They went to his room and shut the door.

“Look at me,” Mag said.

I turned my gaze from watching his bedroom door close to his face.

“I like you too, Evan, and I’m not blind to shit,” he declared.

“You need to let me go.”

I meant his hold on my head and just…

Me.

He did not let me go.

He made a speech.

A speech that was such, I hung on every word.

“We’re gonna sort this shit out and then we’re gonna date in a way you put a bag with clean panties and a nightie in my truck ’cause you’ll be spending the night. That is, before you got your stuff at my place, and I have mine at yours. I’ll make you breakfast. You’ll make me dinner. You’re gonna get your goddamn degree. You’re gonna find a job you dig. You’re gonna build the life you want, Evan. Don’t know if I’m gonna be a part of that. Just know, as of now, I feel the deep need to explore that possibility. And this is not a damsel-in-distress situation where I’m blinded to dick, intent only on saving the little woman. It’s because you like my eyelashes, you give a shit about the planet, you knew your brother was gonna get your ass in a sling but you moved to protect him anyway, you got no issue making the first move to go after what you want and you make fucking great bacon cheeseburgers, even without Worcestershire sauce.”

“You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met,” I whispered.

“And this is a bad thing?” he did not whisper.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?” I asked.

He slid his fingers back into my hair and curled them around my head.

“Trust me,” he stated, his tone now guttural, and those two words landed like punches in my gut, sharing inexorably that this conversation just took a dread turn. “This goes the way I want it to, there’ll be a time I got no choice but to land my shit on you. I’ll fuckin’ hate it, only slightly more than you will when you hear it. This is not the test of us, Evan. That will be the test of us.”

I stared in his intense blue eyes.

And got it.

“Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria,” I said softly.

“You know what a rape house is?”

Oh no.

No.

That was when I lifted my hands and grabbed his head.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Well, I’ve seen one.”

“Danny,” I breathed, my eyes stinging, the tears coming.

“So, you want it straight-up, Evie?” he asked but went on before I could answer. “Your brother and his shit is chump change to what I’ve seen men do to women.”

“Honey,” I whispered.

“And I’m gonna fuckin’ get you clear, Evan, are you hearing me?”

I nodded.

“And you are not fucking trash. I know trash. And that is not you. And not simply because, in every instance I ran up against trash, it had a dick. But that does include your fucking brother.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” I said soothingly.

“Don’t talk that shit to me or anyone ever again, Evan. Yeah?”

I repeated my nod.

“We done with your episode?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You have ’em whenever they come. Let ’em fly. And I’ll talk you down. You still with me?”

“Yes, Danny.”

With all that was happening, it was more than the fact I was a crier that I couldn’t stop it.

So the tear dropped from my eye to run down my face.

Mag shifted a hand and caught it with his thumb, then spread the wet over the apple of my cheek.

“Now, I’m making pancakes,” he declared.

A sharp giggle escaped me that wasn’t humor, as such, even if it kind of was.

“Okay,” I replied.

He started to move away but then didn’t and both his hands shifted so he could rub his thumbs over the apples of my cheeks.

“I got a really bad temper,” he admitted quietly, these words filled to the brim with shame and even fear that I knew to my soul he should not feel.

And thus, I held on, with hands and eyes, and listened.

“You gotta know that before either of us make moves to lock each other in. I wasn’t like that before. I can’t say I never got mad. But I never got mad in a way it was like I was outside myself, watching me lose it, and I had no control over how bad it got. I’ve been in fights. With guys. It used to get physical. And I lost my mind on Nikki a couple of times, just shouting, but she knew about it so she took it and it killed me, knowing she accepted that about me and I couldn’t control it. I found coping mechanisms. I haven’t totally lost it in a while, but I feel it sometimes, boiling under the surface. And I’ve researched it so I know it’s not something that will ever just go away, unless I medicate, and my job, I can’t do that. So…that’s what…” he drew in a big breath and finished, “you gotta know.”

“All right,” I said softly.

“It gets bad, Evie, I gotta stress that.”

These words made something inside me move, a weird fluttery feeling.

It was around my heart. A tightness there I never really felt because I’d lived with it my whole life.

But right then, in a colossal shift to the world as I knew it, it just…

Loosened.

“You heard my mom talk to me the way she did last night.”

“Babe—”

I pressed in at his head.

“Listen to me, Danny, please?”

He shut his mouth.

“She’s never seen what you’ve seen, and she’s like that. And I’ve been taking it my whole life, knowing there’s no reason. I just did it because she’s my mom and I’m supposed to love her. There’s a reason why Nikki understood. You’re a good guy, Danny. Now it’s your turn to trust me, because I won’t lose track of that.”

I was then still holding his head and he was still in my face, but way in my space.

He’d wrapped one arm around me and pulled me to his body, his other hand at the back of my head, and we were making out again.

It was getting heavy, what with my special somewhere pressed against his rock-hard abs, when, yet again, his buds spoiled the fun.

“This is not getting me pancakes,” Auggie called.

Mag broke the kiss only to mutter against my lips, “I’m gonna kill these fuckin’ guys.”

I smiled into his eyes.

The anger slid out of his.

He then kissed my forehead and let me go, turning to Auggie and saying, “Newsflash, asshole. The reason they’re good is you gotta let the batter rest.”

“This dude is Julia Child with a Bronze Star,” Boone noted. “His pancakes are good but he’s a virtuoso at the grill. He can even make pizza on that fucker.”

It was good to know Mag could cook, but…

“Bronze Star?” I asked Mag.

“That’s like, eightieth-date territory, baby,” he muttered.

“Right,” I whispered.

He turned his head from the batter and grinned at me before he leaned in and touched his lips to mine.

“So, Evie,” Axl said, sliding the cup of coffee he’d poured me earlier on the counter by my hip. “Just in case you got time, I brought my laptop. It’s acting up.”