From Sanctum with Love (Masters and Mercenaries #10)(108)

“What?” Kai could remember coming home and screaming at Jared for wasting money on designer clothes and all the shit he had in his room. Now it made sense. His brother didn’t care about suits. He preferred jeans and T-shirts. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“I was ashamed. Why wouldn’t I tell you? Let’s see. Why wouldn’t I tell my high and mighty judgmental brother that I was stupid enough to get caught in a trap? I didn’t even realize what was happening. Why wouldn’t I tell you I was a whore? Because I knew what would happen. You would walk away from me. It still f*cking happened.”

“Was Hannah a client?”

Jared laughed, but there was no humor at all in the sound. “No. Hannah was a drunken mistake. I met her at a bar. I wanted to obliterate myself. I wanted to get so f*cking numb I couldn’t feel anything. And Hannah walked in and we started talking about you. That was the good part. The bad part was waking up and realizing what I’d done. The whole night was a blur but I did it. I know I did it. I can remember thinking I wanted a couple of moments that were mine. I wanted a woman who knew me, who wanted me and not some image she had in her head of me. How foolish do you think I felt the next morning? When I woke up and realized it had all been about you and I’d finally done something worse than selling myself for a roof over my head?”

“Jared, I had no idea.” Because he hadn’t bothered to truly know his brother. Because he’d been like everyone else in Jared’s life. He’d seen the handsome exterior and fooled himself into thinking there wasn’t anything else there. He hadn’t wanted anything else to be there. After watching his mother die, he’d wanted to not care. He’d managed for years and years.

Jared turned, staring out into the night. “It doesn’t matter now. I left the day after you did. I packed a bag and walked out and I slept on the streets for a month or so before I got my first contract. Squirrel went with me. Only person in the f*cking world who ever cared about me.”

“Jared, I’m sorry. I’m so f*cking sorry I didn’t see it. I didn’t see what was happening to you, and I damn straight didn’t look closely enough at what was happening to me. I distanced. I retreated after Mom died.” It was so easy to see what he’d done now.

“She died on me, too. She died on me and when I turned around to the only family I had left, you were gone.”

“I know. I did that,” Kai agreed. “I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m the * in this play, Jared. I find it easier to care about strangers than my own brother because their problems are intellectual. I don’t have to feel them. I don’t have to care. I don’t have to wonder if they’re going to walk out on me. If they’re going to die on me.”

Jared shook his head. “The work you do is good. Don’t sell that short. You’re successful.”

“Successful? I’m only here because Big Tag believes in my work. Hell, I can barely afford the building I’m in. I had to take a loan out. A couple of months ago I had an anonymous donor give us enough to keep going for a while, but if I don’t keep finding ways to fund the practice, I’m going to lose it all.”

“You won’t.” Jared cursed as though remembering something bad he’d forgotten. “Fuck, or maybe you will now.”

There was something in the way Jared said it that made Kai wonder. “I rely on several charity groups for funding.”

“No. I’ve been funding you since the explosion at Sanctum.”

Why did that suddenly not surprise him? He didn’t have to ask why his brother hadn’t told him. He knew. Jared had been afraid Kai would have turned the money down if he’d known where it came from. And he might have. He wouldn’t now. He couldn’t. “Then I need to thank you for that. I need to thank you and I need to apologize.”

Jared’s head shook again. “No. Not so fast. Not until you’ve heard everything. Let me lay it all out for you, brother. I’ve been lying. I’ve been in the lifestyle for years. After what happened at home, my first agent took me and Squirrel in. She let us stay in her guesthouse and after a few months, she invited me to go to her club. At first I thought, well, you know what I thought.”

He’d thought he was going to have to work for his room and board all over again. “That’s not the way our world works. She’d seen you needed the training, hadn’t she?”

“I was lost. I was so f*cking out of control but I couldn’t admit it.”

When he thought about it, he could see what his mind had hidden. “You were never out of control. You might have felt that way, but even at a young age, you were in control. You never got angry. Mom talked about it. One year all you got for Christmas was a couple of used toys and you sat there and I thought you would throw a fit, but you got up and hugged her and thanked Santa Claus.”

Jared leaned against the railing, his shoulders slumping as though tired of carrying so much weight. “I knew there wasn’t a Santa, but she liked to pretend.”

Now that he looked past his own issues it was easy to see that there were a hundred times when Jared could have lost control. “She cried that night. She told me it would have been easier if you’d thrown a fit. If you acted like a brat she could have held it together.”

“She told you all that? I shouldn’t be surprised. You were her partner. After Dad left, she turned to you. That wasn’t fair.”