Summary:

Ilya had grown up in a world where affection was currency, measured and withdrawn at will. Where love was earned through achievement, and failure was repaid with absence. Every triumph was a plea. Every mistake, a debt. Ilya had learned early that tenderness could not be trusted. And Shane, for all his easy warmth, had no idea what to do with that kind of wound. His first instinct was to fix it. To tell Ilya that he was loved, that he was safe, that he didn’t have to be afraid. He learned soon enough that words meant nothing to someone who’d been punished by them all his life.