Page 21 of Forever Always

“Becks, I know.”

I frowned. “Know what? No you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do.”

It was pissing me off and I didn’t know why. How could he possibly know?

“What do you know, Ri? Please tell me. Do you know how most guys don’t bother askin’ your age when you’re on your knees for them?”

“Becks . . .”

“Jerkin’ a guy off would usually be enough to get us dinner for the night. Handful of blow jobs was enough to cover what my jobs didn’t for rent. I didn’t let anyone else have my ass though.”

Not after . . . fuck. I squeezed my eyes shut. This was not how I wanted to tell him. This was exactly the opposite of what I had planned. Now he was gonna blame himself and feel guilty. But I couldn’t stop fuckin’ talking.

“Sometimes, if I was really desperate, I’d let them piss on me. Did you know that too?”

Stop fuckin’ talkin’, Beckett!

The bed creaked and then Riley was on top of me, one hand holding my hair so tightly it brought tears to my eyes. The other one pried my fingers off my wrist. I opened my eyes, surprised to see blood.

“Beckett, stop trauma-bombing me to try and shock me away and look at me.”

Trauma-bombing? “Where’d you learn that?”

He rolled his eyes, but I saw the corners of his lips tip up. “Google. It don’t matter because it won’t work.”

I frowned, completely distracted from my anger. “What won’t work?”

“Tryin’ to scare me away by throwin’ all the bullshit you had to do at me. But it won’t scare me. I know I don’t know everythin’ you went through and had to do, and I get why you don’t wanna share it all. I even get why you’re throwin’ that at me. It’s somethin’ you had to do to survive, somethin’ you shoulda never had to do because you were just a kid with no choice, and I feel awful that it happened. And yeah, I feel fuckin’ guilty because I know you did it so I could eat or not have to sleep on the street or whatever. If that’s what you were tryin’ to do, make me feel guilty, you’ve succeeded. But if you were tryin’ to push me away from whatever the fuck this is between us, it won’t happen. Nothin’ will make me leave short of you tellin’ me to go. And even then, I’m not sure I’d listen.”

Everything settled. All the fear, all the noise. Everything that had made me lash out just disappeared. All I saw was Riley. “I don’t want you to feel guilty. Never that. I never regret anything I did to make sure you were fed and safe, and I’d do it all fuckin’ again. I’m so sorry I made you feel like that. I didn’t want to tell you this way. It just sorta happened.”

Riley relaxed his hold and practically fell into me, his face buried in my shoulder. I immediately wrapped my arms around him, that itch I felt since this whole shitshow conversation started finally eased.

“It’s okay. I know that couldn’t be easy, but thank you for trustin’ me enough to share.”

I kissed the top of his head, and breathed in that vanilla scent that always stuck to him. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything, but the words ran dry. I already nearly fucked things up enough. That was enough for the day.

“So you’re really okay with that?”

“Yeah. Becks, there’s nothin’ wrong with sex work. What was wrong with it was that you were just a kid and those were grown ass man takin’ advantage of you. You do get the difference, right? That even if you did it willingly and they paid you, you were a victim? This wasn’t a choice you had.”

I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure I did. But I was just so fuckin’ exhausted now, I really couldn’t talk about it anymore. Not when the rest of the memories were so close to the surface.

“When’d you become so smart?”

Ri knocked his head into my chest, but he was laughing. “Always, asshole. Thanks to you makin’ me stay in school.”

He had his head tilted up now so that he looked in my eyes, and it took my fuckin’ breath away. I always knew Riley had the most mesmerizing eyes I’d ever seen, but every time I looked at him now, it was like I saw him in a new light. How had I been so blind?

“Becks?” Riley asked softly. He pulled himself back and knelt in front of me.

“Yeah, butterfly?”

“Is it okay if I kiss you again? Now?”

My lips parted, but there was really only one correct answer. “Yeah.”

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