“I’m sorry for freaking out on you,” I added in a rush. “It just surprised me. I was asleep and I wake up and I could tell something was wrong. Then I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, Avery.” He scooted to the edge of the couch. “I don’t need to hear that you’re sorry. I want you to be honest with me, sweetheart. That’s all I want. If you’re getting messages like that, I need to know about that.”

“Why?”

His dark brows knitted. “Because I’m your boyfriend and I care if someone is calling you a whore!”

I flinched.

Cam looked away, chest rising. “Honestly? It pisses me off, even if it’s an accidental text. No one should be sending you shit like that.”  His gaze settled on me again. An eternity stretched out between us. “You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m not going to judge you or get mad.”

“I know.” My voice sounded small to my own ears and I hated that. I said louder, “I know.”

His eyes met mine. “And you trust me, right?”

“Yes. Of course I do.” I didn’t waver.

Again, there was a pregnant pause that had me assuming the worse. “Shit,” he all but growled, and my heart sunk. Did he know? What was he thinking? The truth—everything—rose to the tip of my tongue, and then he closed his eyes. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

“What?” That was the last thing I expected him to say.

He rubbed his palm along his jaw. “I tell you that you should trust me and that you can tell me anything, but I’m not doing the same thing. And eventually you’re going to find out.”

Whoa. Forget the text message. Forget saying anything. What the hell was going on? Almost numb, I hurried around the coffee table and sat a few feet away from him on the couch. “What are you talking about, Cam?”

Lifting his head, he pierced me such a tortured stare that it made my chest ache. “You know how I told you we all have done shit in our past we aren’t proud of?”

“Yes.”

“I can say that from firsthand experience. Only a few people know about this,” he said, and I suddenly thought of the day he’d gotten upset with Ollie and then at the party when he’d gone after that guy. There seemed to be something that Jase had been telling him without really saying it. “And it’s the last thing I want to tell you.”

“You can tell me,” I assured him, and yeah, I felt like a twat considering all that I wasn’t telling him. I pushed those thoughts away, focusing on Cam. “Seriously, you can talk to me. Please.”