“You think he had the bastard killed?”

“I know he did.” Noah was certain Robert St. John had done it because that man had dared shame the family name, not because he’d hurt Robert’s son. “When I turned eighteen, after a big-ass party my mother threw because that’s what she does, my father found me fucking some random debutante. Later that night, he slapped me on the back and said, ‘Good to know that asswipe didn’t ruin you, boy. I hear the pussy begged for his life.’”

Chapter 33

If Noah’s parents had been in front of Kit right then, she’d have slapped them both sideways. They’d sent away a traumatized, scared boy without offering him any help. What must he have thought when he was shoved out of the family home? When he was abandoned?

Just like the monster had predicted.

 “It wasn’t your fault,” she said softly, conscious those beautiful gray eyes hadn’t met hers since he began speaking. “You know that, don’t you?”

“That night? The one of my eighteenth birthday party?” Noah said instead of answering. “It was the first time in eleven years my father asked me if I’d like to go on a hunting trip with him and the rest of the males in the extended family. Every other boy had been going since he could hold a weapon.”

Kit had never hated anyone as much as she hated Robert St. John right then. “That makes him an asshole. It doesn’t make any of what happened your fault.”

He still wouldn’t look at her, but he moved one hand to touch her lower back, the contact hesitant. “I don’t like sex,” he said, the words blunt and hard. “I fuck women because it makes me feel like a man, and for a short time afterward, I can forget that I had my manhood taken from me.”

Kit didn’t know how to deal with this—Noah’s pain wasn’t something that could be fixed with kisses and hugs or love. This was a down-to-the-soul wound, one that was still bleeding. But she knew one thing, and that was that she loved Noah. “Bullshit.”

His eyes finally flicked to her, the dark gray unreadable. “You never say bullshit.”

“I’m saying it now.” She held his gaze. “You’re one hell of a man—that bastard hurt you, but he did not make you any less a man.”

Jaw tight, he broke the eye contact. “Yeah, okay.”

Gripping his jaw, she made him face her. “What if it was me?” she asked him. “What if it had been a child Kit in that room instead of you? Would you consider me any less a woman?”

“No, of course not.” His fingers dug into the flesh of her hip. “But I’m a man, Kit. I was brought up to be the man of the fucking house. To take care of the people who were my own and to gut anyone who dared hurt any of them, and I couldn’t even protect myself.”

“Noah, you were six years old.” Kit was speaking, but she knew her words were hitting a stone wall of rage and self-recrimination and indoctrination. “Girl or boy, no six-year-old can protect themselves against an adult. The hurt is the same, regardless of the gender, and deserving of the same care.”

That held true no matter the age of the abused, but right now, she had to focus on the fact Noah had been a child—she might actually stand a chance of getting through to him if she made him consciously think about the fact he was pitting a small boy against a full-grown adult.

Her attempt didn’t work.

“I should’ve shot him,” Noah said. “That’s what my Dad said the day he found me with the gun. After I told him, he said I should’ve shot the bastard.”

“I want to shoot your father right now,” Kit ground out. “Jesus Christ, that man has no business being a father.” Her parents might be feckless and self-involved, but the one time she’d had a bully come after her in school, they’d marched in and torn the principal a new one, then confronted the bully’s parents. “Where was your mother in all this?”

“Shopping, tanning, taking Emily for walks in her stroller, anything to get away from the reality of a defiled child.” A vicious smile on his face. “She can’t look at me, did you notice?”

She had. Now that she knew why, she wanted to pound Noah’s mother into dust, just crush her out of existence. “That’s on her.” Kit’s voice shook with sheer fury. “It’s the job of a parent to be there for their child, to kiss the hurts and fight the monsters. It sucks that yours failed at that.” She reached out to brush back his hair.

When he grew stiff, she nearly withdrew, but gut instinct forced her to keep going, keep running her fingers through the golden strands. If he wanted her to stop, he’d pull away.

He didn’t.

Inch by inch, second by second, his muscles eased until she braced her back against a tree, stretched out her legs, and coaxed him to put his head in her lap so she could continue to play with his hair. “Have you ever spoken to anyone about this?”

“Fox knows.”

“No, I mean a counselor, or—”

“No. And that’s not going to change.”

“Noah—”

“No.” He closed his eyes, one knee drawn up on the picnic blanket and shoulder muscles bunched again. “I’m not going to spill my guts to some shrink. Not now, not ever. It’ll end up on the front page of a tabloid the next day.”

That tone was one she’d rarely heard from him, but it always meant a hard, bright line beyond which he would not negotiate.

The worst thing was that she couldn’t even argue with him. She was sure there were trustworthy psychologists and counselors out there, but they kept records and those records went into computer systems or into filing cabinets, and Noah was a high-profile man. All it would take was a single nosy receptionist or file clerk who couldn’t keep the news to himself or herself, and it would end up in the tabloids, front and center.

Oh, the articles would be cloyingly sweet, giving lip service to Noah’s courage and strength, but all the while, they’d be ripping him to shreds by bringing up the most horrific time of his life over and over and over again. He wouldn’t be able to escape the knowledge in people’s eyes, and knowing Noah as she did and having just heard what he believed about masculinity and strength, she knew that would destroy him.

What she didn’t know was if he’d walk away from her too, now that she knew.

For this moment, he lay there quietly as she stroked her fingers through his hair, his eyes closed. She didn’t know when she realized the rhythm of his breathing had changed.

He was asleep.

Eyes wide, she almost halted in her soothing strokes, caught herself before she could interrupt the rhythm. If Noah was finally sleeping, especially after what he’d just told her, she wasn’t about to wreck it.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, lazily stroking her fingers through his hair, but the night was beyond quiet when he stirred.

“Wassasleep?” he mumbled, the words running together.

“Yes.” She stretched out her stiff legs when he rolled over to lie on his front, a pillow under his head. “You want to stay out here?”

“Hmm.”

Getting up, she went inside and grabbed a thick afghan throw to put over him. The nights could get cool, and he was already on nothing but a picnic blanket. She was tempted to stay beside him, but she wouldn’t take what he wasn’t ready—or able—to give. From what she’d picked up after all these years of knowing him, Noah never actually slept with another person.

She tucked the throw into place and was about to leave when a strong hand encircled her ankle. Looking down, she saw that he was still in the same position on the pillow, his head turned away from her. Yet when she tried to tug away her foot, his fingers tightened.

Lips curving in a shaky smile, she said, “I need to go find a sleeping bag. You might like the cold, hard ground, but I prefer luxury.”