Following him into the bedroom, I asked, “Chase them away how?”

Dropping his towel, he pulled on a pair of pants. “She’d start with telling them lies about me; she’d say things like I was a drug addict or a serial cheater. Other times she’d claim I was actually her boyfriend, and even the father of her unborn—and of course fictional—child.”

“Oh. My. God.” I slipped on a vest and shorts as I added, “What a total bitch.”

“It didn’t even matter to her that she was still living with that guy, who either didn’t know what she was doing or just didn’t care. It didn’t matter that she was also sleeping with other guys. No, she’d decided my life was gonna be hell because I left her.”

“Sounds like this wasn’t about you at all. You said her parents were divorced, so one of them must have left home. That had to have hurt. Then they’d spent all those years fighting over her. Maybe she liked that kind of attention and thought that was what love was. But when you left her just like one of her parents did, you didn’t fight for her. I mean, she told lies about you—I’ll bet that was one of the court tactics her parents used.”

He shrugged. “Only Kylie knows why she behaved that way.”

“You said she stepped up her game if the lies didn’t work. What did she do to the girls?”

“Sometimes she’d spread false rumours about them to piss them off. Other times she’d turn up at their houses with bruises and claim I hurt her, trying to scare them.”

Grimacing, I said, “That’s…there aren’t words.”

“Sooner or later, even the ones who were wise to her games would leave because they’d had enough of her shit and just wanted it all to end.” And he didn’t sound in the least bit judgemental. “One girl, Tori, she was different. She saw right through Kylie, she said she knew it wasn’t my fault and she’d stick by me and make Kylie realise she was wasting her time.”

This was obviously one of the relationships he’d mentioned. “Kylie didn’t stop with her games, did she?”

He shook his head. “I tried to protect Tori from her as best I could; tried to shield her from Kylie’s shit—even got the police involved, which didn’t help because Kylie’s dad was a cop; they tend to stick together. I went to her parents, told them what was happening. They were no help. They coddled her. No one could convince them that their only child was anything but perfect. It was hard, and it sucked. But Tori swore she wasn’t going anywhere; that she wouldn’t let Kylie drive her away.”

“But she left,” I said softly.

“She said she would have stayed if I’d just opened up to her more; if I paid her more attention and—”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “She was blaming you for her leaving, because she didn’t want to lose face and admit she couldn’t take it.”

He didn’t seem convinced of that. “After my second deployment, I moved to the next town over. I met someone. It got serious. All was good. Helena wanted me to put a ring on her finger. I wasn’t ready for that, but I took her to meet my parents.”

“Kylie saw you.”

He nodded and then pulled on a T-shirt. “She flipped out. Totally lost it. It wasn’t jealousy or a show of possessiveness. She didn’t want me. She just didn’t want me to be happy.”

“What did she do?”

“My parents chased her off that night. She started showing up at my house and Helena’s place of work, ranting the same old shit she’d said to all the girls that came before Helena. Helena was no lightweight, and she saw Kylie for what she was. Each time Kylie did something, she made Helena more determined to stick it out as a ‘fuck you.’”

“But she didn’t stay, did she?” The bitch.

“No. Like I said, she wanted a ring. She felt it was the least she deserved, considering the shit that she had to put up with from Kylie. Maybe she was right. But the thing is, baby, every girl that came before her had walked away. Every one of them. Hell, even my own mother had left me. To me, marriage is forever. I wasn’t going to bind myself to someone unless I was certain they weren’t going anywhere.”

“Helena walked out because you didn’t propose?”

“She left me for a guy she worked with who had been her ‘confidante’ throughout all the trouble with Kylie.” Butch snorted. “She said he was sensitive, made her smile, and cared enough to be open with her. The oh-so-perfect guy dumped her a month later. She came back, but I sent her away. The next time I was in a war zone, I was Turned into a vampire. I never looked back.”

I moved to him. “Now I get it. All of it.” I grazed his jaw with my nails, knowing he liked it. “Butch, they didn’t walk away because you weren’t good enough for them to want to stick around or because you couldn’t make them happy. They blamed you because they didn’t want to admit to you or themselves that they were letting Kylie win after swearing that they wouldn’t.” He had to see that…but he was shaking his head.

“With you, I’m happy. No one could do anything to make me walk away.” His hands settled on my hips. “If they had been this happy, they’d have stuck it out with me.”

Oh, he was too adorable…in his own weird way. “If they weren’t this happy, you aren’t at fault for that. And to be fair, Kylie made things nearly impossible for you.”

“I’m not going to lay the blame at Kylie’s feet. I was never good at relationships. You know me, baby. I’m not a master of communication. I’m not patient or gentle. I don’t have a great sense of humour, and I’m probably the least compassionate person you’ll ever meet. Hell, I find it easier to kill than I do to talk about what I’m feeling. I don’t blame them for leaving.”

He honestly didn’t, and that just pissed me off. “That’s a load of crap. You know that, right? The first night you announced your intentions to me, you said you don’t know how to make people happy. You make me happy.”

His expression called me a liar. “Baby…”

“It’s true. Sometimes it’s simple things, like when you cook my favourite meals or run me a bath without being asked. Then there are big things, like taking care of me during the transition and making my safety your priority. You’re always there when I need you. Oh, and you give first class orgasms. Just sayin’.”