Mack,” Malcolm said. “You are not your father.”
The arrow-sharp precision of Malcolm’s words pierced what little steel remained around his bruised, battered heart.
“And you are not what your father did.”
Something dripped from Mack’s chin. Ah, fuck. He was crying. Goddammit.
“The fact that you started reading romance novels to learn how to be a better man than him shows that you already were a better man than he could ever dream of being.”
Gavin came closer. “You’ve been living with some kind of undercover identity for so long that you’ve forgotten who you really are—a good, decent man.”
“Fuck,” Mack growled. “Fuck!”
Mack pounded his fist on the counter, but then Malcolm wrapped two giant arms around him from behind. And then Del hugged him, and then Gavin, and suddenly even the Russian was there, and it became a great big manly hug huddle with Mack in the middle.
His friends held him up as all the shit he’d been bottling up since he was fourteen came flying out in a torrent of sobs that he couldn’t have stopped if he tried. And they let him cry, let him cling to them.
Malcolm pressed his forehead to the back of Mack’s neck. “Let it go, man. Let it go. We got you as long as you need.”
He did need them. So much. Because his knees shook, and his legs barely functioned. Mack lost sense of time as his chest released all the built-up pressure of a lifetime of secrets and remorse, pain and regret.
Until the pleasant ding-dong of his doorbell interrupted, followed immediately by an impatient knock.
Great. Who the fuck . . . Wait. Maybe it was Liv. Mack untangled himself from his friends.
“I will get it,” the Russian said before Mack could stop him.
He raced back thirty seconds later, eyes bulging with panic. “Code red. Code red.”
Code red? What the fuck did that mean?
A diminutive, pissed-off woman appeared in the kitchen.
Oh, fuck. Code-fucking-red.
A collective gulp filled the tense silence as Thea Scott crossed her arms and glared.
“Um, hi, honey,” Gavin said. “What are you—”
“Don’t honey me,” Thea snapped.
Gavin shut up.
Thea fired her missile-like stare squarely at Mack. “Now, see, this really pisses me off. I come over here all riled up, ready to call you some really creative names for breaking my sister’s heart, maybe even kick you in the balls, and instead you have the audacity to stand there looking like that.” She waved her hands at his general state of pathetic loserdom. “How am I supposed to make you feel like shit when you’re already there?”
Mack gripped the back of his neck. “Thea—
”
“Stop talking.”
He snapped his mouth shut.
She slammed her hands on her hips. “I swear to God, you and Liv are going to be the death of me!”
Mack’s heart sputtered. “What-what’s wrong with Liv? Is she okay?”