“I don’t want to upset you.”
“Me?” he asked. “How would whatever you have to say upset me?”
I weighed my words, rearranging them over and over in my head. How could I tell a man who just lost his father—his best friend—that his loss reminded me of my own?
“Do you know anything about my past? My family?”
He shook his head, and I took in a deep breath. I had a feeling a lot of tears were about to be shed.
“I had a brother,” I began.
“Had?” he asked as he moved just a little closer, placing his arm over the back of the couch.
I nodded and took a moment to calm my racing heart before I continued. “Gabe was older than me, and he was always my best friend, my protector. He was the most amazing big brother. No matter what, I could count on him. When he graduated high school, he enlisted in the military.”
I leaned forward and grabbed my bottle of water from the coffee table. After I twisted the cap and took a drink, I rolled the cap between my fingers. I needed something to focus on; Jackson’s eyes were too intense.
“He eventually was deployed to Afghanistan, and we wrote every week—more often if we could. With each letter I could sense the change in him, but I never thought too much about it. I knew it had to be rough, and those conditions would be hard to live in day after day.”
I tensed as Jackson ran his hand along my upper back and twisted my hair away from my face.
“When he came back, we all thought he just needed time, some space to settle back into everyday life.” Tears began to form in my eyes. “But I couldn’t have been more wrong. We were all so wrong.” A sob escaped me. Jackson wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him.
“He needed someone to save him, and we all failed. When I went over one day to make him get help, I was too late.”
I started to shake as I curled against Jackson’s chest. “I found him in his apartment. The image of my brother hanging from that beam is something I will never forget.”
“Bailey,” Jackson whispered, and I instantly felt horrible for dumping all this on him. I tried to sit up, but he pulled me closer and rested his lips against my temple. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” I could hear the tremble in his voice.
“You don’t need this right now with everything you have—”
“You can always talk to me. No matter what, I’m here,” he assured me.
“It’s just with the loss of your…”
“My father.”
I nodded against his chest. “It just brought back a lot of the feelings I had tucked away. Feelings I avoided.”
A silence set in between us.
“Carla being here in my face doesn’t help much, either. That woman makes me feel destructive and slightly murderous.”
I breathed in his manly scent as I felt him take in a deep, shuddering breath. “That woman is enough to make even a pastor feel hellish,” he offered with a chuckle.
“Yeah, especially when she slept with my father and ruined my mother’s life.” I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back the tears that burned my eyes.
“What?”
I only nodded and opened my eyes as he pushed back and looked down at me. As the silence stretched on, he watched me as if waiting for a sign he’d misheard me.
“My family was already falling apart slowly after Gabe’s death. Carla made a ploy for my father and worked her skank charm. When she gloated about how she’d slept with him, she single-handedly finalized the end of my parents’ marriage. She also drove my mother into having a breakdown. She still hasn’t recovered.” I shrugged, because what the hell else was there left to say?
“Does Amber know?”
I shook my head, and he pulled me back against his chest. We sat in silence with only the sounds of our breathing filling the room as he stroked my arm, offering me the comfort I needed.
Jackson, the overpowering man his brothers refer to as Hercules, had a gentle side. Yes, he was dominant and had no problem doing things his way whether people agreed with his tactics or not, but he was also compassionate.
My eyelids grew heavy as he held me, and the emotional strain of the day slowly faded. I was hanging on the edge of consciousness when he kissed my temple and whispered, “You got me, Bay. You always have me in your corner.”
Chapter Six
Jackson
My neck ached as I stretched it upward and tried to work out the kink. Something tickled at my nose, and as I lifted my hand to rub it, my fingers got caught up in something. I opened my eyes and looked down at the blonde hair tangled in them.
The sun was just barely coming up over the horizon, and the soft glow in the room highlighted Bailey’s face. An uncontrollable smile pulled at my lips. After what she shared last night, we both curled into one another, not caring that we were still on the couch. As I held her, I felt a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in days. She didn’t stir as I carefully untangled her hair from my hand and pushed it back off her cheek. She looked so sweet and gentle, but I knew she was so much more than that.