I kept my mouth shut for as long as I could, I really did. But how was I just supposed to sit there and take what she was dishing out? She hadn’t said a word to me since we left the gas station, and that had been almost an hour ago. And I felt as though I was starting to lose my mind a little bit.

It hadn’t been my fault that the woman had done that to me. How could it be? That kind of shit happened to me all of the time, and yeah, it sucked, but there was nothing I could do about it. What I didn’t understand was why Kari couldn’t just wrap her head around that and stop treating it as though I had cheated on her right in front of her face?

"Kari?” I said again, but she didn’t reply. She turned her head and looked out the window pointedly. I rolled my eyes at her and noticed a spot by the side of the road where I could pull over. I decided I was going to put this to bed, once and for all. I wasn’t going to sit here and take the silent treatment from her – not when our weekend had been going so well up until this moment. She had another thing coming if she thought I was going to let this ruin everything that had happened between us. Not a chance in hell.

I pulled over, and she glanced around, surprised, trying to make sense of what was going on.

"Morgan, what are you doing?” she asked – the first words she had spoken to me since we had pulled out of the gas station.

"We need to talk," I told her firmly. "I’m not going to let this ruin our time together."

"Well, I’m sorry, but if you think you can just kiss other women in front of me—"

"In what world was I kissing her?” I cut her off. I didn’t want to hear this. She must have known she was talking some crazy shit right now, and I was pissed that she had allowed this to get under her skin.

"That’s sure what it looked like," she snapped back. "Your mouth was on hers, wasn’t it?”

"Yeah, but it wasn’t like I was just standing there making out with her," I shot back. "She kissed me. I didn’t want anything to do with her. Jesus, Kari, you know how often this kind of thing happens in the business?”

"So what you’re telling me is that I have a lot more of this to look forward to," she replied dryly. I shook my head, rubbing my hands over my face with frustration.

"You know that’s not what I’m saying," I replied, doing my best to keep my cool.

"Then tell me what the hell I’m meant to take from that because all I saw was a woman just walking up to you and kissing you," she snapped back. I had to swallow down my urge to react harshly – I didn’t take criticism well, let alone when it was criticism I knew I hadn’t earned.

"Usually my security would be there to stop that kind of shit from happening in the first place," I explained to her, my voice low and pointed. "But these women, Kari, you have to understand – they have no concept of what’s appropriate."

"So this kind of thing just happens all the time to you?” she demanded. I could hear the incredulity in her voice. Well, she was in for a shock if she thought it was going to be that easy to dismiss.

"Yeah, it does," I replied, my voice raised a bit. I was starting to feel as though I was spinning out of control. I hated this feeling, and I had never figured out a way to get a handle on it. But I knew I had to swallow it down, at least as long as I was around Kari. She couldn’t see this side of me. I could never show it to her. She would freak out, she would be hurt, she would be shocked, she would be—

"These girls, they see me in the movies and they think that I’m their fucking boyfriend or something," I blurted out, cutting off my own soothing train of thought. I just couldn’t control it.

"And they see me out in public, and they assume that I’m there for them," I explained. "They think that I’ve finally found them after all this time, and they kiss me and they touch me and they make it so that I can hardly get away."

She fell silent, which was something. She didn’t have a sharp comeback for that one, at least. That was a start.

"I don’t want this kind of thing, Kari," I continued desperately. "I really don’t. But you have no idea what it’s like for me, being out there and having them see me. They think they know who I am, and nothing I can do is going to convince them otherwise. These girls, they see me in the movies, and they’re certain that whatever character I’m playing is somehow perfect for them in one way or another."

"How many times has this happened before?” she asked, her voice soft, as though she was trying to counteract my rising voice.

"Shit like that?" I gestured back in the direction of the gas station. "More times than I could count."

"And how far has it gone?” she pressed.

"What do you mean?”

"You said these girls think they’re your girlfriends or whatever," she explained. "How far do they take it?”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I had tried to put this one out of my head, but I couldn’t shake it. She had asked, and I didn’t want to lie to her face.

"There was this girl about six years ago," I explained. "She had – she had seen a bunch of my movies, I guess. And she had gotten pretty obsessed with me."

"Obsessed how?”

"Obsessed like apparently she was sending all of this fan mail to my agent at the time, trying to get ahold of me," I went on. "None of it ever filtered through to me, but the letters were coming in a few times a day at the worst point."

"A few times a day?” Kari exclaimed, apparently shocked. "How was she sending that many? How did she afford it?”

"I have no idea, but she did and she could," I continued. "And there was nothing I could do to stop it because I didn’t even have a damn clue it was going on in the first place."

"And what happened to her?” she pushed me for more.

"Her mother eventually managed to get through to my agent at the time and let him know that her daughter was…she was cutting herself, she told him. And said she was suicidal and that she was going to kill herself unless I reached out to her."

"Jesus fucking Christ," she muttered, shaking her head. I didn’t hear her curse very often, and it was somewhat strange hearing those words come out of her mouth.

"I had to go on TV and make a statement to try and get the whole thing off my back," I continued. "I think she got sent to a psychiatric hospital, eventually. I didn’t hear from her again after that – or if I did, my agent has done a good job keeping it from me."

"So that’s how far it goes?” she asked quietly. I nodded.

"That’s how far it can go," I replied. "And I have no guarantee that it won’t go that far again."

"But that girl back at the gas station..." she continued, glancing over her shoulder as though she half-expected the culprit to reveal herself as being stowed away in the back seat this entire time.

"Yeah, that kind of shit happens all the time," I replied. "That’s why I always have security on me when I go out and about. It’s just safer that way."

"So the options are go out with a whole security team or accept that you’re going to be accosted by women whenever we go outside?" she asked. Even though I was mad at her for what she was suggesting, there was a part of me that thrilled at the mention of us being together beyond just this. That was a start. But the edge to her voice matched with the promise of something more was enough to send my emotions flaring once more, and I found myself speeding out of control again.

"Yeah, well, that’s what you can expect as long as you want to be around me," I fired back, knowing that I sounded arrogant as hell and not caring one bit. When I was feeling attacked, I had a habit of throwing up this smokescreen to pretend that I was actually the one who was purely and totally in control. Sometimes, it even worked.

"You’re an actor, I guess," she sighed heavily. "This is the kind of thing you can expect, right? When you put yourself out there in the public eye, you can’t really be surprised when a few people get over-eager—"

She cut herself off before she was done talking, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. She must have sensed the fury coming off of me in waves. I knew that she had no idea what this had triggered in me – there was no way she could; I had never spoken to her about it. In fact, I didn’t make a habit of talking to people about it if I could. But sitting there, hearing her bring up the “well, you’re in the industry, so what did you expect?” argument was enough to send my blood boiling.

"You really think I deserve all of this just because I wanted to act?” I snapped at her. She recoiled into her seat, not used to the harsh tone coming from my mouth. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.

"No, Morgan, I didn’t mean that—"

"You think I deserved to get abused, too?” I continued. It was too late to stop now. No matter how bad an idea I was sure this was, the feeling had bubbled up inside me all over again, and I couldn’t keep it down. She didn’t say a word, letting what I’d just said hang in the air between us. Good. I wanted it out there. She might as well know the truth, right? The truth about me, the truth about everything that had fucked me up and left me such a wreck.

"Morgan, what are you talking about?”

Her voice was tiny against the onslaught of emotion that was rising up inside me, but it was just enough to push me over the edge into telling her the truth. Into coming out with the truth that I did my best to keep from everyone.

"When I was a kid, my father’s friend abused me for years," I explained. I felt oddly removed from myself, as though I was talking about someone else entirely. Maybe because I didn’t talk about this a lot, the reality of laying it all out there for someone else to hear made me feel as though I was drifting distantly out of my own body.

She didn’t respond. I wanted her to, but she didn’t. She sat there, silent, staring at me. I wanted to meet her gaze, but I was worried that if I did, my ability to actually speak to her would vanish.

"He was in the business too – they both were," I continued, speaking faster now. "And the shit – the shit he did to me, you have no idea."

I wanted her to say something, but she didn’t seem to be able to come out with a word. I was terrified, telling her all of this, and I hated that I was so scared. This wasn’t my fault. This wasn’t something I had done wrong. But still, speaking to her about it, I felt like I was speaking it into existence, as though I was going through it all again right here and now.

"You think I deserved that?” I demanded, my voice hollow. "You think that because my father was in the industry, I deserved to have that happen to me?"

My words hung in the air between us, and I closed my eyes and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

"And what about the actors and the producers when I was growing up?” I continued. I felt as though I couldn’t hold back any longer. I needed her to hear this. I needed someone to hear it. I had held it in for so long, carrying it with me as though it was my shame to hide from the world at large.

"Did I deserve it from them too?” The words came tumbling out of me, so fast I couldn’t stop them. "Is that how the world works? Should I have avoided this whole thing because I knew I was asking for all of this?”

I finally turned to look at her, and her eyes were so heavy with sadness that I felt a lump rise up in my throat. This stuff had hurt me, of course it had, but I couldn’t imagine what it felt like for her to have this piled down on top of her out of the blue. I had held it with me for so long that it felt like second nature, but she was just finding this all out now.

"Have you ever spoken to a therapist about this?” she asked quietly. I shook my head.

"My parents knew what was going on when it was happening," I admitted. "They didn’t want me to go to a therapist. They thought it would blow everything up, ruin the family. They said I would never get away from it if I told anyone, that it would follow me around for the rest of my career..."

I stopped talking. The worst part was, they had been right. I had seen what coming out about this stuff had done to the people who were brave enough to speak up. But it had followed me my whole life anyway – my career be damned, this had crippled me in ways that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Keeping it in had probably made it worse.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered, and I turned to her again to see that she was crying. Tears were coursing down her face, and I hated myself for making her feel like this. Why had I thought this was something she needed to hear? She was horrified. She would never look at me the same way again. My emotions were flailing around; I couldn’t hold down my reactions.

"You’re the first person I’ve told," I replied, staring out over the road beyond. Cars were whipping by, probably filled with people who had thought better than to spill their deepest, darkest secrets to a woman they still barely knew. They probably knew it wasn’t exactly smart to pull this shit on someone that you wanted to be with.

After a long, long pause, she reached out to me and took my hand. The human contact made me jump; my skin prickled for a moment, panic launching through me. She was going to tell me this was too much for her to take, and she was going to leave. She was going to ask me to take her home, and that was the last I was going to see of her. The last few days flashed before my eyes, and I felt a sharp stab of sadness upon fearing that it was all over.

"Morgan." She spoke my name, and the world seemed to stop for a moment. I had no idea how this was going to go. I had never done anything like this before. I had nothing to compare it to.

"Morgan, I’m so sorry this happened to you," she continued. She touched my face and guided it toward her gently. Somehow, her hands on me didn’t feel invasive or too much – I often flinched from a touch like this, especially when I was feeling emotional. But with her, it soothed me.

"You didn’t deserve any of this," she continued fervently. "I can’t even...I can’t even get my head around it. Nothing you could have done would have meant that you deserved this."

I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I just needed her to keep on talking.

She hooked an arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward her; gently, she leaned forward and planted a kiss on my lips. She was crying now.

"Don’t cry," I pleaded, lifting my hand to wipe her tears away. She brushed my hand back down.

"This isn’t about me," she assured me. "I’m crying for you. I can’t believe...your parents, especially. What they did to you, Morgan, what they didn’t do for you – it's plain evil."

I lowered my head onto her shoulder and let it rest there. The position was awkward, but I needed her near me. I needed someone near me right now. To prove to me that what had happened to me hadn’t made me toxic in some way. As long as she was beside me, I knew that I could manage this. I had no idea how, but I would find a way.

"I’m sorry this happened to you," she murmured again, and I felt the wave of emotion rise up over me again. I couldn’t believe I had been holding this all down. More than anything, I was angry. I was furious. None of this was fair – what I had been through, what my parents had put me through when they had found out, all of it was so infuriating.

She wrapped her arms around me as though she could sense everything that I was feeling. I couldn’t believe I’d just told her all of this. It was so...wrong. She was already carrying so much on her shoulders, and I had laid this on her as well. We barely knew one another, but I had shared the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I had promised her a fun weekend, a way for the two of us to blow off some steam and for me to prove to her that I was worthy of working for her charity.

She let me lie against her until the pain had begun to subside. It felt as though I had torn open an old wound, making my body ache, while the anger seeped from me agonizingly. I listened to the sound of her heartbeat and watched as the tears dripped down onto her lap below me. But I didn’t let go.

Usually, when I was this close to a woman, there was one thing on my mind and one thing only, and that was finding some way to turn this closeness into sex. But with her, I didn’t want that. I mean, I was still attracted to her, of course, and there was still plenty I wanted to do as soon as we were back in the real world. But I didn’t need that. I could be close to her without wanting to take her. I just needed her close to me, and she was giving that to me. And that was the sweetest, most intimate thing anyone had given me in a long time.

I wasn’t sure how long we sat there, but the light dimmed outside, and rain started to fall on the window. But eventually, the anger started to fall away. I was still raw with feeling, but I could make it through. I could survive it, at least for the rest of the day. At least until I got home. Because Kari was there with me, and she’d listened, and she hadn’t left, and she had told me it wasn’t my fault. And that, even though I hadn’t known it, was everything I had needed from her.