Page 67 of Beneath the Surface

“How come you don’t talk toyourfamily?” I retort.

His body stiffens behind me, and he lets out a sigh. “My upbringing was different. You already know about the pressure I felt...”

He trails off and my heart falters, sickness swirling through me when I think about him as a little boy, slicing his skin in order to feel.

“Yeah, I remember.” I run my hand along his forearm, feeling the raised flesh underneath the pads of my fingers.

“We all have our stories,” he says. “My parents aren’t good people. Narcissism at its finest. They manipulateeveryone, weaving an image so tight-knit and perfect, no one would believe anything other than their lie.”

My chest tightens.

“Everyday more of my character was stripped away, cut to fucking pieces by their expectations.” He shakes his head.

“And the French?” I ask, unable to stop the words from rolling off my tongue.

He chuckles, pulling my body tighter against him, his breath hot against my ear. “Est-ce que tu aimes ça?”

Shivers skate down my spine. “What does that mean?”

“I asked if you liked it,” he rasps.

My cheeks heat. “I don’t know a woman who wouldn’t.”

Arousal spikes through my core when I feel him harden against my back. “Is French the only language you know?”

His grip loosens. “It’s the one I’m most fluent in, but I’m passable in others. My parents... they had international guests frequently, and it was important to my father for his child to hold conversation.”

I try to picture what Alex’s childhood must have been like, but I come up blank, the bits and pieces he’s provided not enough to paint the image. Or maybe it’s so far removed from anything I’ve known, it’s not able to even exist in my imagination.

“Is your father a businessman?” I twist to see his face.

He nods, the muscles in his jaw tensing. “Yep. For the biggest corporation in the world.”

“Oh.” I’m dying to know more, but don’t want to push him. I can tell this is a sensitive subject, and I know if he proddedme, I wouldn’t react well.

He blows out a breath. “There, I told you one of mine. Now tell me one of yours.”

“My what?”

“Yoursecrets.”

My stomach churns. “I don’t know where I’d even start.”

“The beginning seems like a good place.”

My insides wage war between breaking down my walls and reenforcing them, making tears pool in my eyes. I close them to ebb the burn. “I don’t know if I can.”

He pulls me tighter against him, rocking us in time to the sound of small waves lapping at the rocky shoreline. “Try.”

Try.

One syllable. A thousand different emotions.

“My mom was a junkie,” I burst out. “She abandoned my brother and me when I was little. I don’t—” I shake my head when a tear escapes, annoyance squeezing my stomach because I’m crying over a woman I barely remember. “I don’t know much about her. But she fucked my brother up.”

“Sheabandonedyou?”

I puff out my cheeks. “Yep. Got so high she left us at a gas station in Nowhere, Tennessee.” A forgotten wound starts to throb in the center of my chest. “Chase always swore up and down that she didn’t mean it. That she just... forgot.” I clap my hands together before dropping them to my sides. “But there were only so many nights he could keep the faith, you know? Eventually, he realized she wasn’t coming back.” I pause, thinking back to how Chase’s eyes grew vacant, his personality hardening into stone.

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