The Closer You Come (The Original Heartbreakers, #1)(92)

Damn it. He never would have let her go down on him if he’d known she was injured.

He picked her up and placed her on the couch. After he’d found the first-aid box, he crouched in front of her to clean and bandage her knees.

“Do they hurt?” he asked.

“A little. Distract me.”

“How?”

“Well...you can tell me if you’ve ever been in love.”

“I have.”

“How old were you?”

Leery of the subject—the time frame—he said, “I dated her in high school. She took off when I was eighteen.”

“Do you love her still?”

“No.” His feelings for Daphne had been true and solid, and because she’d been the only relationship he’d ever had, he’d thought of her often over the lonely years in prison. Also the reason he’d thought to reconnect with her after he’d gotten out. But his feelings had faded completely, nothing but an echo of a past he’d tried to forget.

What he felt for Brook Lynn burned hot and wild. He could love her. Madly, deeply.

But could she love him? The real him?

He would never know...unless he told her the truth. The realization slammed into him, undeniable. The longer he kept his secrets—even at her own request—the more she would resent his silence. The more he would feel the weight of it hanging over them.

The sense of urgency returned.

And what if she found out before he could tell her? What if she heard of his sins from someone else? This was a small town—once people found out, it would be impossible to keep it quiet. Would she ever be willing to listen to Jase’s side of the story then?

He peered at her, hoping for understanding, dreading rejection. “Brook Lynn. I have to tell you something.”

She tensed, as if afraid of what he had to say, then released a resigned sigh. She traced her finger along his jawline. “What you were going to tell me before?”

He nodded, knowing he had to do it, had to say it, before he lost his nerve.

Like ripping off a bandage. Here goes.

“I spent the last nine years in prison.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JASE’S WORDS REVERBERATED in Brook Lynn’s mind. I spent the last nine years in prison.

She laughed at the joke. Because he was joking. Right? He had to be joking. Her new boyfriend couldn’t be an ex-con. He couldn’t have done something so terrible he’d had to spend nearly a decade behind bars.

“Don’t tease me,” she said.

“I’m not teasing.” His tone was as hard as granite.

Ice crystallized in her veins.

“You have questions,” he said.

“I mean it,” she insisted. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not teasing,” he repeated.

A lump grew in her throat. Jase, the man she was falling for, really had spent the past nine years in prison?

She stood, jolting away from him. He watched her, his expression losing its hard edge and going blank. The blank one she knew too well. But she didn’t know him at all, did she?

Multiple emotions frothed inside her, and she began to pace. “How is that possible? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried. You stopped me.”

“You should have told me anyway. Should have told me sooner!”

“Maybe. But I’m telling you now.”

“Now isn’t good enough.”

He flinched. A reaction that kept her from bolting out the door.

“Ask anything,” he said. Not only did his expression remain blank, but his voice was now deadened. “I will answer.”

“Wh—what were you in prison for?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “Voluntary manslaughter.”

He’d killed someone. Her hand fluttered to her throat, her pulse hammering fast and hard. “Tell me everything.”

He placed his hands on his knees. “I was eighteen.”

A kid. His entire youth had been spent behind bars with hardened criminals. Murderers. Sociopaths. Rapists. They’d shaped the man he would become.

At least his scars made sense.

“There was a guy. Paxton Gillis. Pax. He was nineteen, in college. Tessa had gone to a frat party. He was there and he followed her to her car and raped her.”

Brook Lynn flattened a hand over her stomach.

“When West, Beck and I found out, we hunted him down. I don’t remember who threw the first punch. So much of what happened is a blur. I was so angry. I lashed out and just...didn’t stop. I couldn’t.”

She remembered the picture and the news clipping she’d seen when she’d searched Jase online—the slim teenager who’d been arrested for beating a college student—and she felt sick.

“So West and Beck were in prison with you?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“I took full responsibility.”

“Why?” she repeated, her voice lashing like a whip.

“They had bright futures.”

“And you didn’t?”

He hiked his shoulders.

She stopped to stare at him, to study him. He wasn’t just blank anymore—he was cold. As cold as he’d been the first day they met. He hardly seemed capable of a good mad, much less a black, uncontrollable rage. But too well did she remember the wine-and-cheese tasting. How, for a split second, he had looked capable of murder. Would he have hit that woman, despite his claim otherwise?