Leo (A Sign of Love Novel)(26)

"What happened to you, Jake?" I ask. That felt like one hell of a scar.

He looks at me for a minute as if he's thinking about whether he's going to answer me or not . But then he says, "Remember the stupid shit I told you I did to earn my father's contempt?"

I nod, frowning.

The heat in his eyes has faded and now he's watching me closely as he says, "Some of that resulted in me tearing the back of my head open. Someday I'll tell you all about it, Evie, I promise. But how about right now I get dinner started?"

I frown and reach my hand up to his hair again and trace the scar. His eyes close and he exhales before he reaches up and removes my hand and brings it to his lips to kiss it. "So damn sweet," he mutters.

Then he takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen and sits me down on a barstool.

"Can I pour you a glass of wine and take a few minutes to change out of this suit?" he asks.

"How about you go change and I'll open the wine and do the pouring," I suggest.

"Perfect. The wine fridge is beneath the counter by the big fridge and the opener is in the drawer above it. Glasses are in that cabinet," he points to an upper cabinet made of glass and full of wine and champagne glasses.

"Got it."

He heads down a hallway between the front door and the kitchen and I get to work on choosing a wine.

Ten minutes later when he re-enters the kitchen, he's in a pair of well worn looking jeans and a black t-shirt. His feet are bare and his hair is damp. He must have taken a quick shower.

He grins at me and I hand him his glass of wine. "Red," I say. "Hope that's ok. Goes with red meat and all."

This is the first time I've seen him in a t-shirt and I can see even more clearly how broad his shoulders are, how wide and muscled his chest is and how his biceps flex when he takes his wine glass from me and extends it towards mine saying, "To beginnings."

I smile and clink my glass gently on his and take a sip, even though I've already been sipping mine as I waited at the bar.

He strides over to the fridge and removes a package of butcher paper and as he's opening it over the counter, he says, "Can I ask you a question? You told me the other night that you didn’t date in high school. Why not?"

I'm sitting in Jake's kitchen, sipping wine while he cooks dinner for me. I feel protected and I feel relaxed and so I answer Jake honestly, even though I have never talked about my high school years to anyone, ever.

"When I was 15, my foster mom, Jodi, was diagnosed with cancer and she and her husband decided they couldn't foster anymore. I wasn't close to either of them, they were mostly disinterested in us girls who lived with them. They weren't unkind, just sort of indifferent and checked out. They watched a lot of t.v. and didn't take a big interest in getting to know who any of us were. We co-existed and they mostly gave us what we needed physically, but emotionally, they were not parents to us, at least not in the way I define parenthood. But I was comfortable where I was, I liked the house, I liked the girls I lived with and I thought life was as okay for me as it was gonna be in that situation.

"Anyway, when I was moved, I moved in with another couple and they made no bones about the fact that me and the other girls living there were drains on them, even though, as far as I could tell, the main reason we were there was for the checks we brought in. Me and Genevieve and Abby, the other girls who lived there, were mostly their slaves. We cooked, we cleaned, and we took care of their six year old twin boys who, it must be said, were good birth control for us girls if that was what they were trying to teach us. Our foster parents sat on their butts and if they wanted something, they hollered at us to run and fetch it for them. My foster mom, Carol, constantly made remarks about me, my body, my hair, my lack of personality, just being nasty. She was specifically mean to me, but she had an equal opportunity policy when it came to our care. She didn't spend one more cent than she had to on our needs, which meant that our clothes were constantly old and too small. At school, girls made fun of me because they thought I wore my clothes overly tight to get the boys to notice me. They called me a slut and worse and the boys treated me like one and so I steered clear of everyone as much as possible.

"I wasn't exactly brimming with self confidence as it was, but Carol made it her job to make me feel even worse about myself. This didn't exactly make me eager to put myself out there as far as making friends or dating. I ate my lunch in the library every day, and I went home after school and cleaned Carol and Billy's house. The day I turned 18, I got a job at The Hilton, and moved out with the intention of sleeping on Genevieve's couch for three months (she had moved out of our foster home and in with her boyfriend six months earlier), until I had enough money saved up for a security deposit on an apartment. Two months in to my stay there, her boyfriend made a pass at me, Gen threw me out and I had nowhere to go and so I worked during the day, went to the library after work and slept at a table in the corner for three hours until they closed and then wandered to several different coffee shops nursing coffees until it was time to go back to work, where thankfully, they have a shower in the employee restroom that they don't mind us using.

"I slept at a shelter downtown one night but an old man tried to crawl into my cot with me in the middle of the night and someone stole the pair of shoes I had left at the end of my bed before I went to sleep. I couldn't risk someone stealing the money I had saved for an apartment, which I was carrying all in cash. I would have been right back where I started and that was unthinkable."