ike growing up.”

“I was lonely,” I said. “It’s hard to be an only child of really rich parents. They filled my days with all kinds of activities and lessons, and while I’m not complaining about all of the advantages I have because of those things, I always felt so isolated. Alone.”

“Didn’t you have any friends?” he asked. “Kids you could play with and talk to?”

“You don’t understand,” I explained. “In my world, kids playing together was akin to corporate executives getting together for a round of golf. You could be friendly, but you never revealed the secrets behind the mask. I knew better than to talk about my parents or explain how I felt to any of the kids I played with because they might have told their parents, and then the balance of power would have shifted and it could have cost my father money. It’s always about the money.”

“Jesus, what the hell kind of world is that?” he asked.

“It’s a brutal world,” I admitted. “It’s being raised to understand that you are competing with other kids at all times and that the weak will lose. It’s always about winning. And in order to win, you can never, ever let your guard down.”

We sat in silence as my words sunk in, and then Brian said, “I grew up in a neighborhood where we kicked each other’s asses, but we also had each other’s backs when the shit hit the fan.”

“I’ve always wondered what that would feel like,” I admitted. “What it would be like to know that someone always had your back, no matter what. I’ve always felt the opposite of that. Like I’d be torn down and destroyed if I ever let my guard down for even a second, so I developed a really mean outer persona.”

“You, mean?” he said incredulously. “I can’t even imagine it.”

“Oh, believe it,” I said. “I was the ultimate mean girl, but it was totally based on fear and the need to keep everyone at a safe distance.”

“What changed it?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

“Yeah, actually, I do,” he whispered into my hair.

“You won’t like me if I tell you,” I replied.

“I promise that I’ll still like you,” he said. “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. But those of us who’ve learned from the experience never forget it.”

I tipped my chin up to look at him as he said this, but his face gave nothing away.

“I was in high school, at an East Coast boarding school, and there was a girl who had a nervous breakdown because we bullied her relentlessly,” I took a deep breath. “It was my fault, I think. I was so mean to her and told her that no one liked her.”

“Why did you do that?” he asked, without moving away.

“I…I…I…was jealous,” I stammered.

“Of what?”

I looked down at the floor and thought about how to explain myself, and then decided that the truth was the best choice. I took a deep breath and said, “The fact that her parents obviously loved her because they were always sending her care packages and came to visit her every few weeks. I was so envious and I hated her for making me feel so unloved, so I tortured her.”

“Like I said, we all do things that we later regret,” Brian said gently. “The question is whether we learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them.”

“Oh, I learned alright,” I whispered. “I will never forget the lesson I learned.”

“What happened?”

“We bullied her so relentlessly that she tried to kill herself in order to escape,” I said in a small voice. “She didn’t succeed, but she never came back to school. I don’t know what happened to her, but I’ve always hoped that her life got much better after her parents took her out of our nest of vipers.”

“Stop beating yourself up,” he said. “Kids do cruel things because they learn their behavior from the adults around them. Do you still treat people that badly?”

“No! I’ll never be that cruel again!” I cried.

“Then let it go,” he said. “You’re not that person anymore, so stop torturing yourself as if you were.”

“You sound like you know a lot about this kind of thing,” I observed as I looked up at him. Brian shrugged and looked out the window on the other side of the room; his eyes focused on some point far off in the distance.

“Yeah, well, the military is kind of similar to your boarding school,” he said. “Only more brutal, I think.”

Tags: Claire Adams Romance
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