Maria yelped and turned to glare at her brother. “Dammit, Logan. I hate it when you do that.”
Logan smirked. “Lurking’s what I do best.” His gaze fell on her neck and his demeanor turned hard. “Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him if he did.”
He probably would, too. She grabbed the ice cream and a spoon before sitting across from him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“He marked you. I warned him if he hurt you I’d make him sorry.”
She resisted the urge to slap her hand over her neck. “Jake didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to, so put away your gun.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, why do men have to go all macho on me?”
“Maria.”
“Be quiet and let me drown my sorrows in a thousand calories of fat.”
Her brother proved he was a patient man by staying silent while she made her way through the container. Her preference would be to finish this pint off, then hide in her room to cry the day away. That he’d let her get away with that, she knew better than to expect.
Logan had been her protector from as far back as she could remember. He’d kept her safe from Lovey Dovey’s obvious resentment of her daughter, kept her out of the hands of men who’d turned unwanted attentions on her.
She’d once asked him why their mother hated her. “Because you’re prettier than her,” he’d said.
It had taken her years to understand, but eventually she had and it had been just another heartbreak in what appeared to be her destiny. The only person in her twenty-four years who’d never hurt her was Logan, the brother who wouldn’t let her leave the kitchen without telling him why she’d been crying.
Stuffed, she sighed and pushed the empty container away. If she told him everything Jake had said to her . . . well, she didn’t want to even imagine the consequences. “He said it wouldn’t work between us.” She managed to tell him that much without her voice betraying just how much she hurt, but she swallowed hard before she admitted her worst fear. “I think I acted too much like Lovey Dovey. You know, like a slut.” Crap. Under the table, she pinched her wrist in an effort to keep the tears away.
“Did he say that?”
The tone in his voice held a death threat. “No,” she hurriedly said. “It’s just what I think.”
Unable to meet her brother’s eyes, she pulled the container back and peered into it to see if she’d missed any bits of brownie. They’d both hated their mother, although Logan’s hatred had been far stronger than hers. Until now. That she’d acted like the whore her mother was brought on a rage for the woman Maria had never felt before. Until the day Lovey Dovey died, she’d always held on to the hope that the time would come when her mother would look at her with something that resembled love.
“And you think that because?”
He was starting to piss her off, and she loved him for it because he enabled her to get a handle on her raging emotions. “There are some things in my life I’ll just not discuss with you, brother of mine.”
Pushing her chair back from the table, she stood and kissed his cheek. “I love you.” She left before he could grill her any further. The humiliating way she’d come apart in Jake’s arms wasn’t open for discussion. Not to mention if she told Logan that she and Jake had had wild sex and then repeated Jake’s parting words, her brother would kill him for sure. If anyone was going to kill Jake, it was going to be her.
“You’re not like Lovey Dovey. Don’t ever think you are.”
Logan’s parting call didn’t reassure her any. She was her mother’s daughter, and it only made sense that some of Lovey Dovey’s bad blood had contaminated hers. The way she saw it, she could go all out and turn whore like her mother or join a nunnery.
Whatever.
Christ, he really hated that word. Jake threw back the sheet and reached down to remove the condom. It was weightless, too weightless for how hard he’d come inside Maria. He held it up and watched the last few drops of semen fall onto his knee from the tear in the prophylactic.
“Shit.” He threw it across the tent, watched as it splatted on the canvas where it stuck, mocking him with all he’d lost.
What if he’d gotten her pregnant?
Falling back onto the air mattress, he pressed an arm over his eyes. Was there no end to the lives he screwed up? There was nothing he could do to return Tennessee to the living, but he didn’t know how to deal with the guilt and the mistakes he’d made.