Admit One is one of those stories which I've been putting off reading for a long time without really knowing why it wasn't appealing to me. Blurb just didn't catch me or I wasn't in the mood for dramatic, or something - I don't know. It's a good story, though a bit long in my opinion, but I can't say that "I wish I hadn't put it off the way I did" either. 
 We read the story from the point of view of a damaged character, but we don't find out more than minimal glimpses of what that damage is until just over 3/4 of the way through the story, and thus it makes it fairly hard to empathize with the character and what he's dealing with. Even though the story is told by the damaged character, the reader has much more empathy for the guy who's trying to love him without being able to truly understand his motivations because the reader is in the same boat. Once it's revealed, his whole life makes sense in a way it couldn't possibly have before. 
 Though I realized the need for this delay is because a particular scene had to occur before the reveal, and the relationship had to be established before the scene could occur, it still felt to me like it was dragging a bit through the middle. While reading, it feels like it's taking these characters forever when the bulk of the story actually occurs over a 3-month period, with some setup in the beginning around 6 months prior to that. 
 In the end, while the mental transition from 'damaged' to 'healing' was fast, it didn't feel too fast to me - it was explained pretty well and it seemed to fit. However, I don't feel their story is truly complete. There's too much damage to overcome in a few weeks, and a single setback of any kind would mentally regress someone a LOT into retreating into the safety they built for themselves and lived with for over 1.5 decades. This is a HFN, not an HEA. 
 So, 3.5 stars, rounded down because this is not going to have re-readability for me.