“How do you know that?”
He placed my hand onto his chest. Beneath his skin, his heart thumped fast and in unison with mine. “Because I feel it,” Jett said softly. “I always have. I wanted you right from the beginning, but you pushed me away, so I had to convince you. Otherwise you would never have given me a chance.”
I smiled at the memories of the last two weeks. So much had happened. Never in my life did I imagine the arrogant guy I met at a bar would interest me on more than a sexual level. Someone I might fall for.
“I want us but at the same time I’m scared because—” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gathering the courage to share with him my biggest fear.
“It’s okay, baby.” His fingers brushed my cheek gently, settling right beneath my chin, where my pulse pumped hard and fast, matching the erratic speed of my changing emotions.
My eyes met his warm gaze in which I found the courage I needed. “My parents were so deeply in love. They adored the ground beneath the other’s feet. When my father killed himself, my mother’s soul died with him.” I laughed to mask the choking sensation in my throat. “She turned into someone else, someone I didn’t recognize. I lost her the moment he died, and no matter what I tried, she never recovered. I don’t do relationships because I don’t want to love and lose myself.”
“What happened to your family was a tragedy, but many people have loving relationships. You can’t rob yourself of that experience just because you’re scared of loss before you’ve even given it a try.”
I could see his conviction in his eyes, hear it in his tone, and feel it in his gentle touch on my body. He believed the happily-ever-after story, and I couldn’t blame him for it, when he’d never experienced the ugliness of having one’s family torn apart, or seeing one’s sister falling for the wrong man only to end up dead.
“You think I haven’t seen my fair share of shit happening?” Jett said.
Clamping my mouth shut, I remained silent. No point in arguing with him. Of course he had. I never doubted that. It just wasn’t the same thing.
Jett sat up and put a few inches between us, staring me down. Angry waves wafted from him, and I knew a revelation was imminent. “You know why I like to use my mother’s name? Because it’s one of the few things she gave me before she left us behind. You lost your dad, whereas I never really had a mother because she couldn’t stay sober. She blamed her addictions on my father’s work schedule and his unwillingness to lay off the secretaries, strippers, and every female who’d open her legs for him. In the end she finally had the guts to divorce him. She took half of his fortune and left me and my brother behind. I ended up doing some pretty bad shit, of which I’m not proud.”
“I’m sorry, Jett. I didn’t know,” I whispered and reached to touch his shoulder. My fingers lingered on the Tribal tattoo I never asked about. Even in the bright light, it looked gloomy and mysterious. Frightening and dark. I wanted to know everything about his past and him as a person. And in that instant I understood that he had insisted learning about my past and previous relationships because he probably felt the same need to know.
“Tell me more,” I whispered. “Please.”
Jett’s jaw set, and his eyes turned into layers of ice. “She barely made the effort to write a card or call. As a kid, I thought it was my fault for not being good enough. It took me a while to understand my mother wasn’t just an alcoholic, she was a drug user. She loved us, but she loved her drugs more. She chose to be like that, which in some way is worse than tragedy. I tried to help her. We all did, but she pushed us away. I learned to live with it and made it my prerogative to turn into a different person. A person capable of love and trust and intimacy.” His hands cupped my face, his gaze boring into me, shaking my core. We had similar experienes in life. Maybe we weren’t so different after all. If my sister didn’t die, she might have gone on the same destructive path, like his mother. “Tragedy may hit all of us in one way or another, but fate’s not our enemy, Brooke. We are. By locking yourself away from the world, you choose your own mistakes and destroy any chance of ever finding happiness. You cannot control life, but you can choose who you are and what you make of it.”
I could feel the truth in his words, and it spoke to me on an innermost level. Tears pricked the corner of my eyes, but I didn’t hide them.
“I’m sorry for my outburst,” Jett said softly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He kissed my forehead. His eyes were no longer clouded, as though he could leave the past behind by just looking at me. He wanted to be with me. And I wanted to be with him. But was it too soon to let love happen?