Page 14 of My Fearless Fake Fling

Gah!He didn’t get it. “Stop trying to make me feel better. My brother and Harrison joined the PJs to get away from me. Their helo crashed going in to rescue some badly-wounded soldiers who were on some secret mission. All five men on board died that day.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. Harrison joined to get away from me. My brother joined so Harrison wouldn’t go alone. Even Leo, Harrison’s brother, blamed me.”

Lennon squeezed me again.

“He blamed me so much, he terrorized me online. I had to turn off all social media for over a year.”

“I’m sure he was just hurting. When people hurt, they need someone to hurt worse than they do,” he said.

“No, he told me if I didn’t kill myself, then he’d kill me and make it look like suicide. I called the police. Then my tires got slashed weekly. And ‘clients’ would complain about me at work, clients I never worked on. I’d get written up. Heset that up. He brought others in. I never knew where the next threat would come from. Since it wasn’t one person, I couldn’t even take out a protection order.”

“Kami.”

“So I moved, ending up here.”

“It wasn’t your fault. He was angry. Sad. It wasn’t you. Sweetheart, you have to believe me on this.”

I shook my headnothis time.

“Nope.” He tickled me, the jerkface, to get me to look at him. “Repeat after me.”

“No,” I said out loud and he tickled again.

“Come on, Kam. ‘It’s not my fault’—say it.”

The tickling intensified, no fair. Resistance futile… resolve breaking… “Okay,” I shouted. “It’s not my fault.”

“Again,” he demanded, controlling those tickling fingers with such dexterity, I thought my side might literally split open.

“It’s not my fault,” I shouted, even as I laughed and wriggled uncontrollably to try and get away. “Now stop.”

“You done being so hard on yourself?”

“Yes.” That came out loud enough for his neighbors to hear.

His fingers abruptly stopped the tickle assault and he kissed my nose, scooted me back over to my spot under the blanket, and proceeded to eat his (slightly melted) ice cream as if nothing happened.

“Eat,” he ordered. How he could see menotspooning the velvety lusciousness intomymouthwhen he stared straight ahead was one of the world’s great mysteries.

Right. I was just supposed to eat now? As if my sides didn’t still hurt. As if he didn’t exponentially exacerbate my. Stinking. Crush.

Fork my life!

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