“Evan told me.”
“Fuck! He hasn’t mentioned that to anyone. He promised he wouldn’t. My family never even knew,” Jared growled. “Yeah, I went on a major bender. I just wanted to forget. Fuck! I just wanted to get rid of the images and sounds of the two of them together. I wanted to forget the scorn of their families and the whispers behind my damn back. I wanted to forget their funerals, and I really wanted to forget that they were gone forever because I’d done something stupid.”
“And did you forget?”
“Hell no. And I hated Evan for a while for forcing me into reality again.”
She stroked a palm over the stubble on his jaw. “I’m glad he did. What happened?”
Mara knew she was done fighting her attraction to Jared, finished trying to defend herself against getting hurt. This man had once loved and had been completely betrayed. Since then, he’d been torturing himself about what else he could have done to save the lives of the very people who had deceived him, and he’d shouldered every bit of blame. Jared might have been with a lot of women, but they were females who hadn’t cared what demons lurked inside him. She did. And if opening her heart to him completely was the only way to heal those wounds, she’d do it. She didn’t care about the risk anymore. She just cared about . . . him.
“I don’t remember most of those months,” Jared admitted in a hesitant, graveled voice. “Every time I woke up, I started thinking, so I got drunk again. It’s pretty much lost time for me until Evan showed up.”
Mara didn’t even have to ask how Evan had known that Jared needed him. While Jared’s eldest brother tried to act like he didn’t care about anyone or anything, he seemed to have an almost scary way of knowing what was going in his siblings’ lives. “So he sobered you up?”
“The hard way,” Jared grumbled. “He tossed my ass in the shower because he said I stunk. A cleaning staff showed up almost instantly to clean my condo, and he forced coffee and food down my throat. He got rid of every drop of alcohol in the house. I guess the main thing I remember is that he stayed, even though he badgered the hell out of me day and night.”
“Tough love,” Mara murmured.
“With Evan, I don’t think there’s any other kind,” Jared rumbled.
“How long?”
Jared shrugged. “Weeks. He took over my office and worked, but he never left me alone.”
Mara could imagine the two gruff brothers in each other’s company, snapping at each other, and caring so very much while they were doing it. “Your siblings love you, Jared.”
“They don’t even know me anymore,” he growled. “They don’t know what happened, or how naive and selfish I was.”
“Evan knows, and he still cares.” Mara could still remember Evan’s words of warning that he never wanted to see Jared suffer like he’d suffered after the deaths of his friends. “I’m not one of your siblings, but I know, and I still care.”
Jared threaded his hands through her hair and tilted her gaze down to meet his. “Do you? Can you really look at me and not see an irresponsible, selfish asshole who killed his friends?”
Mara turned her body and straddled him, letting her legs dangle off both sides of the recliner. “Yes,” she told him truthfully, holding his eyes with hers. Her heart clenched as she saw the momentary confusion and hope in his eyes. “You need to stop torturing yourself. Please. The. Accident. Was. Not. Your. Fault.” Mara put her arms around his neck and stroked the coarse hair at his nape. “I’m sorry they died. They were both way too young, and it’s sad. But you aren’t to blame.”
“You care?” he asked hesitantly. “About me? Even after everything I just told you?” He looked endearingly confused.
“I do,” she whispered softly, swallowing a huge lump in her throat. “I’m not going to try to protect myself from getting hurt anymore, and I’m never going to be less than honest about how I feel. I admire how you pulled yourself back out of the darkness and made yourself even more successful. I hurt for you because you gave up your passion and your dreams of restoring old homes because of bad memories. It kills me that you took the blame so others could keep their happy memories.” Mara was pretty certain not many people would have done what Jared had done. Honestly, it was probably the right thing to do with a mother who had lost a daughter, but she hated that he’d had to be the scapegoat. She absolutely wished Selena’s mother hadn’t been so desperate for someone to blame that she’d made Jared the villain, especially after all he’d done for her daughter.