That question punched me, right in the diaphragm. He didn’t know how much guilt came with that answer, how much shame, how much pain sliced through me. “He started showing symptoms three years in.”

“Before what? How did the relationship end?”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “I can’t, Reese. Don’t make me tell you everything. I can’t. Not yet.”

He stepped closer. I could feel him, and he spoke so softly that it broke the rest of me apart. “How long did you have to breathe for him? Before you got help?”

I was crying.

I couldn’t feel the tears, but I knew they were there.

I saw them falling to the floor, some hitting my shoes.

“Too long.”

“How long were you guys together in total?”

I paused, not because it wasn’t in me to answer, but because my vocal cords had frozen. One beat. Two. Three, and then I could speak again. “Seven years.”

I’d had two years, two amazing years with my soulmate.

He cursed under his breath, then stepped close to me. His arms came around me, his hand cradling the back of my head, and at first I just stood there.

I had never spoken about what I went through.

I never said any of it out loud, just explained the bare minimum to his mother before they’d stepped in to help with him. I had to write out a list of behaviors and events for a lawyer once, but that’d been it. No one else knew—until now, until Reese. My parents. My siblings. My friends. No one. And in some ways, even I didn’t know it all.

It was out now, though.

I had a bleak thought, standing in Reese’s arms, that Trent had gotten what he wanted. Grant had gotten what he wanted. I was dealing with life again.

Then I crumbled.

Reese caught me. He held me, righting me so I didn’t totally fall to the floor. He went with me, moving so we were sitting in a corner of the room, me between his legs. He folded his arms around me, and I broke apart, my sleeve stuffed in my mouth to quiet my tears.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I was still sitting in his arms, resting against his chest when I heard people leaving the dining area.

“You should go eat.”

“Fuck eating.” His chest rumbled from his words.

We heard a voice asking for Reese through the kitchen, then a tentative knock on the door.

“Reese?” It was Juan.

He opened the door, his head poking in and his eyes sweeping the room until he saw us. He didn’t look surprised to see how we were, just pursed his lips together a second.