Page 58 of Hero for the Holidays

“Good.”

“It’s... But you can’t go bringing a lot of women home when you have a teenage girl living in the house.”

So she did care.

“I’m not tempted to, thank you,” he said.

“It’s just, I imagine that it’s curbed your lifestyle a little bit.”

“I think you make assumptions about my lifestyle that are not actually true.”

“So. Then you can answer the question.”

“Very few, Fia,” he said through gritted teeth. “Does that make you happy?”

She looked at him sidelong. “What do you mean ‘very few’?”

For God’s sake. Whatever. He didn’t care. He didn’t have any pride about it one way or the other.

“Three?”

“In thirteen years?”

“Yeah. I don’t—” he let out a hard breath “—get a lot out of it.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. I’m serious. I tried. After the wound healed a little bit, I tried. I was... I was only disappointed. By the whole experience. It’s actually distinctly depressing to feel like you will never have...”

He didn’t know if there was any point in finishing the sentence.

She didn’t say anything more.

“You’re right,” she said softly. “This isn’t about us.”

He felt wounded. By the whole conversation. By all that it forced him to reveal.

“How about you?” Because he felt like it was fair. Because she’d asked him.

“No one,” she said.

He looked at her, and he couldn’t figure out what the hell to say to that. His stomach was tied up in a knot, a knot that seemed to extend up his chest, wrap around his lungs, make it impossible to breathe.

“You’re kidding,” he said. “More than that, you have to be lying.”

“I’m not lying. I didn’t... It seemed dangerous. After you.”

Because of course she was the one who had gotten pregnant. Of course she was the one who had to carry the physical consequences of that. He had been so sure that he was affected by that in a unique way. He had been so certain that he was the one that was scarred by it. Fia hadn’t even had sex since she was sixteen. And sure, it had never been the same for him. But he’d done it. He’d gone out and taken some lovers and tried to forget her, using sex. Using other women. And she had been just so...devastated by what she had experienced with him it had actually ruined her.

There were circumstances where a man might take some pride in ruining a woman for all other lovers, but that was not what this was.

This was aboutscarringsomebody. Taking one of life’s joys and stealing it from them. This was about the harm that he’d caused that he’d never been able to acknowledge.

It didn’t mean that he hadn’t been hurt.

But Fia had never tried to deny his hurt.

He’d tried to deny hers, because like she’d said, he had needed a villain. It had been convenient. It had been expedient for him to make her the villain, because then he could oversimplify everything. Then he could make it all easy.

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