Saint frowned, confusion heavy in his face. Not fighting for words but for answers. “I don’t know.”
“You can’t remember?”
“No, I just don’t know. There’s...” He rapped his fist to his skull. “It’s not there.”
I believed him, as much as I accepted he might’ve deflected me with bullshit all those years ago. The shit that had happened to him—it was unthinkable, and rage festered in my gut for all he’d lived through, every hurt and scar that had nearly taken him from me.
Alexei’s cool hand grazed my back. Then he slipped from the bed and round the other side, wrapping his arms around Saint. “Would you like Cam to tell you?”
Saint leaned into his touch, his reaction to it so fucking simple while his distant gaze was too complex to read. “I don’t want to remember her.”
Because she’d tried to kill him.
And he’d almost killed himself because of it.
Images of a young child slashing his own neck bombarded me. I blinked them away, but I wasn’t fast enough for either of them to miss it happening.
Saint took my hands. “Tell me my name.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. “I think I did know, and I want that part of myself back.”
I took a slow breath, hating that even a tiny fragment of his decision was for me.
He squeezed my hands harder. “Please?”
“You were born SaintZielinski. You’re as Polish as Shay.”
His foster brother.
“Maybe that is why you were placed together.” Alexei nuzzled Saint’s throat. “You are not blood related, though. I checked.”
News to me. “When?”
“When you told me what Viktor had said. I never wanted to know something Saint did not, but I thought it might be the first thing he wondered if this conversation ever happened.”
Saint had gone quiet, even for him. I searched his face—I searched forhim, and something inside me settled as I found his clear gaze.
“You’re okay?”
He nodded.
“Promise?”
Saint kissed me, startling me enough that he stole my breath, and he didn’t give it back until my head was spinning and my dick was hard enough that it was his turn to shatter me the way I’d shattered Alexei, albeit in his own way.
It was a while before we came up for air. I had boundless enthusiasm, but Saint was the one with the stamina.
He ruined me.
Then he ruined Alexei too. I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I found myself splayed in a sweaty heap, face to face with the gold-wrapped Christmas gift Saint had placed on Alexei’s chest.
“You forgot to open it.”
“I did not forget.”
Saint tilted his head.