Page 80 of Resisting You

Frey wasn’t sure how much time passed before he snapped out of his shock, and he was fully trembling when he found his phone. He thought about calling Lane and Bowen, but in the end, he decided to impose himself on the one person who probably had space to deal with him.

“Dallas?”

“You sound like shit. What’s going on?”

“I fucked up. So badly. And I think I’m falling apart.”

There was only a second’s pause, and then Dallas said, “I’ll be there in ten.”

Luckily, ten meant ten in their small town, and it wasn’t long before Frey’s front door opened, and the larger man stepped in. He took one look at Frey, who was curled up on the sofa, and the next thing Frey knew, massive arms were pulling him close.

He didn’t break. He didn’t cry. Everything still felt numb, but warmth started creeping into his limbs, which was dangerous. When he finally let himself feel again—really feel—it would be over. He’d crack open, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to put himself together again.

“Dr. Douche?” Dallas asked after a long beat.

Frey’s laugh came out a bit too much like a sob. “Oh God, don’t call him that. Not now.”

“What happened?”

Frey buried his face in the front of Dallas’s shirt before pulling back and squaring his shoulders. “He found the book.”

Dallas’s eyes flared wide. “Uh. The book?”

Frey nodded. It felt like straight misery had replaced all the blood in his body. “We had just, uh…you know.”

“Fucked?”

Frey flushed and shrugged, glancing away. “Fooled around. I fell asleep. I woke up, and he was out here reading it.”

Dallas groaned, rubbing a hand down his face. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why did you leave it out? I mean, y’all are together, right?”

Frey bit his lip. “I don’t know. I have no idea what we are.”

“But you want to be,” Dallas pointed out. “You’ve been falling for him for a good, long while. So why did you even keep it once you two became a thing?”

“Because I thought I’d need it,” Frey blurted, finally admitting aloud what he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself. He buried his face in his hands and leaned over his thighs. His chest felt too tight. “He never told me what changed—why he wanted me after hating me for so fucking long. I figured…I don’t know, maybe he was lonely, and I was easy.”

Dallas sighed and reached over, pulling Frey’s face up by his chin. Their gazes connected. “You’re not easy, Frey. Trust me.”

“I’m hard to love. I get that,” Frey said bitterly.

Dallas shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. You make people work for it. You’ve been burned in ways that not a lot of people will ever understand. My divorce was simple, you know. She had an affair, got caught, fessed up. We split everything down the middle, made sure we did a test on Audra to make sure she was mine…then we figured it out from there. It hurt. But she didn’t put me through anything close to what your ex did.”

Frey hugged himself tightly. “I can’t keep blaming Jace for being such a disaster. Or for being cruel.”

“My momma used to say that sometimes people are your karma, and sometimes you’re theirs. Maybe this doctor needed to be taken down a peg or two.”

Frey wanted to say no. He’d been through hell and back. But nothing in the book was a lie. Yes, Frey was an immature shithead for messing with Renato at work, but he was the man who’d said all those things. Who made people cry. And while Frey understood why Renato wasn’t soft and fluffy with the residents, there were better ways of ensuring they could handle it.

He didn’t need to destroy them.

But he was also a man capable of so much goodness and kindness and love. He was a man capable of change. A man who had fallen apart when he was confronted with his own cruelty.

That meant something.

And Frey didn’t want to lose him.

“I thought he was going to leave me eventually,” he fessed up after a long silence. “He lost his husband. He’s lonely, and I was too. I figured once he realized what a damn disaster I was, he’d quietly show himself out. I wanted to keep it to remind myself he wasn’t that great whenever it hurt too much to think about him ending it.”

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