He held her, rocking her as she sobbed. His heart felt like it was breaking, his mind roiling. His poor, sweet, darling Kendra was in pain. He would give anything to take that pain away. For now, he just held her close, soothing her with gentle words until her weeping subsided into hiccups and sniffles.
Eventually, Kendra wriggled in his arms, and he loosened his grip, letting her pull away from him to fall onto her back beside him. He grabbed a handful of tissues from the nightstand and handed them to her.
Kendra wiped her face and blew her nose. “Man, oh, man,” she breathed. “I’ve cried more around you than I have since I was five years old. You must think I’m a total whack job.”
“Not at all,” Dylan assured her. “There’s nothing wrong with tears, Kendra,” he added, thinking about his own crying jag in front of Caelan. “Do you remember anything from the nightmare? It must have been a doozy.”
She tensed, turning her head away.
“Listen,” he said gently, forcing himself not to touch her—to let her have her space. “I know something rotten happened to you. Those scars…” He trailed off, hoping she would pick up the thread.
She remained silent.
He made a sudden decision. He wouldn’t wait for their walk on the beach. He would tell her now. Before he could change his mind, he blurted, “Remember how I lit into that guy? The one you called Master Upchuck?”
She nodded, managing a small smile.
“Well, I probably overreacted because it reminded me of something rotten that happened in the BDSM scene. Something I’ve had problems letting go of. Caelan brought me back from the brink afterward. He helped me understand I need to face my issues in order to let them go.”
She turned her head slowly, finally meeting his eyes. “He did?”
“Yeah.”
“What issues?” she asked softly.
How could he ask more of her than he was willing to give himself?
Dylan drew in a breath, girding himself for his confession. “I was with this girl. Her name was Cynthia.”
He shared the story, leaving out nothing. Kendra listened with full attention, her eyes fixed on his face.
He told her about his talks with Caelan, and how helpful it had been to get it out there in the open. “He said something that really stuck with me,” Dylan added, hoping it would encourage Kendra as well. “He said, you’re only as sick as your secrets.”
Forcing himself to continue, he told Kendra the sordid details of that fateful night at the underground club. His voice cracked when he finally got to the end of the tragic story. “I walked away, Kendra. My gut told me the situation was unsafe, but instead of taking action, I focused on my wounded pride.”
He paused, drawing a deep breath as he tried to keep the tears at bay. Though he accepted now that it hadn’t been his fault, the helpless, hollow feeling remained when he thought about Cynthia’s determined path toward self-destruction. “If only things could have gone differently. If only I could have saved her.”
It was no use. Here came the tears again. As they coursed down his cheeks, Kendra reached for him, pulling him gently down so his head rested on the soft pillow of her breasts.
“That’s so sad,” she said, stroking his hair. “I’ve known people like Cynthia, and plenty of assholes like the guy she was with, too. Yeah, it sucks that you weren’t there to save her, but Caelan’s right—this was between them. It wasn’t your fault.”
Somehow, having Kendra say it reached deeper than Caelan’s assurances. “Thank you,” he whispered, the last of his guilt finally slipping away. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from his chest, some of the shattered bits of his heart mending at last.
He rolled onto his back, meeting her eyes. “Thank you for listening. And for not judging.”
They lay together for a long time, watching the sun rise over the ocean, turning it from gray to lavender to sparkling gold. Finally, Kendra said in a voice so quiet he had to lean closer to hear her, “I want to tell you about what happened to me.” She kept her gaze fixed on the water. “But I’m ashamed. I haven’t told anyone all the details, not even Abbie.”
He remained still. She was like a deer in the forest. One wrong move and she’d vanish. He reached tentatively for her hand and took it in his. To his relief, she clasped it tightly in return.
“Back when I was working really crazy hours,” she began, “I didn’t have much time to go to the clubs, and definitely no time in my life for a relationship. But I missed the scene—the intensity. So sometimes, when I got home late at night, I’d go on this website while I was lying in bed, trying to unwind. It was a BDSM chat room—a forum kind of thing. You could email, but you could also send private messages to people who were online at the time.”