Page 33 of After Hours

When he glanced at Romily again, she was staring at him, wide-eyed. “I can’t imagine you tolerating that,” she said softly. “I don’t mean that as a critique. It’s just hard to picture, knowing you now.”

“For a long time, he was bigger than me,” Zachary said, with a smile that hurt his mouth a little. “But believe me, I didn’t tolerate it. I got my ass kicked. A lot.” He shook his head, not a fan of all those memories. “Then I started taking a boxing class in high school. That got me hitting the weight room, too. Suddenly, I went from a scrawny kid to the makings of a man, and that did not go down well with Pete.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Romily said.

She wasn’t looking around anymore. She was looking at him. Only at him, and when she reached over to rest her hand on his leg, he felt something in him almost… ease at that.

It was the strangest sensation. Zachary couldn’t remember the last time a woman had tried tosoothehim.

He liked it, though it felt strange and marvelous and a lot like he was on a kind of verge again, only this time he wasn’t sure he really knew what was on the other side.

That was new, too.

The only thing to do was to keep going, so that was what he did. “One night my senior year, Pete got good and liquored up and actually challenged me. By that point he’d been dancing around that for a while, but that night he was ready. He jumped me when I walked in the door.”

Zachary remembered the confusion. The chaos. How long it felt like it took him to respond when it was likely only a few seconds. “My mother was screaming. I knew the last thing she wanted was for me to fight him, but I was done. I was eighteen. Truth was, I thought I was pretty tough. So I beat the hell out of him, and I’m not going to lie to you, Romily. I enjoyed it. I threw him out the front door and I tossed his shit out behind him.”

“That seems like a fitting ending,” Romily said fiercely.

He smiled at her and reached over to run his fingers down her cheek, over her lips. So he could get a little that of that gold he could see in her eyes into his bloodstream somehow.

“It would have been, but it wasn’t the end,” he said. “A couple of weeks later, he turned up again, but this time he didn’t come for me. He went for my mother. Beat her unconscious.”

Zachary still remembered pulling up to the house in that piece of shit beater he’d been so proud of, because it was his. He’d bought it used, but he’d bought it himself. He remembered frowning at the side door because it wasn’t set right, there against the house.

He’d been halfway to the house before he realized it was because the door had been half-torn off its hinges.

And he’d known. Immediately. He’d known exactly what had happened.

Just like he knew that it was his fault.

“When I got home that night I found her broken on the floor in pool of her own blood,” he told Romily, and this part was harder. But there was no stopping now. “I knew exactly who did it, of course, so after I took my mother to the hospital, I went looking for Pete in the crap bar he liked to hang out in with his degenerate friends.”

Romily leaned a little closer. Zachary shook his head, and blew out a breath.

“He was waiting for me. He came at me with a tire iron. I got it away from him and when he made a move toward me the next time, I swung it.”

It had been so many years now. It was a matter of public record. Still, this was Romily. He realized in that moment—or maybe he’d been dreading this moment because he’d always known—that this really could be the thing that pushed her away from him forever —

But wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that what he was always trying to tell her?

If they couldn’t be honest with each other, what were they doing? Nothing, was the answer. Just playing games to get off and calling it something more profound than it was. There was nothing wrong with that. Zachary knew all kinds of people who liked this kind of lifestyle as a kind of spicy topping on their otherwise vanilla lives.

He thought that was great. For them.

But deep down, he’d always believed—he’d alwayshoped—that there was more.

Romily was the only one who had allowed him toseethat it could happen. That they could make it real. If it required this level of honest vulnerability, surely that was a small price to pay.

Except it didn’t feel small.

And he could acknowledge that it was probably a good thing that his arrogant ass was getting to experience this. It was humbling as shit.

He’d have to remember that the next time she got avoidant during a punishment or pinched herself because she wanted to spark one. Not that he’d change a single thing he did, but he’d remember. He’d sympathize.

Knowing him, he’d make sure to use it against her when it suited him, too.

But first he had todothis, even if she decided she was done with him.

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