He took another step toward me saying, “It’s worse than you could expect.”

“Okay,” I returned instantly. “Maybe it is. But you not sharing tells me you don’t trust me to be able to handle it. Which means you don’t trust me to hold up my side of the relationship. Which means we don’t actually have a relationship. I don’t have to have had one to know that both people in a relationship have responsibilities for keeping it strong and making it thrive and part of that is taking each other’s backs. You have mine but refuse to allow me to take yours. I’ve been cool. I’ve been patient. I’ve given you time. You want more, take it but don’t drag me with you as you struggle with this crap, Chace. Because the longer we’re together the more you should get to know me, come to the understanding I can handle it and trust me. You aren’t even close to that. That tells me you won’t be. So you want to keep your dark secrets, let them eat at you, fine. But don’t make me watch it happen.”

“So what you’re sayin’ is, hours ago, you told me you love me and now, I want a couple of days to get my head straight, you’re breakin’ up with me,” he said low, a warning. A warning I no longer gave a frak about.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Just like that?” he asked.

“No, it’s never happened to me before but I doubt after I fell head over heels in love with a wonderful man who kept important things from me, I’ll get over it just like that. I’ll drink with my girls and cry and wonder if I made the right decision. Then another man will come along, he won’t be as wonderful as my first love, but I suppose I’ll eventually get over it and move on.”

This was the way, way, way wrong thing to say and I knew it when the air went from smothering to stifling and Chace moved.

I tried to keep my cool as I watched him shrug off his coat and throw it over the footboard of my bed and I did this by sharing, “It’s cold, Chace, and the door’s the other way.”

His eyes sliced to me and he clipped, “Stop that shit.”

“What shit?” I asked

“The cold, remote Faye. It’s shit,” he answered.

“You’re right. It is. It’s a façade to hide the fact my heart is breaking. But, whatever. That isn’t your problem anymore. Now, can I point out, you told me you need space but you’re still fraking here?”

“Another man is not gonna come along,” he informed me and I stared.

Then I asked, “What?”

“You are not movin’ onto another guy,” he crossed his arms on his chest and finished, “Ever.”

“That choice is not yours.”

“Yeah it is,” he returned swiftly. “You can’t give away what’s mine.”

“You aren’t getting this, Chace, but just now, I took it back.”

“Can’t take back what’s mine either.

God! He wanted to go, why wouldn’t he just go?

I had to shut this down.

“I thought you were tired,” I reminded him.

“Thought of movin’ on,” he stated and I was back to staring.

Then I thought I got it, it hurt but whatever. I had wine and, tomorrow, I’d call the girls and then, in about fifty years, I’d get better so I invited, “There’s the door. Move on.”

“Was this close to it,” he continued.

“Chace –”

“Then you came back into town.”

I felt my head jerk in surprised confusion.

Chace kept speaking.

“Decided with one look at you, I’d put up with it, all the shit that was gettin’ worse at work ‘cause my end game would be you.”

Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

“The town’s sweet, cute, quiet, pretty librarian in my bed, my ring on her finger, enjoyin’ it as I taught her how to enjoy it, plantin’ my babies in her, building a family.”

Holy fraking frak!

He was saying what I thought he was saying!

No, he was saying more.

I stopped breathing.

He continued talking.

“One look, at the grocery store, you in the aisle, your nose in a book. Stared at you, so f**kin’ cute, but I had no clue how you could shop and keep your nose in a book. But there you were, doin’ it. You looked up, saw someone you knew, smiled at them and I knew eatin’ all that shit at work would be worth it when I was ready to make my play. That cute in my bed. That hair. Those eyes. That smile. Definitely worth it. So I ate it, bidin’ my time, gettin’ the wild out of me so all I’d give you was sweet. You’d move to Gnaw Bone, Chantelle, I knew you would so I could kiss that bullshit good-bye, get myself out of it without takin’ you away from the folks you loved when I claimed you.”

Holy frickity fraking frak, frak, frak!

I forced air in my lungs.

Chace moved toward me and kept talking.

“Waited too long.”

I watched him come to me, my heart beginning to beat harder and my feet no longer not moving because I was trying to be cool but because I was frozen solid with shock. He came to a halt one foot from me so I tipped my head back to look at him.

He lifted a hand, pulled the wineglass from mine and set it on the counter with an alarming-sounding clink.

I looked at the glass in a vague effort to ascertain that it wasn’t broken then I tilted my head back to look back at him, mouth open but I didn’t say a word.

He did.

“He touched you.”

I blinked because I didn’t understand his words.

“What?”

“He touched you,” Chace repeated.

“Who?” I asked.

“My father. He wasn’t only in your presence, you, my Faye, mine, cute and clean and sweet, he touched you. Took your hand, held it,” he stopped speaking abruptly, sucked breath in through his nose then bit out, “Put his mouth on you.”

Okay, now, what on earth?

“So?” I asked quietly when he said no more.

“He likes kink.”

I blinked again because these words were unexpected and also I didn’t know what they meant.

“What?”

“Kink,” he ground out then, “Sex, darlin’, can get adventurous and you don’t carry on with this bullshit play you got goin’ on, we’ll have time, I’ll show you how and we’ll explore that in good ways that we both like. But it can also get weird. To each their own. I don’t give a f**k what someone does to get off. What I do not need to know is that my Dad likes it weird and when I say weird I mean sick-fuck, turn your stomach,” he leaned into me for emphasis even though he put undeniable verbal emphasis on his final word, “weird.”