Even though I know that I shouldn’t, I press my hand against his chest.

Ashton’s hand closes over it and he squeezes his eyes shut. “I thought I’d never feel you do that again,” he whispers.

I give him a moment before I gently push. “Keep talking.” But I leave my hand where it is, resting against his now racing heart.

Ashton’s lips curve into a small grimace. When his eyes open, he blinks against a glassy sheen. Just the idea of Ashton crying wrenches at my insides. I struggle to keep myself composed. “I still remember the day my mom and I sat at the kitchen table with a batch of cookies that I helped her bake. I was seven. She pinched my cheeks and told me that I was a blessing in disguise, that she didn’t realize what she was missing until the day she found out she was going to have me. She said that something finally clicked inside her. Some maternal switch that made her want me more than anything else in the world. She told me that I made her and my dad so very happy.” That’s when the single tear finally slips down his cheek. “She had no idea, Irish. No idea what he was doing to me,” he whispers, his eyes closing once again as he takes a deep, calming breath.

I brush the tear off his cheek but not before it spurs a dozen of my own, tears that I quickly wipe away because I don’t want to derail the conversation. “When did it start?”

Clearing his throat, Ashton goes on, pushing the door wide open to show me his skeletons without reservation. Finally. “I was almost six the first time he locked me in a closet. Before that, I never saw him much. He worked long hours and avoided me the rest of the time. It didn’t really matter. My mom doted on me constantly. She was an expressive woman. Endless hugs and kisses. I remember her friends joking that she would smother me to death with love.” His brow furrows. “Looking back on it now, that must have bothered my dad. A lot. He had had her undivided attention before that, and . . .” Ashton’s voice turns bitter. “One day, something changed. He started staying home when my mom had plans—a baby shower, or a party with her friends. He used those days to stick me in a closet with a strip of duct tape over my mouth. He’d leave me in there for hours, hungry and crying. Said he didn’t want to hear or see me. That I shouldn’t be alive. That I’d ruined their lives.”

I can’t understand how Ashton is so calm, how his heart keeps its steady rhythm, because I, despite all of my resolve to keep my composure, have melted into a blubbering mess as the visual of that little dark-eyed boy—not much bigger than Eric or Derek—curled in the closet burns bright in my mind again. I struggle to speak with the sharp lump in my throat. “And you didn’t say anything?”

Ashton’s palm wipes away some of my tears. “A few months earlier, I had accidentally let our Pomeranian out the front door. He ran right into traffic . . . My mom cried for weeks over that dog. Dad said he’d tell her that I intentionally let it run out the door, that I was a wicked little boy that did bad things to animals. I was terrified that she’d believe him. . . .” He shrugs. “What the hell did I know? I was only six.” There’s a pause. “It was about a month before my eighth birthday when my mom started forgetting dates, and names, and appointments. She did it occasionally before that but it started getting really bad.” His Adam’s apple bobs with a big swallow. “Within a year they diagnosed her. That’s the day . . .” Inhaling deeply through his nose, he rubs the belt on his wrist. The one that’s still there, still confining him. His constant reminder. “He never used a belt on me before that. I don’t think he knew how hard he could hit before breaking skin. And he was mad. So mad at me. He blamed me for everything. He said the pregnancy did this to her, that the hormones had started wrecking her brain the day I was born.” Ashton absently scratches over his forearm, where one of his scars hides. “He told me not to tell her what happened or the stress of it would make her get worse, faster. So I lied. I told her I got the cuts screwing around on my bike. After that, I lied to her about everything. The bruises on my ribs when he punched me, the welts when he hit me with the belt again, the bump on my forehead the night he shoved me into the door frame. I got so used to lying, and my mother’s health was deteriorating so quickly that what he was doing to me became . . . insignificant. I got used to it.

“He stopped hitting me the day we moved my mom into a high-end research and treatment facility. I was fourteen. At the time, I still held out hope that she might get better, that the treatment would reverse or stall the disease. She still laughed at my jokes and sang that song in Spanish . . . She was still in there, somewhere. I had to hope that we could buy enough time until they found a cure.” Ashton’s head dips. “That was the first day my mom asked me who I was. And when he came at me that night . . . I knocked him flat on his back. I was a big kid. I told him to go ahead and hit me as hard as he could. I didn’t care anymore. But he didn’t. He never laid a hand on me again.”

With a resigned sigh, Ashton gazes up at my face as he brushes the never-ending stream of tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. “He found a better way to punish me for breathing. I just didn’t realize exactly what it was at the time. He sold our house and moved us across the city after that, for no reason other than to remove me from the life I knew, forcing me to change schools, to leave my friends. He could have shipped me off to boarding school and washed his hands of me as a responsibility, but he didn’t. Instead, he started dictating who I would speak to, who I would date, what sports I would play.” With a snort, Ashton mutters, “He’s actually the one who demanded I join crew. Kind of ironic, given that rowing is the one thing that I love to do . . . Anyway, one night when I was fifteen, he came home from work unexpectedly to find my unapproved girlfriend and me fu—” Dark eyes flash to my face as my back stiffens. “Sorry . . . messing around. He called her a whore and kicked her out of the house. I snapped. I had him off the ground, ready to pound the shit out of him.” Ashton’s arms tense around my body as he holds me close to him. “That’s when he started using my mother against me.”

I feel my brow furrowing with confusion.

“He threw around numbers—the price of keeping her in her expensive facility, how much it would cost if she survived another ten years. Said that he was beginning to question the point of it. She wasn’t going to get better, so why waste money.” Ashton’s tongue slides over his teeth. “A waste of money. That’s what the love of his life became to him. He hadn’t gone to see her since the day he put her there. His wedding ring was long gone.

“I didn’t want to believe that. I couldn’t just give up on her. She was all I had and he knew it. So he made my choice very simple—I could either live the life he permitted me to live or her last few years would be spent in some shithole, waiting to die. He even found newspaper clippings, examples of horror stories from those kinds of places—neglect, assault . . . That’s the day I realized how much my dad despised me for being born. And I knew he’d follow through with his threat.”

I release the air I’ve been holding. So this is what he’s been hanging over Ashton’s head all this time.

His mother.

“So I gave in. Over the years, I’ve kept quietly accepting his demands.” With a snort, Ashton mutters, “The worst part? I could never really complain. I mean, look at my life! I’m going to Princeton, I have money, a car, a guaranteed job at one of the most prominent law firms in the country. It’s not like he’s torturing me. He’s just . . .” Ashton heaves a sigh. “He just took away my freedom to choose how I live.”