Page 89 of Rev

“But I’m not going to.”

“Stupid girl,” he whispers.

“Maybe so.” I kiss his jaw. “Could you let me walk away?”

“I’d rather take a bullet. But if it meant nothing happens to you, yeah. I would.”

“Rev,” I whisper.

“Never had this.” His voice is not even a whisper, as if the words are escaping rather than being spoken.

“Had what?”

His arm tightens, his hand squeezing my hip. “This.”

“Can you…would you elaborate for me, honey?”

And again, he flinches. Inhales roughly, lets it out with a growl. “Fucked a lot of women. A lot. First was when I was thirteen.”

My chest tightens. “Thirteen?”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “Don’t figure you like hearing this. But you asked.”

“Just don’t cheat on me.”

He shakes his head. “That’s it? That’s all you care about?”

“When you boil it down, yeah. Do I like the thought of you with other women? Not really. But it’d be pretty childish and petty of me to get all twisted up about it, when it’s as much a part of you as all the rest. So, yeah. As long as you’re honest with me and cut me loose instead of sleeping around behind my back…yeah.”

“I can make that promise, at least.”

“Good. So. You were saying?”

“Been with a lot of women. But it was always…quick. Do the thing, and they leave. No chitchat after. No sleeping together after. I fuck ‘em, and either they’re gone or I am. If there was someone I went back to, or had it more than once with her, maybe we talked a little between. Never shared. Never…” He squeezes me again. “Never did this.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

I mull this over, and he’s silent while I do so. “Have you ever been hugged?”

“Chance, occasionally. But he’s my brother.”

“Why do you flinch when I call you honey?”

“Told you. It hurts. Don’t know what to do with it.”

“And me showing you affection?” I emphasize my question by touching his ear, which I’ve noticed he’s particularly responsive to.

“Same.”

“Can you go deeper?”

He growls a sigh. “No one was ever nice to me. No one ever gave that first shit about me. More to the point, everyone I ever knew, with the sole exception of Chance, always saw me as less than fuckin’ dirt. So…when you’re all sweet to me, touchin’ me, actin’ like…I don’t even know. Like you do, with me. It’s…it fuckin’ cuts me to the bone. Rips me apart. You’re sogood, soclean,so kind, so goddamnsweet, and I’m…none of that.”

“Clean?” I ask.

He nods. Lifts that hand again, staring at it as if seeing something on it I can’t. “No blood—no darkness. Not like me. I’m fuckin’ filthy with it.”