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“Why?”

“Because he’s your best friend,” I reminded him.

“You’re my best friend,” he argued.

“Don’t say shit like that,” I said softly.

I’d really thought I’d be able to handle the situation without Trevor’s interference. But as usual, I’d been so, so wrong.

“You need more sleep,” he insisted. “It’s the middle of the night. We can talk in the morning.”

“I want to talk now,” I said. “If we put it off, it will be too easy to just never do it. And we need to talk about it.”

“Do we?” Trevor asked, bitterness in his tone.

“Yeah, we do,” I said. “I understand that you’re angry with me.”

“Angry?” He sat up and stared down at me, his profile bathed in moonlight through a crack in the curtains. “Why the hell would I be angry at you?”

“Because of what I’ve done,” I whispered. “Who I am.”

“I adore who you are,” Trevor insisted. “I mean, yeah, you drive me insane sometimes. But that’s kind of what we do, isn’t it?”

I knew he was teasing me, trying to avoid talking about what he’d heard. But if we were going to keep going with this thing…we were going to have to deal with it.

“Trevor.”

“Fine,” he said, blowing out a sigh. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Do what?” I asked, my brows furrowing as I stared up at him.

“Choke you unconscious,” he answered. “I don’t think I can give you that level of…” He swallowed thickly. “I can’t hurt you like that.”

“I never asked you to,” I reminded him. “And I’m sorry you had to hear about it like that. Believe me, I never wanted the worst things I’ve ever done to be broadcast to everyone I respect most in the world.” I huffed out a sigh. “I was trying to figure out who I was, Trevor.”

“And did you?”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but for how long?” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I have no right to throw your past in your face. Or to hold your future against you. You’ve been honest with me from the beginning of this. And I don’t have any expectations and when it ends, I won’t have any regrets.”

“I don’t blame you for being disgusted with me,” I said.

“I’m not!” he said firmly, reaching out to grip my hand in his. “Andy, I’m not disgusted. I’m just worried that I’m still not giving you what you need.”

“You’ve given me everything,” I promised him. “That year was…dark. I chased things I didn’t even know if I wanted to just figure out if I did.” I didn’t have the guts to tell him that Mark’s brother choking me out and fucking me wasn’t even the worst of what I’d let men do to me. Because it didn’t matter.

I was here now, with him. Right where I wanted to be.

And I wanted it way more than I was willing to admit. To him or to myself.

“That wasn’t even the most shocking revelation of the day,” he admitted, releasing my hand and wrapping his arms around his legs.

By the end of the conversation in O’Shea’s office, I’d been pretty delirious with pain, but I couldn’t remember admitting to anything worse than what he’d heard Mark say about me.

“You’re really still going to be a priest?”

Oh.