...I stopped the car at the end of the shop’s driveway and turned to Stacy. “Can you just let go of your notion that I’m missing out on life? I don’t feel like I am.”

“Okay. But here’s the thing, Levi. I want—”

“Just stop. I love you.”

To my utter shock, Stacy grabbed both my wrists, his powerful grip tight enough to bruise. His gaze bored into mine, freezing me cold. “You stop, Levi. Listen, just this once. You’re so afraid I’ll be pissed if I see you get a hard-on for some other guy, you run from me when I want to talk about it. Do you think in five years I’ve never seen another man that gave me a little tingle? It happens to everyone, lover. It’s not something to be ashamed of.”

My voice didn’t want to work. “I’m not you.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve never cheated on you, Levi.” He looked at me for the longest moments of my life, his eyes gone black with some emotion I had no name for.

I knew. I knew.

“I heard what the bartender said the other night. You need to know that if it ever happens and you trick some guy, you don’t need to keep it from me. I expect you to first, be safe, and second, to tell me so we can be more careful.”

Ice water tossed in my face would not have chilled me more than his words.

“What the fuck is going on here, Stacy? I’ve never cheated on you. Never. And I’m not starting now.”

“Levi, we’ve been together a long time and, as a couple, we’ve enjoyed unprotected sex for quite a while now. Do I need to be concerned?”

A fine trembling seized my body. This conversation was out of control, the potential for disaster increasing by the second. My stomach clenched in on itself until I fought back the dry heaves. The world spiraled around me, going black at the edges. I broke free of his hands.

“I love you. I never cheat on you. Yet you sit there and ask me if it’s possible I could have given you the clap—or something worse? Maybe I should be the one worrying. And you have to do it here? You motherfucker! I have to go in there and work!” I choked, unable to breathe. “I never…”

Stacy’s arms came around me. I shoved him away, holding him at bay. The words came as I managed a deep breath. Horrible words I couldn’t stop from pouring out of me in my anger and pain that he didn’t know me well enough to believe how much I loved him.

“Why don’t you go get a fucking blood test since you can’t trust me? Now you listen to me. You decide whether you love me enough to have me hang around because if I’ve gotten a little old for you, you should tell me. I’ll step aside so you can go find yourself another sixteen-year-old!”

He drew back as if I’d struck him, which I had. I’d lashed out, hitting him with the most damaging words I owned. He’d been falsely accused of having sex with a sixteen-year-old boy when he was twenty. The boy had lied—Stacy hadn’t touched him—but the accusation had almost ruined Stacy’s life. The pain remained, and I, who loved him so much, knew the wound lingered in him, unhealed at its deepest point.

And I used it against him.

I reached for him, and this time he batted my hands away.

“I’m sorry, Stace. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You said it, so you did mean it. Now get out of the car. I can’t be with you right now.”

My stomach roiled. “Stacy, please, we need to go back home and talk this out.”