Let It Snow(39)

When his feet hit the cold hardwood floor, he rested his hands on his down comforter and pushed up. Jake stood gingerly, giving himself time to adjust to the entire world tilting on its axis.

Breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, he walked slowly down the stairs and into his kitchen, where he found Eric leisurely sitting at the breakfast table, eating a Danish, with Lucky sitting like a ‘good boy’ beside him, begging for a bite.

“Sit.” Eric motioned to the seat pulled out across the table from him. “Drink.”

Jake noticed a piping-hot cup of coffee sitting in his black Batman mug on his white oak kitchen table, and the tempting smell of roasted coffee beans overrode his instinct to tell Eric to go to hell and not bark commands at him like he was a dog.

Sliding into the chair, Jake sank down and leaned his elbows on the cold wooden surface of the table. Closing his eyes, he lifted his warm java-filled mug with both hands, bringing it to his mouth. The second the hot liquid touched his lips, he began feeling more alert. After several drinks of the strong coffee, the hangover-induced fog he’d been navigating through began clearing up.

When he opened his eyes, he found his brother staring at him with a smug look on his face.

“What?” Jake asked defensively.

“You look like shit,” Eric stated bluntly.

“Thanks.” Jake set down his mug. “Is that what you came over to tell me?”

“No, I thought you might need to talk,” his brother said calmly as he finished off the last bite of his breakfast.

Jake’s eyebrows rose as he shook his head. “Nope. I’m good.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” Jake confirmed with a nod of his head.

Truth was he was confused as shit and furious at himself for still wanting Tessa as much as he did. Last night in his truck, he’d been seconds away from stripping her out of her clothes and burying himself inside of her in the driveway of the home that he owned and did not live in.

Then when he’d gotten home, he’d been so tempted to drive back over to her that he kept having to stop himself from grabbing his keys. So in an attempt to just go numb, he’d started drinking. It had started with a glass of whiskey, but if memory served, he’d finished off the entire bottle and then some.

“Rough night?” Eric asked, his gaze falling on the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s tipped over on its side and about a dozen empty beer cans sitting on Jake’s granite countertops.

Jake didn’t feel like justifying his bender to his big brother, and it pissed him off to be questioned about it. Eric had no idea what the hell was going on in his life.

“Eric, if you have something to say to me, say it.”

“Actually it was you, little brother, who had a lot to say last night—or this morning. Why don’t I let you do the talking?” Eric picked his phone up off the table and pressed on the screen then turned it around.

Jake was stunned to hear his own drunken voice coming from the small device. At the beginning of the message, he sounded mad and wasn’t making much sense. He was rambling, speaking in broken sentences, talking about love and how unfair life was. And then, when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, he heard himself slurring, “…she lost the baby and just left. Who does that?! How could she leave me after that?”

Jake reached across the table, pulled the phone out of his brother’s grasp, and pressed delete.

“She was pregnant?” Eric asked, but it was more of a statement than a question.

Jake didn’t look up at his brother. His gaze was focused on his fingers that were wrapped tightly around Eric’s phone. Jake nodded.

“And she lost the baby?”

Jake nodded again.

“And then she left,” Eric concluded.

Sighing, Jake figured that since his brother knew this much—thanks to his own dumbass drunk-dialing!—he might as well tell him the whole story.

Taking a deep breath, he just started talking. “About a month after high school graduation, we went to The Train Museum in Sacramento. We’d been there about an hour when Tessa started complaining of stomach cramps. I was barely able to get her to the car in the parking lot before she started crying and I saw blood between her legs. I remember how bright red it looked against the pale blue shorts she was wearing. I got her in the car and then I raced towards the hospital I’d seen from the freeway on the way to the museum. I ran red lights and was doing about seventy. When I finally got her there, everything happened so fast. They took her out of my arms and rushed her back into the ER. They wouldn’t let me go back with her because I wasn’t family.”