The Bad Boy Bargain (Suttonville Sentinels #1)(54)

That’s when it had all changed.

Shaking off his dark mood, he went into Cade’s room. Aside from a plain blue bedspread replacing the Iron Man comforter on his bed, it wasn’t much different. Sure, the posters had gone from Dragon Ball Z to manga and high-concept Marvel comic drawings, but the room was totally Cade.

“Sit.” Cade pointed at a chair by his desk, then shut his bedroom door.

“You aren’t going to steal my virtue, are you?” Kyle asked.

“You wish.” Cade went to his nightstand and pulled out a book without letting Kyle see the cover. “Now, this might surprise you, but I’ve slept with three girls. Three, Kyle. And all of them told me they enjoyed it. One went so far as to say I was, how’d she put it? ‘Very generous with both my hands and my time.’”

Kyle’s eyebrows raced for his hairline. “Are you shitting me? God, you’re the real player of Suttonville High. Jesus, man.”

Cade smirked. “Come to think of it, one of them called on Jesus a few times.”

Holy hell. Kyle dropped his face into his hands. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working. If anything, I feel worse.”

“That’s not why I told you.” Cade sat on the foot of his bed and kicked Kyle’s ankle. “Look at me, young padawan. Teach you the ways of the Force, I will.”

“I don’t think Yoda read the Kama Sutra, dumbass.” But he laughed. “So what are we really doing?”

“I’m providing you with free psychotherapy, if you’d just shut up.”

Kyle shook his head, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Just because your mom is a psychologist doesn’t mean you’re qualified to mess with my brain.”

“I’m taking college-level psychology at UTA this semester,” Cade said softly. “And my mom’s been helping me with case studies. I might be more qualified than you think.”

Shit. One more thing he didn’t know about Cade. He was such an *, and the only way to stop being an * was to stop being an *. Kyle sat up straighter. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

“You lost your mom early,” Cade said. “So you’ve always been a little wary of girls because you had no familial exposure to them. You always shied away from the girls chasing you on the playground in fourth grade at Summit, while I was trying desperately to let them catch me. On the rare occasion that they bothered to chase me at all.” He chuckled. “By the time we were in middle school, I thought you might be gay, because you looked uncomfortable with everyone and everything, and I wanted to tell you it would all be okay, but you quit talking to me. Then all these rumors started in high school and I decided maybe you were overcompensating for being overlooked before. A late bloomer maybe.”

“This is pretty damn embarrassing to hear, you know,” Kyle said frankly.

“I’m not judging. Get that through your head—I don’t judge you. I never have.” Cade glared at him. “I’m your friend. You may’ve stopped being mine for a while, but I didn’t.”

TKO to the guy in the Arrow T-shirt. Kyle stared at his hands. He’d done so many things wrong. Now, maybe, he could get some things right. “I’m sorry. Really. I should’ve been…better. At everything.”

“I don’t blame you one bit for morphing into ‘Kyle Sawyer, bad-boy wonder. King of the hoodies, duke of badassery.’ You had your reasons, and they were logical. Painfully understandable, to be honest.” Cade shrugged. “Besides, I figured you’d remember the real you at some point and come back. Shall we continue?”

“Oh, what the hell. Sure.”

“So now you’ve built all of this—meaning girls and relationships and sex—up in your head until it’s an Event, capital E. You’re scared to fail because you’ve been taught—cruelly—that failure leads to humiliation. That being sensitive, smaller than other guys, and dyslexic made you a target. Even though a lot of that’s changed, you’re still afraid to be hurt, so you either avoid relationships, or you end them before you can get your heart broken.”

Now it was Kyle’s turn to let his mouth hang open. “So you’re saying my hang-ups are Cameron’s fault?”

“And all the other bullies. And your teachers, not having your mom, and always being told to suck it up by your dad and your grandpa. I really do like that old man, but he’s pretty old-school. His solution to all this hurt you in the long run. Turning you into something you aren’t isn’t the best way to solve problems even if it protected you from the worst school had to offer.”

Kyle slumped in his chair, too tired to ask his bones to hold him upright. “Jesus.”

“So I’ve been told.” Cade whacked him on the knee. “Now, for your cure.”

“Can’t wait,” he mumbled.

“First, think about what scares you. When you started having doubts last night, what happened?”

“Faith…” He clenched his hands together. “Faith seems to want more than just revenge. Like a relationship, and she probably thinks I have that stuff down. Thing is, I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin, too, but she thinks I’m this great…this great…”

“Lover,” Cade said. “If you can’t say it, you can’t do it, man.”