Bad call. But I had plenty of life experience, and Aisling lived in a protective bubble. Of course she wanted answers, closure, and all the other mumbo jumbo you read about.

“She opened the door and threw the phone he’d used to call me. She started screaming at me in front of the entire neighborhood, calling me a whore, a homewrecker, a spoiled bitch. She said my mother is a slut, that everyone in America knows one of us doesn’t belong to Fitzpatrick, then promised she would let all the hospitals in Boston know what I did. It was humiliating. Especially since I never knew this man was married.”

“Is that why you never tried for a hospital here?” I asked.

She bit down on her lower lip, pulling more and more dead skin from the side of her fingernail. “Partly. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not the entire reason, anyway. Since then, I limited my interaction with men even more.”

“Good,” I deadpanned. “We’re all fuckers.”

Silence hung in the air. I wanted her to leave. She wasn’t going to tell me anything about her parents’ relationship, about Gerald. This was pointless.

“Tell me something personal.” She rested her cheek on her shoulder. “Just one thing, Sam. It will make me feel better. Please.”

“Aisling, it’s time for you to go.”

“Why?”

“Because this is going nowhere fast. We fucked. It was a mistake. It’s time you move on. Whatever you think is going to happen, I can assure you it won’t happen. I don’t have a soul, or a heart, or a conscience. We had fun, yes, but women are all the same to me. I will never choose you above all others. If you think life with Gerry is a nightmare for your mother, imagine your father at his worst and keep going. That would be me.”

That was when it finally happened.

She finally cried in front of me.

It was just one tear. It rolled down her cheek, flying off her chin like a cliff, landing with a splash on her knee.

“Goddammit, woman,” I hissed, looking away, feeling … feeling. It wasn’t a big feeling, just a little discomfort, but I did not want to see her cry.

One time.

This would be the one and only time I was going to humor this infuriating woman. No more.

I stood up, snatching the whiskey bottle by its neck and taking a swig as I began pacing the room.

“When I was a kid, before Troy and Sparrow took me in, back when I lived with Cat and my grandmother, we had a painting in our house. Just the one. It was a very cheap painting. A faded old thing of a cabin on a lake—basic and not very good. Anyway, the painting was in front of the bed in the master bedroom. It had the tendency to fall from its nail onto the floor every time the door creaked or someone breathed in the house. Cat was the only person with a key to the master bedroom, and she hadn’t figured out I’d learned how to pick a lock.”

I stopped. Took another swig. Realized I was halfway drunk and put the bottle down on the coffee table, noticing Nix was fingering and touching more of the bullets in the jar, breathing the initials out with her lips. Like she was mourning those people or something.

“When I was a kid, Cat used to punish me by starving me. In order to do that, she made the spot under her bed a makeshift pantry. That’s where she kept all the food. Condiments, chips, pretzels, ready-made meals. Grams wasn’t strong enough to fight her on this. As you know, I was a shitty kid, so I was virtually in a constant state of punishment. That made me very hungry and very small for my age.”

She pinched her lips together, and I could tell she was about to sob again. It made me feel like fucking Bambi. I didn’t need anyone’s pity. I rushed through the next part.

“At some point, I figured I could just break into the room and grab Ramen or a bag of chips or something. And I did. Often. But Cat had the tendency to come in at the most inconvenient time. When I didn’t have time to run away from her room, I had to hide under the bed, buried beneath the junk food.”

I smiled bitterly at the bare concrete wall in front of me, feeling Aisling’s eyes clinging to my profile, eager to hear more.

“Cat was a whore, so more often than not, when she came home, she wasn’t alone. I stopped counting after the fourth time I had to sneak under her bed and felt the springs of the mattress digging into my back as someone fucked her above me.”

Aisling looked away, hissing, like my pain bled into her body.

“No,” she croaked.

“Yes.” I changed direction, walking toward her. “I felt the weight of my mother’s sins, figuratively and literally. They fucked her over my back. Again and again and again. While I shivered, dizzy with hunger, every muscle in my body strained so I wouldn’t make a sudden move and make myself known. My most distinct childhood memory is that stupid painting. Every time the headboard hit the opposite wall, it would drop, but not facedown, so I could always see the cabin and the lake staring right back at me, as if they caught me red-handed. We had a relationship, this painting and I. I felt like it was taunting me. Reminding me of my shitty life, and every time I looked at it, I could feel the blue and purple dents on my back from the rusty bedsprings digging into my skin.”

“You don’t have any paintings,” she said slowly, looking around the room.

I tapped the bottom of my cigarette pack over my bicep, and one cigarette popped out.

I fished it between my teeth. “Nope.”

“My house must be very triggering for you.”

I chuckled, lighting up the cigarette. I sprawled beside her on the couch, careful not to touch her, exhaling a trail of smoke to the ceiling.

“I don’t have triggers.”

“Everyone has triggers,” she argued.

“Not me. I let hate fester and redirect it into ambition. I welcome my weaknesses and don’t shy away from them.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder, pressing her palm to my heart. I froze.

This was new.

And unsolicited.

Still, I didn’t move. Her hand on me felt good. Right.

“Is this why you hate women?” she whispered. “Because Cat wronged you so much?”

“I don’t hate them. I just don’t want much to do with them,” I groaned.

“Well, I want something to do with you.” She looked up, blinking at me with owlish eyes. Our gazes met. The thick humming of our pulses filled the air. I drew away from her, pressing my thumb to her lip.

“No.” I smiled viciously, standing up. “Here. You got it off of your chest, and even got a little bonus with my sob story. Now get the fuck out, Nix. And don’t come back.”

“But I—”

She started, but I turned away, taking a drag from my cigarette and looking in the other direction.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window, I could see her standing up, dignified. She made her way to the door, her chin held high, her back straight. The minute she closed the door behind her, I let out a breath, dropping the cigarette into the half-empty whiskey bottle.

Charging to the bathroom, I all but kicked my slacks down my knees, turning on the shower spray and stumbling inside before the water turned from cold to hot.

I braced one arm over the tiles, let the water pound over my body, and started jerking off—with my dress shirt still on.

“Shit …” I hissed as I rubbed my cock mercilessly, pumping fast. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”