Page 87 of Boyfriend of the Hour

“Then things started to get really bad at home,” I said as I hugged a pillow to my chest. “Mostly because of school. Everyone else in my family is smart, see. Really smart. My brother is a freaking lawyer. Lea got a degree, too, before she had kids. Kate did fashion school and built her own business, Frankie was valedictorian, and Marie was already becoming this brilliant chef. And then there was me. Flunking out of ninth grade. Nonna wassomad. She said my grandfather was rolling in his grave right alongside my dad, and that they would both be so ashamed of me. Thatshewas ashamed of me.”

For the first time, Nathan’s brow furrowed. “I understand that feeling.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I bet your family’s really ashamed that you became a surgeon. Real stain on their legacy.”

Nathan’s big shoulders just rose and fell. “It wasn’t the path they planned for me. Among other things.”

His brown eyes met mine, and I saw truth there. A pain that mirrored mine. I didn’t know how or why, but somewhere along the line, Nathan Hunt had experienced the same kind of berating, shaming, and humiliation from his family that I had.

Just the idea made me rage inside.

“So, what happened with him after that?” he asked, pulling me out of my anger on his behalf. “How did it become…more?”

I cleared my throat and released the pillow I only just realized I’d been squeezing half to death. “Oh, well. About what you’d expect. I was angry with my family. And sad. And Shawn was…there. He started picking me up and taking me to dinner. Helping me with my homework when I needed it. Making sure I got to and from dance class. Just, you know, taking care of me. He made me feel like it was just us against the world, and I believed him. And when he finally kissed me, I felt like the luckiest girl on the planet, you know? I would have done about anything for him at that point.”

And I had, but I wasn’t about to describe all of that to Nathan. How Shawn had confessed his feelings to me as if he had some terrible disease, and only I could provide the cure. Convinced me that we needed to stay a secret, that we were soulmates who just needed more time.

I lost my virginity four months before I turned fifteen.

I thought I was in love.

Because I thought I was his.

But when you don’t have anyone to talk to about these things, you also don’t have anyone to tell you you’re being an idiot. So, I also didn’t have anyone to tell me that the inevitable was going to happen. That Shawn would tire of me and become alternately distant and controlling. That I’d never be able to reach him—only he could reach me. That I’d live for the days when I’d spot his red Mercedes turning the corner by the dance studio, knowing he’d take me for dinner like a grownup, then to motels that eventually grew less and less pretty as the years went by. That some days, I’d feel like the center of his world, and others, I’d feel like he kicked me out of it.

That I’d never be his girlfriend. Never be anything real.

But that every time I’d try to break it off, he’d worm his way back in all over again until I’d give in.

“It went on like that until I finally graduated high school,” I said. “Then he sort of lost interest for months at a time. I knew he was always seeing other people. He said we defied labels.”

I could hear myself practically parroting the same line Shawn had fed me last night, like I was still that idiot teenager. He still looked almost the same. And I had felt the same. The second he walked into the bar, every bit of lightness I’d felt had vanished, swallowed by that dark shadow of inevitability.

“But even then, he’d always come back. But by then, even though I didn’t want him to, it was just easier to wait until he was bored again. Shawn gets angry when he’s rejected, and he knows things. An angry Shawn is a scary Shawn. And I don’t ever want anyone else to know about him, Nathan. No one.”

The unspoken question, of course, was why I had told him then.

Because I had to.

Because I could.

Because, somehow, Nathan was still looking at me like he always had, without judgment or contempt. Like I just was.

“So, let me paraphrase,” he said once it was apparent I was done talking. “When you were thirteen, a twenty-two-year-old man started grooming you?—”

“Dude, I’m not a dog,” I cut in. “He wasn’tgroomingme.”

“It’s just the term for when an adult manipulates a child into an inappropriate relationship,” Nathan explained quietly. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

I took another long drink of coffee. I knew that. I’d just…never wanted to say it out loud.

“He started a relationship with you,” Nathan rephrased, then looked up as if to say,Is that better?

I nodded shortly. He went on.

“He made you dependent on him, built an attachment, cultivated a sexual relationship with a minor?—”

“It wasn’t illegal,” I muttered. This right here was why I never told anyone this story. “The age of consent in New York was fourteen until a few years ago.” When Nathan’s eyes flashed with something dangerous, I shook my head. “Don’t ask me how I know that.”