The pain that echoed through his every word sliced her like a knife, making her bleed for him. She’d heard it was possible to feel the pain of others almost as acutely as they were feeling it themselves, but she’d never experienced it so profoundly until now. “Your father is no reflection on you, Owen. You had no control over who you were born to, just like Evan and I had no control over who we were born to. We got lucky. You didn’t. That doesn’t make us look at you any differently because something you couldn’t control happened to you. If anything, it makes us admire you more than we already do, because you survived it when it might’ve broken a lesser person.”

“How can you be so sure it didn’t break me?”

“Look at you. You’re strong and capable and trustworthy and loyal and loving and gentle—so gentle with me and Holden and your mother and all the other people you love. You’re nothing like him, Owen. No one thinks you are, except for maybe you.”

His cheek twitched with tension as he fixated on a spot over her shoulder. “I feel like he’s in there, lying dormant, waiting to lash out when he has the right provocation.”

“So if I piss you off someday, you’re going to hit me?” With her hands flat against his chest, she gave him a little push.

Since he wasn’t expecting it, he stumbled slightly. “What’re you doing?”

“Proving a point.” She raised her hand and laid it gently against his cheek. “If I slap your face, will you slap me back?”

He turned away from her hand. “No. Stop it. Why are you doing this?”

She rolled her other hand into a fist that she pressed to his abdomen. “If I punch you in the stomach, will you punch me back?”

“Laura…”

“You’d never lay a hand on me, no matter what I did to you. Never. I haven’t the slightest doubt about that. I could say anything, do anything, and you’d never touch me with anything other than love.”

“Stop this.”

“Not until I hear you say you’re nothing like him.” With her hands once again on his chest, she raised a challenging brow. “Do I need to push you around a little more to make you understand what I already know?” The notion that she could physically make him do anything he didn’t want to do was ridiculous, and they both knew it. “Do I?”

“No,” he said with a sigh as he curled his hands around her wrists and lifted them from his chest. He kissed one of her palms and then the other. “I’d rather die than do anything to hurt you.”