Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(40)

“Yes.”

“I mean, shit, Jacob. I bet you hated that. Did you hate that?”

He opened his mouth to say Mind your business, but three completely different words emerged on a sigh. “God, so much.” He heard a hint of something vulnerable in his own voice and tried not to die of embarrassment. Attempting to lighten the mood after that little spillage of angst, he cleared his throat and said, “Thank God they eventually came to their senses and dumped me somewhere nice and quiet.” On second thought, maybe the word dumped wasn’t a mood lightener after all.

It certainly didn’t have that effect on Eve. In fact, when he flicked a quick look at her, she was clearly the opposite of amused.

Her expression was smooth, blank, almost serene. But her eyes burned. Badly.

“Your parents,” she said, “sound like pricks.”

Jacob instinctively wanted to argue, even after all these years. Instead, he took a breath, remembered how many times he’d woken up alone in the dark, and nodded. “Mm.”

“There’s a story, in my family, you know.” She looked up at him suddenly. “It happened before I was born, but my grandmother loves to tell it. Back when my oldest sister was crawling, our family lived in some big old mansion. But the more my sister explored, and the better she got at communicating, the more she made it clear she didn’t like all those empty rooms. She liked the smaller spaces where she felt safe. She wanted a little bedroom and hallways that didn’t echo.” Eve was watching him steadily as she talked. “So my parents sold the house.”

Jacob wished he could look away from her, wished he didn’t understand what she was getting at. But he did understand, and his stomach twisted with envy. Still, he managed to quip, “Is that a my family’s rich story? Interesting timing.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “You know it isn’t. That is a story about my mother, who always wants the best and biggest of everything, not understanding her child’s needs but taking them seriously anyway. Because that’s what parents do. They take you seriously and they put you first. When I was at St. Albert’s, I knew a girl whose mum and dad both worked two jobs to pay her fees. Four jobs, Jacob, to support something as unlikely as a career in performing arts. But she needed it, and they could make it work, so they did. Because parents put you first. And I can hear in your voice—I don’t even need to ask—that yours didn’t. They didn’t put you first. They didn’t even try.”

No. No, they hadn’t. They’d treated him like an inconvenience at best, and they hadn’t been apologetic about it. He remembered, sometimes, the agony that used to cause him.

But it didn’t hurt too badly anymore. “You’re right,” he said stiffly. “They didn’t give a shit. But Aunt Lucy did.”

Some of the murderous fire left Eve’s dark gaze. She nodded with an air of satisfaction. “Good. Then clearly she deserves you far more than they ever did.”

Deserves you. He couldn’t touch that phrase, with all that it implied. It might make him feel too much. She was making him feel too much.

Maybe she could see that, because she softened and smiled and asked different questions, lighter ones. “You said a child taught you how to speak French. When you were—?”

“I made friends with a boy in the Congo. We stayed there longer than usual. I think something was wrong with the truck.” Jacob shrugged, the movement smoother than it should be. The way Eve was looking at him made this topic easier. She didn’t gawk at him like he was a lab rat, or act like he’d been raised by rock stars and failed to appreciate it. She looked like she understood a little bit and wanted to understand even more.

His left hand flexed at his side.

“Anyway,” he said firmly. “It’s late.” And it was. His eyelids felt weighted, his mind a little hazy, even as his blood fizzed with electricity in her presence. “You really need to go home.”

“Ah. Hm. Yes.” Her steady serenity was replaced by a sheepish expression that did not bode well. “About that—and don’t interrupt me this time.”

Jacob stared. “Pardon?”

“Just . . . don’t interrupt me, because every time I try to explain this you cut me off, and if I don’t let it out soon I’m going to lose my nerve.”

“What are you—?”

“Shhhh,” Eve said. “Just shush.” Then she stepped around him and opened the door to his sitting room, the room he never actually sat in. He’d turned it into a kind of gym, cramming his weight bench and his running machine in there—not that either were much use to him now, since he’d fractured his wrist.

And since, apparently, his weight bench was being used as a clothes hanger.

Jacob stared, slack-jawed, through the open door at what should be an unoccupied and organized sitting room. There were clothes on his equipment. There was makeup sitting on top of his old television, the one he never watched. And his battered pullout sofa was now a battered bed, strewn with his spare winter duvet and his cushions.

“What. The. Fuck.”

Eve flashed a nervous smile and waved her hands. “Surprise! I live here!”

Surprise. I live here.

Jacob turned slowly toward her. “I beg your pardon?”

Her smile faltered. “Oh my God, you look like you’re going to murder me. Don’t you dare murder me.”