If You Were Mine (The Sullivans #5)(25)

The laughter left his eyes. “He died when I was seven. Just a couple of weeks before my eighth birthday.”

She gripped the stem of her glass tighter. He hadn’t said anything during breakfast at his house when they’d been looking at the black and white photo.

“I’m sorry, I just assumed—” She tried to clamp her mouth shut, but still the words, “That must have been so hard on you,” slipped out. He’d said before how much like his father he was, that he got his love of cars from him. A young boy who clearly worshipped his father had to have been devastated by his death.

He shrugged, but she could almost see the weight on his shoulders as she forced the movement. “We pulled together, all looked out for each other.”

She did some quick math from the picture she’d seen, and realized he’d been right there in the middle as the fifth child out of eight, not the oldest, not the youngest. She knew how easy it was to get lost in a family, even when you were the only child.

Had that happened to Zach?

“How did it happen?”

“He had an aneurysm at the office. We found out he was dead when we got home from school. He was only forty-eight.” He lifted his eyes to hers and what she saw in them tore at her heart. “It will be twenty-three years next week.”

She had to reach for Zach’s hand. Even though it had been more than two decades since his father’s death, she could see that it still hurt him. Deeply.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Every time they’d been together, he’d tried to touch her. But now that she was the one who’d reached for him, he pulled away and reached for his beer, gulping it down before putting the empty glass back on the table.

“Shit happens,” he said. “Sucks, but what can you do?”

It wasn’t hard to guess that the flippancy came from trying to cover how bad he felt. And really, who was she to question people’s coping mechanisms? After all, when she found out that her beloved father was a two-faced bastard, she’d turned into a seventeen-year-old cutter.

Still, she felt there was more Zach wasn’t saying and was absolutely certain that his father’s death had affected him on some deeper level than he would be sharing with her over Indian food tonight. And no matter how much she tried to remind herself that it was dangerous to let him get too close, his unexpected vulnerability struck right at the heart of her.

After the waiter delivered steaming platters of naan bread, Tandoori chicken, and curry, he looked up at her and said, “Your parents are still together. What else should I know about you?”

Most men barely listened when a woman talked about herself. Trust Zach to remember every freaking word, no matter how casually tossed off it had been during an impromptu training session in the park.

She broke off a piece of the flat bread and took a bite of it, even though it suddenly tasted like sawdust. When she’d washed it down with a sip of beer, she said, “There’s not much else to tell.”

But he wasn’t that easily daunted. “Where did you grow up?”

“Washington D.C.” She stared down at a plate full of food she no longer had the desire to eat.

“You’re a long way from home,” he commented.

Yes, she was. On purpose. She’d wanted to get as far away from her parents as possible. “I like the West Coast.”

He raised an eyebrow at her curt words and she realized she wasn’t playing it nearly cool enough as he said, “Any siblings?”

“No.”

Atlas looked up at the tone of her voice, and moved to put his head on her lap as if to comfort her.

“What did they do to you, Heather?”

She sighed, knowing that if Zach had been that persistent about getting her to have dinner with him, there was no way he was going to leave this one alone without getting her to eventually tell him what he wanted to know.

And maybe it would help him understand her reluctance to date him if he knew more.

“Everyone loves my father,” she told him. “It’s what always made him such a good salesperson, that people can’t help but be charmed by him.”

“Selling what?”

“Used to be chemicals. Now it’s cell phone towers all over the country.”

“How much time did he spend on the road when you lived at home?”

“About half the year.”

“That’s got to be hard on a kid.”

She liked how he made it sound like they were talking about someone else. “My mother worked overtime to keep us busy when he was gone so we wouldn’t have time to think about being lonely or missing him. And it was always a big celebration when he returned. He got me great presents from the road to make up for being gone.” Presents she’d wanted to smash into a zillion little pieces when she’d found out the truth.

“Did it work?”

She met Zach’s gaze. “No.” She reached down to stroke Atlas’s head as if to steel herself for what was coming next. “But it was worse when I found out he’d been cheating on my mother for years. For their whole marriage, actually.”

Zach cursed. “That sucks.”

“You want to know what was even worse than that?” She couldn’t wait for him to reply, not when the words were suddenly tripping over each other to get out of her mouth. “She knew about it.” Heather pushed her plate away. “All those years, even now, she knows he’s cheating on her, but she stays with him anyway.”