She nodded and turned the coffee cup around in her hands. “Yeah. I know.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds.
“OK,” she said. “I – this is hard for me to talk about. Really hard. So… can you just let me talk? I’m afraid that if you interrupt me or ask me anything, I’ll lose my nerve. Can you just – just let me babble? You can say whatever you want after. Is that OK?”
He leaned back, suddenly deathly afraid of what was coming. “Yeah. I’m listening.”
She took a deep breath. “I know you know that I’m – that something happened to me. That I was hurt.” She forced herself to meet those steady gray eyes. “Even without me or Emma or Liv or Kat telling you anything, you and the guys, you all know… they never get too close to me, and you never stand between me and my escape route.”
Escape ro
