“Is that why you have so many toothbrushes?” I blurted out.

“What?”

“Toothbrushes,” I stated, gesturing behind him, toward the stairs. “You have all these unopened boxes of toothbrushes in your bathroom. Do you have them for the girls you’re with? One for me and one for Aimee and whoever else?”

A moment of complete utter silence passed between us as he gaped at me. Like so silent, you could hear a cricket sneeze.

“You really are fucking serious,” he said, and that really did nothing to calm me down. “First off, I have so many goddamn toothbrushes because my mom gets me one for every damn birthday and holiday. She always has. It’s a fucking tradition, and I keep them.”

Oh.

Well, that sounded kind of believable.

“Second, no girl—not a single fucking girl except you—has ever used one of those toothbrushes. Not even Aimee. When I was with her, when I was with other girls, I fucked them, they fucked me, some might have stayed the night, but they all left in the morning or before then, and they sure as hell didn’t use any of my shit. Not even the damn shower.”

I really didn’t want to hear about him fucking anyone.

“I’m not trying to sound like a dick, and I get the way this looks to you, and I’m sorry—I really am, because this is the last thing you need and to deal with her being here. And I get that you don’t have a lot of experience with these things,” he went on, and I felt my cheeks heat with color, because what he said was true. I was twenty-one and had absolutely no experience with boys. “So I understand and I’m trying to be real cool with the fact you don’t get the difference between the girls I’d fucked and you.”

“I really don’t want to hear about the girls you fucked,” I said, speaking my earlier thoughts. “But since you brought it up, what about your train station bed?”

Something crossed his face as he drew back, and I didn’t know why it looked like hurt, because he was the last person who should be feeling butt sore. “Yeah, okay. I’m not particularly proud of some of the shit I’ve done in my past—not the drinking and not the sleeping around. Bad decisions, but that shit . . . that shit is so in the past.”

Oh my God.

It hit me then—the thing he never told me that he’d done when he’d gotten back to the United States and when he was here, and couldn’t get his head to shut down. Alcohol and sex go hand in hand. A bit of guilt wiggled free. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“You’re gonna hear about it, Calla, since it’s such a big fucking deal that we’re arguing about it in the middle of the night.” His voice was still level, but his eyes were so dark, they almost seemed black. “I’m only going to say this once. I’ve been with enough people that I know the difference between what was going on with them and what’s going on with you. You’re not one of them. You’re not Aimee. You’re not even in their ballpark.”