Page 79 of The Fighter

He’d been allIand notwe. Why did Con make himself seem like the source?

I couldn’t let it go, and I didn’t want to. I started to see Con in a new light—his seriousness and composure now seemed rooted in something other than an earnest responsibility. There was more to it in the way he spoke about Devlin. And it seemed all tied to me. To Amara. To his whole life.

Later that night, after my sister left, I found Con in the bedroom wearing a pair of thin sweatpants and nothing else, staring out at the city through his large windows with a glass of amber-colored liquid.

I rarely saw him drinking. He had wine with dinner sometimes, but not more than two glasses at most. I’d already been on edge about his mood, but this was a bad sign. I walked up behind him, wearing my boxer briefs, and wrapped my arms around him. He swayed as I leaned my weight on him, and he placed the glass on a nearby table before gripping my wrists. I pressed a kiss on the curve of his shoulder, and the skin shiftedbeneath my lips. His body was relaxed, maybe from the half-glass of alcohol, or maybe because it was just him and me.

“How was your day with your sister?”

I rubbed my head against his. “It was perfect.”

I could see his small smile in the reflection of the window. “I’m so glad.”

“How was your day?”

“It was fine.” His words were curt.

“What’s going on with Devlin?”

He answered quickly, like he had an answer ready and waiting. “Don’t worry about it. Nik has it covered.”

This was the way he often brushed me off when I asked, and I always let him do it, maybe because I’d been selfish the last few days. But that ended now, with nothing but Con, me, and whatever was in his head. I let my lips trail over the rim of his ear and then down his neck. There, against his pulse point, I said, “What happened with Devlin ten years ago?”

His whole body stiffened, and I gripped him tighter, preventing him from turning or getting away from me. I was stronger than him, and I wasn’t above using it. Not for this.

“I—” he licked his lips and reached for his whiskey glass. He took a long sip before swirling the melting ice. “The three of us had a falling out.”

“Over what?”

His gaze was down, on his glass, which he carefully placed back on the table. His fingers trembled. “I think you can guess based on his line of work now.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to guess, Con. I want you to tell me. I want to know why Ben doesn’t seem to take Devlin’s actions as personally as you do.” His heart pounded against my palm where it rested on his chest. He stayed silent, but I could almost hear the frantic explanations rattling around in his chest. “Icould always sense your guilt over Devlin, but this seems like more than just a friendship falling out.”

He lifted his foot, but my grip was too tight, and he couldn’t move away from me an inch. His eyes locked with mine in the window, and his were blazing. “Let me go.”

“No,” I shook my head and squeezed my arms. “You made me, and now I can make you.”

“I’m not like you.” His nostrils flared, and he vibrated like a caged animal.

“Talk to me, Con. This isn’t fair that you get to see everything that makes me ugly and not show me your ugly too.”

He growled, an actual growl, and it made me smile into his neck. But I wasn’t giving up. “Why did your friendship with Devlin end?”

“Tav, you can’t?—”

“I can. We’ll stand here all night.” I recalled his words when he’d forced me to look at my own reflection.

He made a scoffing sound and turned his head away from mine, but that was the only protest he could make, since his body was locked against mine, and I wasn’t budging. His chest heaved, a few deep sighs that felt more performative than anything. “Fuck,” he muttered, and I could feel the moment he gave him, when his shoulders slumped, and he dropped the irritated mask enough to let the pain streak across his regal features. “Fuck you, Tav.” But there was no heat to his words, only defeat.

He dug his nails into my forearm where it handed across his chest. “When we were teens, Devlin had a crush on me.”

My lips parted. In all the times I’d known Devlin, I hadn’t gotten even a whiff that he was attracted to men.

“I guess it was a crush. I don’t really know. For as long as I’d known him, he’d looked up to me like a big brother—Dennis was a lot older and never around—but then one day, it changed,and Devlin wasn’t looking at me like a brother anymore. And he wasn’t subtle about it. I’d been with boys a lot by then, so he knew about me. And Ben’s bisexual, so nothing was taboo. But Devlin was intense. He wanted…” Con shifted his weight and leaned back into me, as if he needed the support. I locked my knees and let him give me the burden. “He wanted more than I could give. I’m not sure I ever admitted this, not even to Ben, but Devlin scared me in how he wanted me.”

“How so?”

“I think even then, he saw that I tended to lean dominant, and that part in me called out to that part in him.” He sighed. “At the time, I’d been young, like twenty, and I hadn’t been able to understand what it was about Devlin that scared me, but now I think… he wanted to be owned. Collared and leashed. Controlled. In a way that I could never do, that I’d never want. I held him at a distance for a long time. He hadn’t confessed to me, not yet, even though I could feel how badly he wanted to.”