Chapter 28 #2
She was not happy about it. In fact, she ranted about it almost as often as she apologized to me about my nose. Which was not her fault. I continued to remind her that violence from a man was never the fault of a woman.
Though I hated what had happened, how it had traumatized her, I was secretly happy that it had pushed Finn into her house. I was hopeful about something happening between them. Maybe because I was living in my own bubble of love and now had faith it could also happen to people I loved.
Lori teased me good-naturedly about becoming “one of them.” Them being the Jupiter women, paired in unlikely, too-good-to-be-true love stories.
Which maybe, just maybe, I was.
Except now my estranged brother was at my doorstep, likely dragging more drama with him.
When I felt a warmth at my back, I wasn’t surprised Beau made his presence known. I’d opened the front door, he’d heard a male voice from his open door in the office. He was protective before. Now it was almost out of control.
Before Beau could assert his dominance, my brother rustled some up. Yet too little, too late, and in the completely wrong direction.
“Did you do this to her?” Jack stepped forward, to do what, I didn’t know since Beau had about a foot and a hundred pounds on him.
Jack was stepping into Beau’s house, accusing him of abusing his woman. I knew that wasn’t going to go down well. Yet Beau had been on his best behavior. He hadn’t raised his voice in the house that past week. He was trying not to trigger me. Treated me with care.
But he was still Beau. Grumpy. Alpha. Overprotective. I figured this was when his self-control would break.
Beau’s spine stiffened, but he kept his hand on the small of my back. “No,” he replied calmly. “I absolutely did not do this to her. And who are you?”
His tone was perfectly even.
“Hi.”
All three of our heads spun downward. Clara. Standing next to us, in her tutu, offering a smile to my brother.
And my brother, for all his misgivings, was not the asshole who didn’t smile at small children.
He looked ten years younger when the grin stretched across his face. “Hi there, darling.”
“I’m Clara.” She held out her hand.
“I’m Jack,” he replied, looking upward at Beau for a small moment—maybe ensuring that he wasn’t going to punch him—then shook Clara’s small hand. “Hannah’s brother.”
Clara looked up at me, beaming. “Your brother! Oh, come in. Daddy will make you a hot chocolate. I’ve heard all about you.”
Jack’s brow raised, looking at me. “You have?”
He was likely surprised I’d been telling anyone about him.
“Of course, she has. Hannah tells me everything.” She tugged on his hand. “Now come in. It’s cold. Are you staying here? We’ve got a spare room. Daddy, get his bags.”
In a couple of sentences, Clara had made her will known and had ensured that there was no way around this family reunion.
And who were we to disobey her?
I had not imagined that the first evening I’d have with my brother in years would end up being nice.
But Clara was in attendance. She made the benign wonderful and the complicated tolerable.
She told Jack about everything we had done since I arrived, asked a multitude of questions about Jack’s own life, and he’d told her everything—even things I didn’t know.
He had a puppy named Spot, he played pickleball, and had recently been scuba diving in Jamaica.
And she’d somehow fished out some happy memories from our childhood—us fishing together then trying to cook the fish ourselves in the woods, almost starting a forest fire. Backyard baseball games.
It felt nice. To realize that my childhood was not all pain and scarcity, to recognize that those things had not drowned out all of the joy.
But eventually, Beau had to put Clara to bed. And he had done that while shooting a meaningful look to me, asking without words if I was okay being alone with Jack.
Always protecting me. I smiled and gave him a subtle nod.
He kissed my neck before bidding Jack a semi-cordial good night. Beau was polite for Clara’s sake, but he was not happy about Jack being there. That made two of us. Jack was a stark reminder of the past.
Not that his outward appearance betrayed it.
He’d done all he could to distance himself from the thin, hungry, lanky boy in cheap clothes.
The one I remembered most. He had filled out, a little more in the stomach than was proportional to his body.
His dark hairline was receding, and there were brackets of lines around his eyes.
But he was wearing high-quality pants and a sweater.
The watch on his wrist was nice but not flashy.
His teeth were white and straight. He looked like an upper-middle-class businessman, just like he—or more accurately, his wife—had always wanted.
“Clara’s wonderful,” he commented as I handed him a mug of tea.
I smiled, despite my nerves at having him there, at having this conversation. “She is. She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever known.” I settled on the armchair, needing physical space from my brother.
He didn’t feel like my brother. He felt like a familiar stranger I wasn’t sure I was going to like.
“And she loves you,” he added. “They both do.”
I sipped my too hot tea. “Yes.” Admitting it out loud felt odd and amazing at the same time.
“You’ve got a good life.” Jack drank some of his tea before putting it down.
“I do. Now.” My answers were short and curt. It was unfamiliar to me to be so cold, especially now that I was surrounded by warmth, even with snow on the ground outside.
“I’m sorry.” Jack looked at me with genuine anguish marring his features.
I tilted my head, surprised by the apology. I’d long accepted that I’d never get one from my brother. He was intent on having a good life, leaving his past behind. In order to do that, he had to tell himself lies about who he left behind too.
He laughed, yet the sound was sad. “For everything.” He ran his hand through his hair. “For leaving you when you were so small. Leaving you with her.”
His features darkened at the mention of my mother.
He cut ties with her sooner than I did, carried deeper wounds.
Maybe because he was around when she was more or less sober.
When she showed him love and affection. I reasoned it was so much harder to lose something than to never have it at all, like me.
“I don’t blame you,” I replied after considering the situation, forcing myself to think of the lost, small, betrayed girl I’d been when Jack left.
I’d resolved to hate him for the rest of my life.
But hatred was such a hard emotion to hold, especially against someone who didn’t deserve it.
“I would’ve left the second I could’ve too. ”
“But I could’ve taken you with me.” His voice was wracked with guilt.
I smiled, reaching forward to squeeze his hand. “No, you couldn’t have.” I stated the truth we both knew. He had been too young. Too irresponsible, full of mistakes he was yet to make, little wreckages of his life he still had to find his way through. There was no room for me there.
“You are my brother,” I reminded him. “Not my parent. It wasn’t your job.”
“Taking care of you had to be someone’s fucking job.” The bite in his tone told me he was angry. At himself, our mother, our father. The world where situations like ours were not uncommon. “You were so small. So good. Generous. And you had no one.”
I shrugged. All of that was true. Except I didn’t have no one; I had Cole. He got me through.
“Maybe once,” I agreed. “Now I have a family of my own.” I looked at the photo displayed on the wall, of us at Clara’s birthday party, together as she blew out the candles.
We weren’t even an us then. I was upset by Beau’s behavior.
He was cold and closed off, but the photo showed the two of us side by side, watching Clara with love in our eyes.
We had been a family, even then.
My eyes squared back on my brother. “Now I have a lot of people. You included. If you want.” Though I knew it wasn’t entirely that simple, sure that my sister-in-law still had a few spells cooking in her underground lair to try to make me go bald or something.
There was a lot left to work out. But baby steps.
“I left her,” Jack said, as if he were reading my mind. “Kelly.”
I widened my eyes over the rim of my mug.
I never thought I’d see the day. Kelly was not a nice person, but she helped give Jack the nice life he so coveted.
Her family helped him into a job he wasn’t entirely qualified for, a salary he didn’t quite deserve—to keep their daughter in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed and to keep Jack forever under her thumb.
“It should’ve happened years ago.” He sounded sad, regretful. “I was focused on the wrong things.” He stared at the photo I’d been looking at. “I want a family,” he added. “A real one. Like you have.”
“Clara’s not even mine,” I told him, even though the sentence tasted like dirt in my mouth.
“Yes, she is.” Jack spoke with a certainty he shouldn’t have had after just an evening with her.
But he was right.
She was mine.
We smiled at each other, our past nowhere near reconciled, our wounds nowhere near healed. But it was a start.