Love in Xxchange: Miles to Go by Bailey Bradford (7 ebook reader txt) 📕

First time was when I was fourteen and just figured out I found boys attractive instead of girls. Saw this one guy at the convenience store by where I was living, and he was…he was big, all masculine and hard and everything I wasn’t. Caught him looking at me and thought I’d be cute, wink a time or two, shake my ass when I walked off. Didn’t know he was following me. I didn’t get more than a block before he pulled over and offered me a ride. I was a dumb kid, and he…he told me I wanted it, that I looked like I wanted it, so he…he did—”

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“Bo,” Max whispered, trying to tug him up higher.

Bo ignored him. “He kept me for hours, made sure I knew everything that could go on between two guys. I couldn’t tell anyone, either, once he showed me his badge. No one would take my word over a cop’s, and my family would have disowned me. Couldn’t have a fag in the family, you know. They would have said it was my fault, and it was, since I’d looked at him like that and—”

“Bo!” Max thundered, snapping Bo back to the present, tearing him out of memories that still made his body tremble with remembered pain. “It wasn’t your fault, you know that!

You were just a kid, and he was someone who abused you and the trust his position implied.”

“I know,” Bo murmured, “but it happened more than once—not with him, never saw

him again. I just stepped right into the pattern of being a victim, setting myself up to be one.

Then one day I realised I was going to get myself killed like that, and as much as I didn’t like myself, I did like living. I started flirting and offering, and controlling what happened.”

“No, you were still a victim,” Max argued. “You just switched it up to where you could tell yourself you weren’t, that you were putting out willingly, but you were doing it to keep from being…being hurt again. If you gave it away, they couldn’t take it, could they? And you never thought you deserved any better because, what? You thought you were dirty, maybe?”

Bo felt scraped raw from the inside out. Max had it figured out, mostly. “Damaged,” Bo corrected. “Unlovable. Undeserving. Good for nothing but a place for some guy to—”

“Bullshit!” Max rolled them over, pinning Bo with his weight. He tilted up Bo’s chin. Bo tried not to look at Max, tried to keep from raising his eyes, but he couldn’t resist, not when he knew Max would wait with all the patience Bo’d never had. He managed to look at Max through nearly-closed lids. “All those people, none of them saw you, honey. Not a one of them bothered to look. Not when you were a little boy, aching to belong, to be loved, not when you were a confused teenager who needed support, not when you were a grown man who still had those two wounded versions of himself as a kid locked inside. Instead, you were hurt, and maybe you let yourself be used later on, because you didn’t know any other way, but that don’t mean you deserved any of it, Bo.”

Bo wanted to believe Max, but he didn’t know how. He started to shake his head only to remember that Max still cupped his chin. Max’s eyes were welling with the threat of tears, the tip of his nose red, but he looked at Bo with so much love that Bo didn’t know how to MILES TO GO

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handle it. He began to shake, as if his body wanted to turn inside out, deep, gut-wrenching shudders that caused his muscles to cramp and his lungs to squeeze out each breath in a rasping pant. He dimly realised that his face was wet, that even now tears were running from the outer edges of his eyes, down to his temples and into his hair.

Max rolled them again until Max was on his back and Bo was laying on him. Bo buried his head against Max’s neck, gritting his teeth through the racking spasms that shook him.

He slowly became aware of Max’s murmured words of love in his ear, of Max’s hands caressing him, his strong arms holding Bo.

“I love you, honey,” Max uttered over and over as Bo struggled to get himself together, yet every time Max said those words, Bo’s heart ached with his desire to believe them.

“How can you?” Bo finally asked when he could unclench his jaw. He felt shredded, utterly demolished and shattered.

“How can I not?” Max countered. “I’ve waited my whole life just for you, Bo, forty-three years, just for you. You’re the only person who’s ever made me want anything, and I will love you every minute of this lifetime and every minute after it, too.”

Some of the shards started mending themselves back together with Max’s declaration.

Slowly, the pain began to ebb, not leaving, but simmering to a bearable throb. Bo studied Max intently, seeing everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever needed there in Max’s dark eyes—if he could only just believe.

“You’re everything I want,” Max rasped. “More than I deserve, but I’m keeping you.

You say I’m a good man, right?”

“The best,” Bo agreed.

“Then trust me to love you,” Max urged. “Trust me to know that you deserve it, and maybe you’ll see that you really do. Please, honey, let me.”

Bo couldn’t deny Max anything, not when Bo loved the man with an intensity that

rocked him to his very soul. “I will,” he promised, feeling a little bit more of the pain slide away. “I do.” And I love you so much, you wonderful, stubborn, sexy man. And Bo would tell him that, just