Bray took my hands into hers, consolation and understanding and even a little bit of horror lay resting in her face.
“I thought of you and of when we were kids swimming in that pond. Just seeing your face looking back at me in my head made me want to stop that shit. It didn’t matter to me that I thought you were engaged—” I pointed at her. “I was pissed about that, just so you know. I thought that should’ve been me. Anyway, it didn’t matter to me that you were in love and that I thought I’d lost you forever, I wanted to be a better person for myself and because I knew you would hate to see me like that. I never touched coke or crack again and I never will. None of that life-killing shit. No f**king way. And smoking weed became a rare recreational thing for me.”
Without giving her a chance to respond, I added quickly, “Would you have left me if I said yes? If I admitted I took part in something like that?”
This time, even though my heart told me that no, she wouldn’t have left me, another part of me felt ashamed enough about everything I had told her that I thought maybe she might. It was when I truly understood what she went through with me all those years. I didn’t agree with how she handled things, but I understood it at least.
“No,” she said softly. “There’s nothing you could do or say to make me leave you.” And even though we had both said this very same thing to each other a few times in the past two weeks, it felt new and more real every time it was said.
She leaned in and kissed my lips. “Now it’s my turn,” she said.
I honestly didn’t expect it. I knew I had told her that I wanted us to get everything out in the open. Right there. Right then. But I think a part of me assumed she had no other secrets. Hell, the ones she had been keeping were pretty bad in and of themselves. What else could she have possibly been hiding from me?
Chapter Seventeen
Bray
My hands fell away from his and rested at my sides. I took a step back, swallowed, and announced, “I like sex. A lot.”
He raised a brow. “And that’s a problem why, exactly?”
I wanted to laugh at that, because it was funny to me admitting to a guy that his girlfriend loved sex and he was supposed to frown upon it. But I couldn’t laugh because it was the next part I was the most afraid to admit.
“Well,” I said, “it’s a problem because I… I’ve been with quite a few guys.”
He’s going to be so disgusted with me and just walk away, I know it…
“The same can be said about me with girls,” he responded casually. “Did you use protection with them?”
I was dumbfounded by his response. Not his admittance, but his lackluster reaction to mine.
“Yeah,” I said. “I-I mean, once or twice it didn’t go down that way. Heat of the moment, I guess. Stupid as hell, I know, but I always did after that second time. And I’m clean. They tested me for everything when I was in the hospital.”
He looked up in thought for a moment and then nodded. “Well, so am I,” he said casually.
It didn’t matter that he seemed OK with the truth. I was still worried and felt the need to explain further. Just in case.
“It started out I was only trying to fill a void,” I said. “I think I was just looking for affection. But then it turned into something else.” I ran my hands over my face and then the top of my head and sighed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I swallowed and looked at him nervously. “I had a threesome with this guy and his girlfriend. And I liked it.” I couldn’t look at him anymore. I felt so ashamed. I felt like the biggest slut on the planet. I didn’t deserve him. “I think that’s what changed me. I’m sorry, Elias. I really am.”
“Why?” Just like before, there wasn’t a trace of disappointment or disgust in his voice. “Bray,” he said, and I looked up, “I had a threesome with Mitchell and Jana. And it wasn’t my first.”
“I know,” I said. “Jana told me that night on the ridge.” I thought about Jana for a moment. I saw her dead eyes looking up at the night sky. The blood on the rock underneath her body.
I forced it away.
“So then what’s the problem?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that your girlfriend has been with so many guys, or that I’ve done really kinky stuff?”
He shook his head and looked at me as if I were being ridiculous. “So it’s OK that I do it and not you?” he asked. And before I could say anything, he added, “Baby, this isn’t 1950. You have as much right to as much sex as you want, however you want, as I do. You didn’t cheat on anyone or screw someone’s husband.” He narrowed his gaze and said, “Did you?”
“No.”
“Then you have nothing to be ashamed of. Definitely not with me. As long as your love for sex doesn’t land you in some other guy’s bed now that we’re together, we’re good. I’m not an ass**le. I’m not going to throw your past up in your face.”
I should’ve known all along that Elias, of all people, would not judge me. Not on my sexual history. Not on anything. The only thing I regretted was the seventeen years I wasted not realizing it sooner.
Elias took a hold of my hands again and wedged his thumbs underneath my bracelets to find my scars. “I love you, Bray,” he said, and the moment changed in an instant. “But you’re gonna have to promise me something. You have to promise that you’ll never do anything like this again. It scares the hell out of me to even think”—he put pressure on my wrists with the emphasis of that word—“of you killing yourself. You can’t leave me in this world without you. Do you understand? Look in my eyes and tell me that you’ll never try anything like that again.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Like I told you, I only did it once because of the side effects of that medication.”
“But you did it once,” he pointed out. “You had it in you all along. You even admitted to having suicidal thoughts before that, Bray. That means you had it in you. And that is terrifying to me. Just knowing that it’s there.”
“I won’t,” I said again, hardening my gaze. “I’m past that now. I’m stronger than that.”
He thought about it for a long moment. I hoped he believed me.
Then he leaned in and kissed me long and soft. The feel of his lips against mine and the emotion in that kiss melted me. I felt weak in the knees, and I draped my hands around his neck, interlocking my fingers. He lifted me up around his waist and held my butt in his hands.