Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(85)

He knew her now. He knew that she adored her sisters—so much she never shut up about them—and that her friends back home didn’t deserve her, but she talked about their ludicrous rich-girl antics with fondness, anyway, and that she was perfectly capable of working hard and succeeding as long as she was given the space to do so.

All of which begged the question—why had she left her life behind and taken the first job she could find out here? Once upon a time, Jacob hadn’t cared to know, and then he hadn’t deserved to ask, but now? Well. Now, he was the man Eve Brown would tell anything. Which felt like one of the top five most powerful positions in the world.

So he waited, and after a moment, she started talking. “This story isn’t especially flattering. Toward me, I mean.”

“You should know by now,” he said, somehow pulling her even closer, “that I’m not going to judge you.”

“Jacob Wayne, you dirty liar.”

“That I’m only going to judge you a little bit,” he corrected, “and that I’ll still—” He stopped talking, the words I’ll still love you yanked offstage by a hook around the neck. Not yet. Seriously, not yet. “I’ll still like you,” he finished roughly. Nice one. He was about as smooth as crunchy fucking peanut butter.

“Gracious of you, darling,” she snorted.

“That is my defining character trait, yes.”

“What if I’d killed somebody?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, and I would visit you in prison if necessary.”

She gasped, all feigned outrage. “You wouldn’t offer to help me hide the body?”

Jacob’s lips quirked without permission. “You’ve been here quite a while, Sunshine, and there’s no police sniffing around. So I imagine you hid it just fine yourself.”

“Well. Yes. Quite right.” She preened at the idea of being a capable murderer, because she was a ridiculous ball of fluff. Jacob kissed her forehead because there was really no other option, not when she was being so obnoxiously cute.

“Now,” he said, “stop stalling. Tell me this story.”

She sighed. “My parents were angry with me.”

He waited for a moment before nudging. “Did you hit them with your car?”

“Spiritually speaking, I think I’ve hit my mother with my car many times.” Her tone was dry, but her fingers were tapping a rapid rhythm against his rib cage. “My mum wants so badly for me to be successful. At anything. And for a while, I gave up even trying. I think failure was one thing, but giving up, for her—that was a bridge too far. They were disappointed with me and I couldn’t bear it, so I . . . I left, determined to find something to do. You know, to prove myself. And so, here I am! Trying not to fuck up again.”

It wasn’t a totally unexpected explanation—and the way Eve spoke about herself was hardly unfamiliar. She said that sort of thing all the time—that she was a failure, a disappointment, that she was trying but had no faith in her ability to succeed. Jacob couldn’t pinpoint exactly when those words had started to set his teeth on edge, but the feeling got worse every time. And here? Now? It was the worst it had ever been, like scratching bone.

Apparently, he couldn’t bear to hear Eve Brown criticized. Not even by herself. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, because manners were useful things, and he’d read somewhere that it was good to start positive before telling someone off. “But Eve, I think it’s time we had a serious conversation—”

“Boo,” she interrupted. “You know I hate serious conversations.”

“No,” he said sharply, turning to look at her. “No, you don’t. Stop acting like you do. Even the brightest, lightest things still have substance.”

She was quiet for a moment, clearly surprised. “I—well—”

“And this is exactly what I wanted to talk about. Eve . . .” He wrapped an arm around her and squeezed, corralling his feelings into actual, useful words. Sometimes her presence made that kind of thing easy, but sometimes, when he was drowning in all the emotions he felt for her, it was incredibly hard. “Eve,” he repeated, “I know you think you need to improve yourself, or grow up, or whatever else. But there is nothing wrong with you. You’re just . . . a bit different, that’s all. You’re just sensitive enough for the world to seem too fast and too loud. And you’re—you’re hurt, I think. You’re used to flinching in case you get hurt again. I’m the same, for different reasons, but still. The fact is, you’re smart, you’re creative, you’re dedicated, and you care about people. You’d do anything for anyone, even if you were terrified, as long as it was right. And what matters more than that? Tell me one thing, honestly, that matters more than that.” Expressing this stuff felt a bit like digging for gold; Jacob labored for what felt like hours (but was actually thirty seconds), and in the end he was mildly exhausted and utterly elated because—

There. There was his gold: Eve’s smile.

“You’re very complimentary, this evening,” she murmured. “I wonder why?”

He rolled his eyes.

And she, just like he’d known she would, sobered up after a moment. “Thank you, Jacob,” she said softly. “If you’d said something like that to me last month, I might not have believed you. But I’m starting to see sides of myself I didn’t even know were there. So maybe I’ll believe you after all.” She was teasing, but behind her smile he saw it: a burgeoning trust. Not in him, but in herself. “I . . . I suppose I never really thought of doing nice things for people as a skill. At least, not until I came here, and you offered to pay me for it.”