“You picked a heck of a way to do it.”
“No kidding. But at seventeen I was six foot four and cocky as hell—the perfect candidate for underground fighting. I did pretty well for myself . . . and for Paula’s boyfriend, Angel. I kept it up until I was eighteen and a senior in high school, when my mom had a heart attack and passed away.”
Kate’s eyes filled with sympathy. “That must have been hard on you and your sister.”
The truth was, he still didn’t like to think about that time in his life. One of the reasons he’d gotten into fighting was to lighten the load for his mother, but no amount of money could reverse years of stress and overwork on top of high blood pressure. “It was. I was all Tina had after Mom was gone, and I was afraid DSS would come and take her away. But I was making enough money to pay the rent, so I figured if I kept doing what I was doing, we’d manage all right. Until the night Angel told me to throw a fight.”
“My God. That really happens?”
“It happened to me. But because I was a teenager full of piss and vinegar, I didn’t do it. I won that fight, and ten minutes after it was over Angel and a few of his friends gave me a broken jaw, three broken ribs, and a punctured lung. Paula visited me in the hospital just long enough to spit in my face and tell me how things were with her and Angel.”
Kate looked horrified. “Oh, Ian.”
He shook his head. “Don’t waste any sympathy on me. I was stupid and I got what I deserved. It’s just dumb luck I didn’t end up in jail, or worse. Dumb luck, and a guidance counselor at school who convinced me not to throw my life away. He made sure I graduated, and then he hooked me up with a city scholarship program so I could go to college.” He shrugged. “I majored in business and communications, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
There was silence between them for a moment. Then: “What happened to Tina?”
“Tina did well. She went into foster care with a nice couple in Brooklyn, not far from where we’d grown up. She joined the Marines after she graduated from high school and flew helicopters in Iraq. She went to Afghanistan after that, where she met Jacob’s father. They got married the next time they were on leave, and when her enlistment was up she got out. She was six months pregnant when Joe was killed in action.”
“So Jacob never knew his father.”
“No. But he was a good man, a father to be proud of. Jacob will always have that.”
There was a crease between Kate’s brows. Was she thinking that he hadn’t had a father to be proud of—or any father at all?
He hoped not. He didn’t want Kate feeling sorry for him, especially since he didn’t merit any sympathy. He’d obviously done extremely well for himself, and he’d always viewed pity as a waste of time—whether for himself or for someone else.
“How did Tina die?” she asked softly.
“Drunk driver.” He shook his head. “Talk about irony. She made it through two wars without a scratch and ended up getting killed in White Plains by some guy running a red light.”
When he realized his hands had clenched into fists, he forced himself to relax. A year had gone by since his sister’s death, but the loss still felt like an open wound.
After she’d settled in White Plains, he’d gone over most Sundays to visit. Tina usually made lasagna for dinner—the comfort food of their childhood.
He hadn’t eaten lasagna since the night she died.
He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Kate didn’t ask anything else, for which he was grateful. After a moment she put her hand on his arm and traced over the tattoos there.
Her touch was soothing and exciting at the same time.
“You could have had these removed,” she said after a while, and he was glad she was letting the subject of his sister drop. “Why didn’t you?”
“I thought about it, but I didn’t want to erase my past. I don’t talk about it and I don’t display the evidence, but that doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of it.”
“Ashamed? You should be proud. I can’t believe what you accomplished, considering the odds stacked against you.”
He shrugged off the compliment and changed the subject. “What about you? Any secrets in your past you’d care to reveal?”
She shook her head. “I’d be embarrassed to tell you about my childhood after hearing about yours. It was so . . . ordinary.”
“I don’t think any childhood is ordinary. And it’s hard to believe yours was, considering you’re one of the least ordinary people I’ve ever met.”
In the light of the lamp they’d never bothered to turn off, he could see the blush that came into her cheeks.