Page 213 of Five Brothers

A quiet laugh escapes her, but she keeps her head on my chest. “Why?”

“It’s reminding me that you’re nowhere near my age.” I stare up at all the fabric. “Something I forget a lot, given the things I just did to you.”

She still has a math book on her bedside table, for Christ’s sake. I’m feeling a little weird about how she just rode me backward.

She lifts her head. “Have you ever been with someone with a thirteen-year gap before?”

I almost smile, because no, I haven’t, but almost immediately, the smile fades. That’s not true, actually.

She stares at me, her own amusement dying. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

She drops her eyes, opening her mouth to speak but then closing it again. I tense.

She swallows. “Army … told me, um …” She meets my eyes. “He told me about the husband and wife who made you and him an offer.”

I shift, looking away.

But I can’t move. She’s on top of me.

“He didn’t say as much,” she goes on, “but I eventually figured out you must’ve—”

“I’m clean,” I say. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

She doesn’t falter. “I wasn’t worried,” she tells me. “I know you’d never put me in danger.”

But she keeps her eyes fixed on me, and the room suddenly feels too small.

“How many?” she asks me.

I press my teeth together and grind for a split second. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

But she pushes me. “How many times did you do it?”

“What did I say, Krisjen?”

She shuts up, but even though I’m holding her, she feels far away now.

The past is depression. I can’t change it. Why bother thinking about it?

Maybe we would’ve eventually been okay if I hadn’t gone that far, but what if we hadn’t been? I took care of my family, and I’d do it again.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

I struggle to breathe, and without thinking, I grip her tighter.

It wasn’t the sex that was hard. I just didn’t like not being seen. I wasn’t someone to them. They would never have spoken to me in public. They never would’ve held a door for my sister or thought about me after I left the bed.

I close my eyes, breathing hard as I tuck her head back into my chest. “A few,” I finally reply in a whisper.

“A few like three, or a few like ten?”

My throat is so dry. “A few like six,” I say.

I wait for another question, but she just lies there, her arm draped over my chest and her hand on my shoulder.