Chapter Forty-Nine
“Would you tell me more about your family?” Jane asked.
Chance choked on a joke about his willingness to practice making kids.
He hadn’t expected the change in topic, but could see how they got there.
Jane didn’t want to dredge up the pain. But she had the right to know the events that formed him as a man.
More somber, he rocked back on his heels. “Well…”
She faltered. “Actually, never mind. You said enough before.”
He offered too quick of a smile, and his body language shifted. Chance took a deep breath, not hiding from Jane’s question. “There was more to the situation with my mom.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.” She took both his hands and stroked them as though she knew he needed something. “I didn’t mean to press.”
“Damn, Jane.” His mouth went dry, but he pulled his hands free and wrapped her to his chest. “You’re smart, beautiful, and can read my mind. Quite the trifecta.”
She tilted her head back, resting her chin on his sternum. “Sensing unsaid family problems is my secret talent.”
“That sucks.” He wasn’t eloquent, but that was the truth.
She leaned back into his arms. “When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time watching what went wrong in other families.”
“Why?”
“I was a sadistic kid.” She shrugged and rolled her eyes, stepping out of his arms. “Actually… I watched other families. I wanted to see their problems. To know that I wasn’t alone.
But then I realized theirs were always different than mine.
” She paced, never stepping out of his reach, but Chance could tell she needed space.
“Normally, something happened. There was always an action and then a consequence.”
He crossed his arms over his chest to keep from holding her. She’d come to him when she needed him. “That made your family different?”
Jane stopped and stared into the distance for several seconds before facing him. “With my parents, I couldn’t see the actions that caused the consequences. Their behavior, the way they treated me…” She sighed sadly. “I was too young to understand.”
He wasn’t sure he understood her meaning now. “What didn’t you get?”
“Do you know what narcissism means?”
“Your parents were narcissistic?”
She nodded. “Yes. Clinically.”
Her clarification didn’t shed any light.
Tensely, Jane wet her lips. “They believed the world revolved around them, individually, and they’d manipulated or abandoned anything that didn’t react accordingly.”
“Ouch,” he said.
“It is what it is. Lots of people have it better and worse.”
He didn’t know which his childhood qualified as.
“My dad was our problem,” Chance admitted.
“My mom was really sick. She needed him. I did, too. But my dad left us to be with a younger woman.” He let out a strangled laugh.
“You know how it is. I don’t fucking know why it still bothers me.
I guess because I couldn’t do more for my mom. She wasted away until… she was gone.”
Jane stepped close again. “She died?”
“Yeah.” Chance cleared his throat. “The doctors called it an eating disorder. She was so beautiful—as much on the inside, if not more, than on the outside.” Again, his throat clogged.
He swallowed hard. “When I was Teddy’s age, I didn’t get why she just wouldn’t eat.
I knew she was hungry. That’s why I learned to cook. ”
Jane rubbed his arm, and he couldn’t stop talking, inching closer. He’d thought she’d come to him when she needed him, but oh the irony, he needed to hold on to Jane.
“I’m sorry, Chance.”
“As I got older, I could see how she tried to control everything by controlling herself. Everything meaning his philandering ways, I suppose.” The jackass.
Chance ground his molars. “He once told me that men get better with age. Then he just looked at my mom and let his unsaid words hang.” That was the first time Chance hated how others perceived him.
The good-looking kid. The golden boy. It had fucked him up for years.
Maybe it still had. “I was eighteen when she passed. Angry and with something to prove. So, I enlisted. Tried to leave it behind and prove to the world that real men weren’t superficial pieces of shit. ”
He dropped his head back and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Jane curled her arms around his torso. With his eyes shut, he let go of all the anger and tension. He rested his chin on top of her head and waited until his resentment regulated. “Did a shitty job of leaving it all behind, obviously.”
Jane eased back and met his gaze. “You don’t leave behind the things that make you who you are. You use them to make yourself a better person.”
He worked that over in his head. “Spoken like the strong woman you are.”
Her cheeks heated. “Speaking from experience. That’s all.”
“I never told anyone about what happened,” he admitted. “Or, rather, why things happened.”
“Maybe you’re still figuring it all out,” she suggested.
He didn’t know about that, but of other things, he was certain. Beauty came from within, and that fueled attraction.
Jane pressed her mouth to his. The kiss lingered. He relished the way she soothed the dark shadows in his soul.
She whispered against his lips, “Thought you needed that.”
“You have no idea.” Chance took her hand and led them from the overdone living room until he found an unadorned anteroom. An oversized couch faced a large picture window. The dark sky melted into the backyard, partially lit by the aqua-blue glow from the pool.
He tugged Jane onto the couch and waited until he had her complete attention. He was ready to battle her uncertainties and dismantle her defenses or doubts, and he’d keep doing it until she understood the truth, and that was simple. He was in love with Jane.