Page 69 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

“Ask your damn question,” he ordered, bossy as hell.

She had so many questions. A million whys and hows and whens. But she had to be careful. Strategic. What were the things she needed to understand about him to go from being lovers to friends?

She supposed the simplest place to start was a question she’d already asked him before. “Why’d you join the military?”

He sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. A coping mechanism he’d developed all on his own. “My stepfather didn’t give me much of a choice.”

Then he was silent. She waited for a while, thinking he’d find his voice again and explain that, but he didn’t.

“So, my turn?” he asked instead.

She frowned at him. “No. You have to answer it to my satisfaction, and your stepfather not giving you a choice isn’t an answer. It’s a sentence that creates a million other questions.”

“I’m sitting for this,” he muttered, stalking over to the couch and collapsing rather dramatically on it. She moved slower, lowered herself onto the corner of the couch carefully. She wanted to touch him, wanted to curl up next to him, with his arm around her, and have this conversation as if…

But there was noas if. She kept her distance, and she watched his scarred hand rather than his face. “How did your stepfather make you join the military?”

“Powerful man. A powerful man who always hated me.”

“Hateis a strong word. Sometimes when we’re young—”

“I was young, and then I wasn’t. He hated me. This was no up-for-interpretation, stepdaddy grounded me a few too many times. Hate. Pure, unadulterated hate. I was a stain. He loved my mother—well, his version of love. I was his not-fair-skinned, not-easily-folded-into-the-family reminder she’d loved someone else. Although in fairness, I did start a fire at their wedding. Quite on purpose.”

Monica gasped. Silly, all in all, considering she’d heard far worse. Still. She couldn’t imagine… She couldn’t…

“It was the first time they sent me to therapy. Hardly the last.”

He said it so offhandedly. So…dispassionately. She could hardly reconcile this man on the couch with the man she’d gotten to know over the past six months. “You…”

He gave her one of those rueful, awful smiles as if the world was a cruel, cosmic joke all the time. “Have to save questions about that for tomorrow, I guess.”

Except, now that she’d started it, part of her didn’t want to know how this story ended. All she wanted to know was that he was whole and real and here. A good man. She didn’t want to know about the tragedies that had shaped him—they hurt too much.

But she’d opened up Pandora’s box, and here was all the hurt he’d tried to convince her to avoid.

When would she ever listen?

Chapter 18

It was a strange thing to be having this conversation, Gabe thought. Not because of the place or time or even her, but simply because he’d never expressed any of this to a living soul.

Oh, he’d told his mother plenty of times that Evan hated him. Before they’d married even, he’d begged his mother to stay away from the man with cold eyes and cruel words.

She’d been lost somehow. Evan’s money or charm or sick ability to find the weaknesses in people and destroy them with it.

Destroy everything.

She cleared her throat. “Why did you… You were a boy and you… At a wed…” She shook her head as if she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

He almost wasn’t sorry for letting that part slip out. He wanted some of her horror directed at him. He might have been the injured party overall, but he was certainly no innocent victim.

“Why did I set a fire at my mother’s wedding?” he asked flippantly, but how could he be anything but flippant when he’d somehow confessed all these old horrible things to her? What was there to explain? He’d been angry, hurt, scared, and he’d lashed out in a way he still couldn’t fully remember deciding to.

“I guess you’ll have to save that question for another day, too,” he said, smiling blankly at her.

It didn’t provoke her anger as he’d hoped it would. She simply looked sad. The color had leached out of her face and her eyes looked impossibly blue. Impossibly…kind. But kindness didn’t last. Kindness, care, love—it all faded. Always.

He’d answered her first question, now he’d ask his two, and then he’d find a way to get out of here. Besides, what could this question really reveal about him if he told it right? “Have any experience with emotional abuse?”

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