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“Do you want to tell me, Oaken?”

But my fears appeared to be unfounded. His answer was an instant, emphatic, “Yes.” He closed the distance between us with two huge strides. “I want to tell you anything you want to know. I want to give you everything I have to give. All of me. Even the bad bits.”

“You have no bad bits,” I whispered.

His hand rose to cup my jaw.

“Like you,” he began, “I was taken in by a family member after my mother’s death. But my uncle was not good. Not like your Aunty Anjali.”

Dread sluiced like poison. I already knew this story would be a bad one. We’d barely even begun, and it was already painful.

Little Oaken. Five years old. Grieving and alone.

And not given to someone good.

He deserved someone good. He deserved an Aunty Anjali, swooping in like a superhero and carrying him away. The fact I’d received such a miracle when he hadn’t was an injustice so grave that my body went briefly nuclear with fury.

“My uncle was Garrek’s father. We lived all together in his house for a time. He was… difficult.”

“Difficult?”

Oaken grimaced. “He enjoyed control. Power. He would hold back food from me when he was angry. And take other things away. My warm clothing. My bed.”

Something throbbed mightily in my brain. For the first time in my life, I understood anger that could keep me from thinking, from breathing, from seeing straight. Oaken was a hot green blur before me.

“But whatever he did to me, he did tenfold to Garrek. Garrek always took the brunt of his anger. He was beaten. Often and badly. He still bears the scars to this day.”

I’d only met Garrek a few times in passing. We hadn’t really ever talked. I’d never noticed any scars on him. But he always wore that lacy vest…

“The day my uncle first tried to beat me was the day he died. Garrek…” Oaken’s voice suddenly warmed with affection. “You speak so highly of your aunt. To you, she is a hero. That was Garrek to me. Bigger, stronger, older. He could not bear to see me hurt. I was sickly. My lungs were nearly as bad as my mother’s had been. I would not have withstood what Garrek had for all those cycles of his youth. And I think maybe he knew it. He pulled my uncle away, and he hit him, and in the course of the struggle, my uncle hit his head and died.”

I breathed like a saw was going in and out of me.

The next time I encountered Garrek, I was going to march right up to him and shake his fucking hand.

“I didn’t know about your lungs,” I said.

There were so many things I didn’t know.

“They are much better now,” Oaken said. “Something about the environment here is better for them. For me. As horrific as my uncle’s actions, and the ensuing trial, were, they were necessary for me to get to this place.”

His white eyes shone with the force of a sun. I could barely stand to look. But I did look. Because he was so fucking beautiful.

“They were necessary,” he said, caressing my jaw, “because they brought me to you.”

I’d come here planning to tell him that I was leaving soon.

But now, all I wanted to do was hold him. To let him know, with my body if I couldn’t do it with my voice, that I was his if he wanted.

His to keep.

My hands shook as they rose to his face. He gave a soft groan when I tugged him down to me. His mouth sought mine at once, hot, hungry. Desire snapped, then blazed through me like lightning.

I kissed Oaken fervently, frantically. As I did so, I gently pushed him until the backs of his knees hit the chair. I pushed him again, and he fell into its seat.

He didn’t reallyfall.He was so solid, so strong, that he wouldn’t have moved a millimetre in response to my touch if he hadn’t wanted to.

But he did want to. When I pushed against him, he yielded.