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“Except don’t you have to walk up the aisle with her?”

Nolan squirmed as if he wanted to crawl out of his skin. “I can handle it. And it isn’t like she’ll do anything during the ceremony, you know?”

“She… okay. Maybe not. But… For Christ’s sake. You shouldn’t have to just knuckle through standing next to yourrapist.”

He flinched again.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“It’s okay. And the story is—it’s long and ugly.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I think I can piece some of it together, unfortunately.”

He met my gaze, those blue eyes full of too many emotions to name. “CanI tell you?”

My heart jumped. “Of course you can. You don’t have to, but if you want to…”

“I think I need to. The way what she did completely derailed my life… no one else knows.” He paused. “No one who’s still in my life, anyway.”

Blood pounded in my ears, and I touched his knee. “Tell me?”

He was quiet for a long, long time, eyes unfocused. I didn’t know if he was pulling his thoughts together, figuring out where to start, or maybe even flashing back to an uglier time in his life.

“You still with me?” I asked softly, just to be sure he wasn’t quietly having a flashback.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m…” He shook his head. Then he took a deep breath. “So, all this?” He gestured at the extensive tattoos covering his arm, then at his side, where his shirt covered more work on his ribs. “This didn’t start just because I like ink. I do like it, but this…” He dropped his gaze and shook his head.

I swallowed. “Self-harm?”

Shame twisted his features as he nodded. “It was something I could control. Something nobody could take away.” He scratched the back of his neck. “When I was at Twentynine Palms, one of my artists caught on. I’m not—I have no idea what gave it away, but she figured it out.”

“Jesus,” I whispered. “But doesn’t that mean… every time you look at your tattoos…”

“For a while, yeah. But I’ve had some of the earlier ones covered up.” He gestured at an elaborate and very dark dragon encircling his upper right arm. “Replaced them with the ones I liked, you know? Instead of something I got just because I was in a bad place.” He grimaced. “Getting the one on my ribs redone fucking sucked, but it was worth it.”

I shivered; I’d watched a buddy get a rib tattoo once, and he’d given up on being stoic after the first ten minutes or so. And Nolan had been tattooed theretwice?

“The worst part was getting them removed first,” he went on. “Some of them could be covered up, but some—they were too dark, so they had to come off first.” He shuddered. “That fucking sucked.”

My mouth went dry. Every layer he peeled off his past just made me sicker.

“I finallyonlyhave tattoos I like,” he whispered, running his fingers along the intricate abstract design on his left forearm. “There’s nothing left of what she did. Not on my skin, anyway.”

“But it’s still there,” I said. “In…” I tapped my temple.

“Unfortunately.” He rubbed his forehead as if this whole thing gave him a headache. It probably did. “She told me every time—and she’s told me a hundred times since—that if I ever tell anyone, she’d sayIrapedher.”

Fury had me on my feet in an instant. “Are youkiddingme?”

Nolan jumped, staring at me with huge eyes.

“For fuck’s sake.” I threw up my hands. “That’s—that’s exactly the shit that keeps women from reporting assaults! I literally know women who were assaulted, and the minute they made the accusation, people accused them of making false accusations and—ugh! What the fuck? Is this woman a goddamned psychopath?”

“Maybe,” he said in a small voice. “All I know is she locked on to me as soon as I came out as gay. She straight up told me and everyone else that I just hadn’t had fucked the right girl yet, so I was confused.”

“Oh God. I know a few lesbians who’ve heard that from men, but I didn’t realize…”

“Me neither,” he muttered. “But she was determined. She bullied me about it constantly through junior high and high school. I mostly ignored it because she was just a mean girl, you know?”

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