He shakes his head, and I despise how sad he looks, because it makes me feel pitied. “I can’t, because you’re right, this most definitely changes the way I see you.”

I drop my head and wish my hair wasn’t in a ponytail, that it could provide a curtain of protection for the pain I can’t hide. I hate that I have to carry this past with me forever. I press my palm to my mouth, fighting back a sob, because even though they’ve disappeared from my life, my parents still manage to ruin all the things I love.

“Hey.” Pierce’s rough, callused fingers skim my jaw. I can’t handle this gentle affection, not when I know it’s coming from a place of pity, and that the end is inevitable.

I twist my head, unwilling to see how this truth changes everything. And it’s now that I recognize how much I wanted to keep this, us, him. I want him to want me regardless of who my family is.

“Rian, you need to look at me.”

“I don’t want to.” I sound petulant, and my voice cracks.

He ducks down so his face is right in front of mine, and his nose brushes the tip of mine. “I think you need to ask me how what you’ve told me changes how I see you.”

“I already know.”

“You think so?”

“You feel sorry for me. You’re going to tell me how awful that must’ve been, but I’ll understand if you can’t be with me anymore. I know I should’ve told you the truth right from the start, or maybe I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you in the first place. But I didn’t think it was going to get complicated like this. I thought—”

“Can you shut up for a second?”

“You don’t need to explain. I get it, P—”

His mouth crashes down on mine. I keep my lips pressed together because I haven’t had a chance to brush my teeth, and I do not want his tongue in my mouth. Well, I do, but not until I’ve had a breath mint.

“Open.”

I shake my head. “Nuh-uh.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t,” I say through gritted teeth.

He backs off a bit. “Why can’t you?”

I hold a hand in front of my mouth to prevent him from launching another lip attack. “I need to brush my teeth.”

He rolls his eyes and sweeps his fingers gently along the hollow under my eyes. They’re damp, I realize. Because I’m crying.

“Stop being so sweet when you’re supposed to be running the other way.”

He smiles softly and brushes the tip of his nose against mine. “There’s my girl. I’m not going anywhere. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“But you’re angry and I lied to you.”

“I am and you did, but I understand why.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can see that you are. It hurt, that you could think the worst of me, Rian. I hated knowing I was missing something, and I wanted you to feel like you could tell me, but I get why you couldn’t. I needed some time to manage my own emotions. Needing time doesn’t mean I’m going to walk away. How pushy do I have to be to get that through to you?”

“Marley’s been my only constant for the past decade. When people find out who we are, they tend to walk away, and I can’t blame them. We’ve worked so hard to get where we are and make our own name so we aren’t connected to our parents. It’s just so shameful.”

“It’s not your shame to own, though.” He threads his fingers through mine and leads me to the couch. Pushing the blankets aside, he pulls me down with him.

“I helped my dad. I knew numbers. I didn’t know what he was doing. He stole so much money from so many people.”

“You were a teenager and you trusted the people who were supposed to take care of you.”

“I don’t need you to rationalize this for me, or feel sorry for me, or pity me—”

“I’m not doing any of that. I’m cutting you the break you can’t seem to cut yourself. And it’s not pity, it’s awe. You did all of this on your own. You made a life, you protected yourself and your sister, and built your own career. That takes an incredible amount of resilience and determination.”

I want to sink into him, absorb some affection, and forget that my past still creates so much turmoil in my present. “So what now?”

He stretches his arm across the back of the couch. “We talk.”

“About me?” I say it slowly, as if the words are made of lead and painful to spit out. I’ve worked so hard to stay focused on the present, on the now and not the then, even though my past has shaped me, and not always in a good way.

“Well, yeah. I think it’s about time, right? I want to understand, so I know how to handle you moving forward.”

“I don’t know how to deal with it when you say things like that.”

“You’ll get used to it, like you’ve gotten used to me being a pushy asshole.”

I laugh and then sigh, considering how I want to approach this. “I’ve spent the last decade trying to separate myself from my childhood. I think the most painful part wasn’t losing things, because it’s just stuff. It’s physical comfort, but the emotional comfort, not having people to rely on, that was devastating.” And now here’s this man, who knows who my family is and what they’ve done, and he’s still here, still wanting me even after the omissions and the accusations I threw at him. I need to trust that he’s not here to screw me over. God, I wish my parents weren’t such fuckups and that I could believe in the good in people.

“I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to go from that kind of life to something so—”

“Pathetic?” I smile sadly.

“No. Not pathetic at all. You went from having everything to having almost nothing at eighteen. That couldn’t have been easy.”

“I used to take so many things for granted. My parents bought me a Range Rover for my sixteenth birthday. What sixteen-year-old needs a freaking Range Rover? Also, it had a roomy back seat, not ideal for preserving teenage virtue. Not that my parents cared, either way.”

Pierce’s expression darkens. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

“Marley was the defiler of the back seat. I wasn’t really a get-it-on-in-the-back-of-the-car kind of girl.”

“You like dryers and beaches better.” He winks.

I appreciate the moment of levity. “Well, dryers anyway. Maybe not the beaches.” After a few moments of silence, in which I’m sure my face turns red at the memory, I continue. “My parents would drop us off as soon as school finished for the year, and they’d come back and get us before it started up again.”

“So you didn’t see them all summer?”

“No. But that wasn’t unusual. We didn’t see them much, period. We had nannies and housekeepers. So while other teenagers were getting part-time jobs and doing meaningful things, we were hanging out on yachts. Well, that’s not completely true. I did a lot of volunteer work in the summers, thanks to my grandmother. She was big into charity work, and she taught me to give back where I could. I probably would’ve been a complete spoiled brat otherwise.”

Pierce fingers the end of my ponytail. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to be so close to something you know so well, with so many memories attached to it.”