Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(75)

Later, he’d wondered whether their prep school discouraged kids with special needs, or whether his parents were just too stubborn to admit that their child, the product of their genes and guidance, could prove flawed in such a fundamental way. Whether the shame of it had blindfolded them, plunging them all into darkness.

It didn’t matter, though. Not really.

Either way, they’d never seen him for what he was, what he could become, what he had become, and what he would never, ever be.

They still didn’t.

His cheeks were wet, and she was blotting them with a napkin, and he was too lost to feel embarrassed. “I know they love me, and I love them, but I don’t know how to forgive them.”

A lifetime’s worth of hurt spilled over them both, and she waited patiently and held his hand securely in hers and dried his tears, and if he were a warrior like the man he’d portrayed for so long, he’d have pledged his fealty, his life, to her right then. Laid his sword at her feet, relieved.

She was easing him upward, guiding him to the couch, and tucking him into her body once they were seated. His head on her shoulder, his arms as tight around her as he could make them without hurting her, his face buried in her rose-scented neck.

“I don’t know how to forgive them,” he repeated, whispering into that soft, secret hollow.

Her fingers were combing through his hair, stroking him. He closed his eyes.

When he didn’t speak for a while, she laid her cheek on his head. “We can talk about that, if you want, or I can simply listen. Or we can stay like this, if silence would help.”

There was no judgment in her voice. No impatience. No disdain, at his weakness or his ingratitude or his tendency to feel more than was comfortable sometimes.

He hadn’t known. How could he have? Nothing in his past, amid all his successes and ill-fated relationships, could have predicted the dizzying relief of laying his heart before her, unshielded, only to discover—

Only to discover that she’d protect it for him.

So he could talk. Finally, he wanted to talk about it. Wanted to listen.

He took a shuddering breath against her throat. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I think . . .” Still tunneling her fingers gently through his hair, she paused before continuing. “I don’t think forgiveness is something that can be owed.”

Against his face, he could hear her labored swallow. He could feel it.

“Especially if that forgiveness hasn’t been earned. Even if the person who hurt you is also someone who—who loves you.” Her fingers stilled, her warm palm cradling his skull. “You can choose to offer it. But you don’t owe it to anyone. Not even your parents.”

She was cupping his face, lifting it from her shoulder. Meeting his eyes, her own suddenly fierce. She spoke faster now, with more certainty.

“If you don’t want to see them, don’t see them. If you don’t want to talk to them, don’t talk to them. If you can’t forgive them or don’t want to, then don’t fucking forgive them.” She nodded, either in emphasis or to herself, he wasn’t sure which. “If you do want to forgive them, that’s okay too. If you want to talk to them or visit them, I’ll support you however I can. There’s no right or wrong answer here, Marcus. Just whatever answer would make you happiest.”

That had never been the point, not with his parents.

For decades, the three of them had been bound by expectations and obligations, rather than any particular regard for something as inconsequential as his happiness, or even theirs. But if he shed those strangling tethers, if their bond became something he could choose or not choose, as he desired . . .

He didn’t know what that would feel like. Whether his anger and hurt would fade into insignificance, finally. Whether forgiveness would come more easily, or whether he’d find himself confident in his decision not to offer it.

“I’ve never—” He pinched his mouth shut and thought back. Scrolled through decades, searching, but his instinctive claim was correct. “I’ve never talked to them about how they made me feel back then. How they make me feel now. Instead, I just pretended to be someone else. It seems . . . wrong not to forgive them for things I never said hurt me.”

She was back to picking her words with care. “Do you want to talk to them about it?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” he finally said.

Shit, so much unguarded emotion was exhausting. Head muddled by fatigue and uncertainty, he was resting on her shoulder again, curled against her side, her body a bulwark in a gale. Her fingers were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck now, her other arm warm around his back.

When it came to his parents, he truly had no idea how to proceed.

All he knew: None of his characters, none of his artifice had ever offered him this kind of shelter, this kind of comfort. Only April.

Despite the dread and shame curling in his gut, then, he wasn’t telling her about Book!AeneasWouldNever. He wasn’t confessing his lie of omission.

This circumscribed openness might not be everything he wanted. She might never know all of his story. But what lay between them was more than he’d ever had before, more than he’d ever dreamed he could grasp, and he wasn’t risking it.

No, he wasn’t risking it.

He was squeezing tighter.