Page 89 of Ache for You (Slow Burn 3)
He’s always adorable. It’s one of his best qualities. He’s playful, good tempered, and lighthearted, and always wants everyone around him to have fun.
Unfortunately, the man is actually a decent human being.
When I groan, Brad glances up at me, his forehead crinkled with worry. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s inconvenient feeling empathy for someone you previously decided to hate.”
He grabs my hands, his eyes full of desperation and hope. “So that means you don’t hate me?”
Overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion, I heave out a lungful of air and beseech the ceiling, “How is this my life, God? Did I do something to personally offend you?”
Brad is too busy getting excited by this new development in the conversation to pay attention to my pleas to a higher power.
“Because I’d do anything to stay friends with you, even if you don’t want the money and stuff. I meant it when I said you were the only one I ever felt safe with. You’re my best friend, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to—”
“We’re not breaking out the BFF charm bracelets and matching outfits yet, pal,” I interrupt sarcastically. “Let’s wait until after I get the results from my STD test to see how things are going to go.”
“I’m clean!”
I’m taken aback by the volume and confidence of that pronouncement. “You sound pretty sure.”
“I am. I get tested every month!”
Watching my face, he immediately realizes that was a mistake. He cringes in that puppy-about-to-get-smacked-for-chewing-a-new-pair-of-shoes way and bites his lip.
But I don’t care. I’ve flipped from empathy to murder in two seconds flat. I peer at him in narrow-eyed suspicion. “If you were ‘safe,’ like you said you always were, why would you need to get tested every month?”
He glances at my clenched fists. “I’m afraid if I tell you the truth, you’ll deck me.”
“I might deck you anyway. Talk.”
He debates it for a moment, inhales a breath for courage, then blurts the words out in one long breathless rush. “Because nothing is one hundred percent effective there’s always a chance you can pick up something bad even if you use protection and I was scared I might pass something on to you so I got tested a lot to make sure I was clean so you wouldn’t catch anything.”
He stops for a breath, bracing himself for a hit, but my head is spinning too fast for me to take a swing at him.
“You’re telling me you were trying to protect me?”
He nods.
“From getting a sexually transmitted disease that you might unknowingly have had?”
He nods again, but has to think about it first.
My voice rises. “Because you were sleeping around so much, with so many different partners, that the risk of catching a nasty virus was so high you had to be tested once a month?”
He says defensively, “Sometimes more often than that, just to be sure.” Then he brightens. “But I’m totally clean, so we’re all good!”
I stare at him with my mouth open because there just aren’t any words.
There are. No. Words.
He decides this would be a good time for us to share another hug, and throws his arms around me.
At that moment a man’s hard voice comes from the doorway behind us.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”
I peek over Brad’s shoulder and see Matteo standing in the open doorway of my shop, his back stiff and his eyes blazing, looking as if he’s about to burn the place to the ground.
