Page 110 of Leave

“It’s okay.” He flashed a quick smile before fixing his gaze on the ceiling again. “Anyway, when I realized being a vet was off the table…” He swallowed, and though the light was low, I thought he blushed. “I wanted to teach.”

“Did you?”

He nodded, avoiding my gaze. “I did some tutoring when I was in high school, and I think I was pretty good at it. I guess—I mean, one of my teachers told me I was good at reframing things so a student who was struggling understood it.” He seemed to cringe inwardly, as if he were expecting me to laugh at him or tell him he was an idiot.

“I think you’d be a great fit for that,” I said softly.

His expression shifted to one of surprise. “You… You do?”

“Well, yeah. Some people definitely aren’t wired for it, but you seem like you’ve got the patience, and you’re good at explaining things.” I half-shrugged. “Seems like you’d be good at it.”

He studied me like he hadn’t heard me right.

I opened my mouth to say something, but my phone picked that moment to ping. I reached for it. “I think that’s our dinner.”

“Oh, good.” Nolan sat up. “I’m starving.”

“Me too.”

It was indeed our pizza, and I went down to the lobby to pick it up. When I came back, we put the box between us on the bed and dug in.

After Nolan had finished a slide, he put his plate aside and pushed out a long, heavy sigh. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a mess since we got here.”

“You’re not a mess. You’ve had to play nice around your—around someone who hurt you. And act like nothing ever happened.” I touched his face and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to be as strong as you have.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” he whispered.

The words “you did” threatened to jump off my tongue, but I bit them back and just pulled him in close. Closing my eyes, I stroked his short hair.

I got it. I’d been trained to deal with victims of every kind of abuse, and this was apainfullynormal response. There were absolutely options for sexual assault victims, regardless of gender, but how many victims were accused of lying? Or mocked? Or just ignored?

And hadn’t I listened to people I worked with—fellow cops, for fuck’s sake—laugh and snark about men who’d been raped, especially by women? There’d been times I’d actually worried one of them would respond to a call for that kind ofassault. Would they laugh in the victim’s face? Dismiss them? Because these guys were already dicks about women who’d been assaulted. In their eyes, a man was either gay (because he’d been raped by a man) or a pussy (because he’d been “raped” by a woman); there was just no empathy or sympathy at all.

“You got it up, dude. You were into it.”

“You just told me you had an orgasm, but now you’re telling me you didn’t want it? Which is it?”

“Regretting it after the fact doesn’t make it rape.”

I swallowed bile. I wished Nolan had reported it to the police, but I was nauseous imagining him being dismissed and mocked. Especially when he was as young and vulnerable as he’d been back then.

And now, in his thirties, he had to quietly tolerate the presence of his rapist. It wasn’t fair, damn it.

There also wasn’t anything I could do about it, no matter how much that frustrated me. All I could do was support him and have his back, and hopefully he could get through this so we could go home.

“Listen.” I took his hand and looked in his eyes. “The next few days are going to be tough, but it’s almost over. We just have to get through the rehearsal and the wedding, and then you won’t have to spend time around her.” I ran the pad of my thumb along his. “We’ll get on a plane, get back to Okinawa and the cats, and be done with it.”

The mention of his cats brought a weak smile to his lips. “It’ll be nice to see them again.”

“Yeah, it will. I miss those little fuckers.”

“You do?”

“Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “They’re your cats, but I live with them. I miss Arrow hogging my pillow.”

Nolan laughed for real. “Oh, sothat’swhere he disappears to at night.”

“Every night.”

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