Chapter 302

"That’s when he hit you?"

"He went crazy... said that I had always been the better one, the older one, the smarter one, that I had screwed up his life, that I had taken everything good from him, and now I was taking the woman he loved, that I’d humiliated him over and over... He pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes closed as he relieved that hell. "He said quite a lot more than just that."

"I’m sure he did."

Then he stormed off. And I went to the hospital to get stitched.

Brianna watched, tears streaming down her face, as he gagged out an expletive, and this strongest of men almost fell apart.

And for the first time, he faced it.

As if a fist had gone into his stomach, he let out a shudder of breath, almost doubling up in agony—and he told her. Or did he? Because he truly didn’t know if he was talking about it or living it again. At that point he wasn’t sitting with Brianna; he was backpacing in that hospital cubicle, a wad of gauze pressed to his cheek, so incredibly a