Ace left about twenty minutes earlier, and I was still lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling as I tried to process what the fuck my life had become. Everything was a mess.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I thought of Ace telling me he wasn’t going to touch me in a sexual way again unless I asked him to.

While that brought me some relief, I knew that wasn’t totally what I wanted.

When I said he couldn’t touch me like that without any explanation, I meant exactly that. Touch me but tell me why.

Tell me why you’re doing it, what’s going through your head—that...