Page 47 of The Truth of Loving You

Part of me hated that he’d been able to break me down. Made me confess my guilt over Pax. Hated the reminder that it was possible for me to fall in love with someone else but implied it won’t be him. Hated him for being so wise for someone so young. My therapist insisted that I didn’t hate him at all.

I had to admit that I’d broken the rules because I wanted more. For whatever reason, Shane had chosen me, and it wasn’t my place to second guess him. He was so much more than a fuck buddy, and I had to own that.

I understood my obsession of wanting to have sex with Shane. Envisioning how incredible his ass would look taking my cock. I didn’t understand the craving to want to be around him without sex. That type of want made our relationship real and not a temporary arrangement. I wasn’t going to fight the want anymore. I was taking Lisa’s advice and not fighting against things.

I knew without him saying it that Shane had been starved for affection and validation.

Feeding him from my hand had me needy for his body. I swear he sucked and licked my fingers to torture me. He traced all my tattoos with his fingers and his tongue. Shane made my biceps, forearms, and thighs erogenous zones with his touch. Maybe he wasn’t the only one starved for affection.

We swam and I stopped in an alcove surrounded by trees, inaccessible from land. The perfect place to get my hands on him.

“Is this where you’re going to dump my body?” Shane teased as I gripped his waist, bringing our bodies flush.

“No dumping. It’s not on the spreadsheet.” I ghosted my lips up his neck to his ear.

“Neither is all the kissing.” He shivered in my arms.

“Do you object?” I asked, snaking one hand down the back of his swim trunks to palm his ass.

“Not in the least,” he said as our lips brushed. “Well, I guess if you killed me now, I’d die happy,” Shane quipped.

“I’m not killing you until I’m done with you.” I hooked him around the back of the neck and kissed the hell out of him again because I could.

“Warn me when you’re done,” Shane whispered so low I don’t think he meant for me to hear, so I didn’t respond.

I couldn’t promise him a future. But Shane Reynolds was slowly becoming the most important person in my life. I didn’t know what that meant or how to make it work out.

When I was with Shane, I was more me than I’d ever been in my life. It was insane because I played a role for Shane, but now, the role was real. Like I was discovering the real me with him.

Lisa had noticed the difference after seeing us together for fifteen minutes.

I held him in a tight embrace as we kissed until we were waterlogged. We swam back to our blanket, and I laid out the cushions. I’d hoped to put them to better use, but the risk of getting caught wasn’t worth it.

Shane was sprawled out on the cushions with his eyes closed and face tipped up to the sun. His good looks belonged in a high-end ad for cologne or some other fancy product. I ran my fingers through his hair, and he responded with a satisfied hum. One of my new favorite sounds.

“When did you recognize your love of numbers and spreadsheets?” I asked, stroking his hair.

“It’s a long, boring story,” Shane said, his body stiffening.

“I don’t think anything about you is boring. You don’t have to tell me, but I’ll take the quick version.”

Shane opened his soulful brown eyes, assessing me. I wanted to ask him who hurt him, but that was so far from our rules. Even this question went over the line. But it seemed to be such a vital part of him that I wanted to know about it.

Shane closed his eyes and faced the sun again. “It was a matter of survival. After my family trauma, I needed something that made sense. That summer I couldn’t go to camp, I started reading math textbooks. Literature is up for interpretation, but numbers are straightforward. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I’d mastered calculus.

“I doubled up on English classes and graduated at the end of my sophomore year. Numbers helped me escape from my family. Spreadsheets are the natural byproduct of organizing numeric data,” he said, and I had the feeling he wouldn’t have said all that if he’d been looking at me.

“I’m not sure if I should say ‘that’s awesome’ or ‘I’m sorry.’ Families can be shit. Mine certainly sucks. I’m lucky to have Lisa. And you have Sara. Do you talk to your parents?” I kept moving the line I’d drawn between us, unable to stop.

“If I tell you about my parents, then I get to ask about yours.” Shane rolled on his side, so we were face-to-face.

“Fair,” I agreed. I didn’t give a shit about either of my parents.

“My parents never got over what happened. They associate me with their trauma. I’m not their son; I’m their pain. It took years and years and years of therapy to accept that the best thing for me and my mental health was to limit contact with them. Sara saved my sanity. She fought for me against my parents, against the world. I’d be lost without her.” Shane’s eyes held a lifetime of pain.

I cleared my throat, thick with emotion. “My mom left right before I started kindergarten. I don’t know if she ever tried to contact me. My father’s a bastard, and once you cross him, you’re dead to him. I look like her, and I’m an artist like she was, which is not acceptable to my father. I’ve thought about trying to find her, but she’s the mom. She could find me if she wanted to.” I rubbed Shane’s arm, not sure if it was to soothe him or myself.

I hadn’t talked about my mother in over a decade.

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