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I cut him off before he could launch into an excuse. I didn’t want to hear anything reasonable. Not right now. “I had to hear it from Willa. Willa! She thought you were so in love with me that you’d told me everything. Do you know how much it hurt to tell your best friend she was wrong?”

His eyes flashed and his jaw ticked. “Willa told you?”

“Yes! And I don’t even care if you’re mad. I don’t care that I went behind your back! I don’t care if it’s a betrayal. You should have told me!”

“You’re right.”

That…wasn’t what he was supposed to say.

“I should have told you. Everything. We’ve been so close and everything has been so good that I didn’t want to ruin it. And then,” he hung his head, “I forgot.”

“You…forgot?” He forgot to tell me about one of the biggest moments of his life?

My brain exploded.

He shrugged. “I forgot. Things between us are so natural. I just kind of forgot that I hadn’t told you because to me, you should know everything about me. All of it.”

“How can I possibly know what you haven’t told me?” Seth might be more in touch with his emotions than most men, but he was as stupid as any man.

“I’m glad you know now. If you have any questions, let me know. I’m not hiding it from you.”

I wanted to strangle him. “Not hiding it? You asked me to wait, Seth! I’ve been waiting!”

“I’m sorry.”

Sorry. Sorry. That single word was so…not enough.

My heart thundered in my chest as his gaze turned heated. He drank me in inch-by-heated-inch, then took three long, deliberate strides, wrapping one hand around my waist while the other came to my face. “Be as mad as you want, Annalise. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You are an asshole.”

“Yeah, sometimes I am.” Then a devilish grin danced across his lips. “I’m sore. I think I’ll go float in the pool for a bit. Relax. Forget about this shit day.” He started backing away while unbuttoning his shirt.

My crazed brain took a second to catch up. “Floating?” And here I thought I was moments away from packing up my shit.

“Floating,” he repeated, moving through the house. “You’ve been pushing me away, right? Scared because you thought I didn’t trust you. Well, you can be pissed at me all you want. I deserve it. But at the end of the day, I’m your man. And you’re my woman. This is real. So I’ll just be in the pool waiting for you to come to your senses.” He dropped his shirt beside his shoes and started working on his pants. He pushed them and his briefs to the ground and stepped into the pool naked. So that I could clearly see our fight had affected him.

He shot me a grin over his shoulder as he fisted himself at the base of his cock. “Damn, I sure did miss you, gorgeous.” Then he slowly lowered himself into the water.

Our fight was just…over. He wasn’t mad. He hadn’t been hiding his past on purpose. He trusted me.

He dismissed everything that scared me and then stripped naked, inviting me to let it all go.

Because there was no reason to fight anymore. I could hold onto my anger, be mad that he’d forgotten something so important, or I could move on. Maybe if I’d simply asked…

“Seth.”

“Annalise.”

“You can’t forget important things like that.”

He shot me a cocky grin. “I’ll try to do better. Promise.” His eyes ate up every inch of me. “You can’t hide from me either. No more pulling away crap. I know you’re used to taking care of yourself but I’m here now. We take care of each other.”

My last threads of anger dissolved. We take care of each other. Fuck, how I was tired of being alone.

Seth was intoxicating.

I wanted to feel him.