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I took a drink of my soda. “Listen, I really don’t want to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but… is everything okay?”

He bristled like he wanted to lash out and tell me to mind my business. After a moment, though, and what seemed like a briefinternal struggle, he exhaled. He picked at his dinner, then lay his chopsticks down beside it. With a heavy sigh, he pressed his elbows onto the table beside his abandoned plate. “I got an invite to my brother’s wedding.”

I stiffened. “Oh.” I almost asked,“That’s it?”But that would’ve been a dickish thing to say. Obviously it was a big deal for him, even if I couldn’t imagine why. “Is… Is that not a good thing?”

“No, it is,” he murmured. “He asked me to be his best man a while ago, and of course I’m going to. I’d never say no.” His brow pinched as he stared intently into his mostly abandoned food. “The issue is going home. I love my family, but there are some… complicated things.” He shuddered. “People I could handle never seeing again for as long as I live.”

More alarm bells clanged in the back of my mind. “Yeah?”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate.

I debated how much I wanted to press. I was worried, and there were certain messy family situations that people just did not need to subject themselves to.

“Whatever’s going on back home…” I studied him. “I mean, is this like, a sibling or something you don’t get along with? Or…” I hesitated, then cautiously asked, “Like, ‘creepy uncle who shouldn’t be alone with the kids’ kind of thing?”

Nolan’s flinch said it all. “Something like that.”

“Shit. But you’re still going to go?”

“I have to,” he said almost soundlessly, and he met my gaze with unusually vulnerable eyes. “It’s my little brother’s wedding.”

My mouth had gone dry, and I took another swallow of soda. I suddenly wasn’t any more interested in my dinner than he was. “Does… Does your family know?”

He shook his head, and his voice sounded hollow as he whispered, “No one does.”

My stomach clenched. Holy shit…

Nolan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, then reluctantly picked up his chopsticks again. “I have to go to the wedding. Iwantto. I’m just… trying to psych myself up to deal with the rest, I guess.”

“And there’s reallyno onethere who knows? No one who can have your back?”

“I can’t tell anyone,” he said. “It would… the damage it would do to my family…”

My breath lodged in my throat along with the words,what about the damage it’s obviously done to you?

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, and he loaded some more meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and rice onto his chopsticks. “Just not looking forward to a few things. That’s all.”

Something about the way he said it held weight. Finality.

Drop it,he wasn’t saying out loud,because I’m done talking about it.

I hesitated, but I didn’t want to push him. Not about this subject.

So, I picked up my own chopsticks, and like him, I continued eating.

To say the conversation bothered me would be an understatement.

Sitting alone in my bedroom after we’d come back from dinner, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to pull my thoughts into order.

The card he’d shown put everything we’d done in bed earlier into very uncomfortable perspective. I’d thought maybe he was just distracted or not really in the mood. It hadn’t even crossedmy mind that he might have an ugly past like that. He hadn’t elaborated on what had happened to him—no details about how old he’d been, who’d done it, what had happened—so I had no idea if we’d been brushing up against that dark history. I’d thought we were just exchanging blowjobs to relieve some tension, but…

“Jesus Christ.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. Now it suddenly made sense why had had so many rigid boundaries when it came to sex. I’d sucked him off more times than I could count, but I’d never seen the man naked. He didn’t even walk around the apartment without a shirt on. He insisted he didn’t mind when I did—he made no effort to hide when he was checking me out—but he never followed suit. Not even when we were out on the balcony or our weapons grade air conditioning wasn’t enough to stave off the tropical heat.

He didn’t kiss. He didn’t want to sleep in the same bed. Mostly-dressed handjobs and blowjobs were the extent of our hookups and had been from the start. As much as I’d craved more, he’d made it clear that was all he wanted. I’d always thought an orgasm was better than no orgasm, so whatever, but it hadn’t occurred to me…

Fucking hell. Especially with the cop training that had been pounded into my head, I should’ve known there was more to his backstory. That he wasn’t just the quiet, stoic type who was shy about taking off his clothes. Not that he’d given me any reason to think one way or the other, but most people weren’t that closed off for no reason. Most people didn’t keep the rest of the world at a very firm distance just for kicks.

Least of all people who were as selfless and kindhearted as Nolan. Hell, take the way we ended up living together.

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