The Fearless King (The Kings #2)(54)

She looked at him like she’d never seen him before. “I don’t understand you.”

He didn’t understand himself in that moment. It wasn’t his job to fix Journey, but he’d gone from thinking she needed to be fixed to appreciating her jagged edges and wicked charm. She might be more complicated than most people he’d met, but she wasn’t truly broken. No matter what she believed about herself.

Something I’d do well to remember. “Let me hold you.”

Another hesitation, shorter this time. She took the two large steps between them cautiously, as if expecting him to rescind his command, and then slipped into his arms. She pressed her face against his chest, her soft words almost felt more than heard. “What happened to your mother, Frank?”

He tensed. He’d only meant to offer her comfort, to apologize again for being short with her. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to drag his old pain kicking and screaming from the box in the back of his mind where he’d kept it locked away for so many years.

Would she even understand if he tried to explain? Frank rested his chin on the top of her head. Journey had displayed her demons for him again and again. Maybe it was time he shared a few of his own, no matter how the words felt like shattered glass in his throat. “My old man didn’t last a year in prison after his conviction. He was shivved in the shower about eight months into his sentence. He never got a chance to file the appeal that might have set him free.” And while Henry Evans was a cheating asshole, he wasn’t guilty of murder. An appeal might have meant freedom if he’d lived long enough to file it.

“Shit, Frank.”

“Yeah.” He hugged her tighter, inhaling the citrusy scent of her shampoo. “My mother just…gave up. She managed to hold down a job to pay the bills, but she checked out and nothing could check her back in.” The first year or two, he’d done everything he could to snap her out of it. Part of him believed that if he was just good enough, she would come back to him. Solid grades, half a dozen scholarships and even more grants so she wouldn’t have to worry about killing herself to pay for his college, not even a hint of trouble or girls or normal teenage bullshit. None of it mattered. “She was diagnosed with breast cancer the month after I left for college.”

Getting the next part out was more difficult, the end of the story one that he didn’t want to give voice to, as if he could change the way things happened by not talking about it. Talk about it or not, the past is the past. “She refused treatment. She just…resigned herself to dying. Within six months, she was gone.” He hadn’t found out until a week later that she’d kept current with her old life insurance policy—one that paid out to the tune of two million dollars. She might not have loved Frank enough to fight to live, but she’d loved him enough to ensure he was taken care of after she was gone.

Cold comfort, that.

“Jesus.” Journey clenched him to her, as if she could squeeze away his past.

“It was a long time ago.” Fifteen years, to be exact. It struck him that, in another couple of years, he’d have spent more of his life an orphan than he’d spent with parents. He smoothed a hand down her back. “Come to bed with me, Duchess.”

She hesitated but finally nodded against his chest. “The only thing to do at this point is call the day to avoid it from getting worse.” Journey stepped back and looked around the kitchen. “It doesn’t seem like the ten plagues of Egypt are going to descend on us, but better safe than sorry.”

“I don’t know—the day isn’t complete without a bunch of locusts making an appearance.”

She jerked to a stop. “Did you just…You did.”

“What?”

“You just made an honest-to-God joke. Again.” She smiled. “Dang, Frank, I’m going to have to be careful. At this point, I actually like you, and you fuck like a dream. You aren’t a secret duke or something, are you? Because the only way you could be more perfect was if there was a title involved.” She strode away before he could answer, which was just as well. He didn’t know how to respond to that.

He might look like the full package on paper, but the truth was that Frank was shallow. Barring Beck, his friendships were surface level and wouldn’t withstand any amount of stress. He dated, but the specter of his parents’ relationship hung over his head, a cloud he couldn’t escape. Letting someone close like that, loving them with everything he had…All it did was open a person up for devastation. He chose relationships based on a genuine understanding of what he could and couldn’t give emotionally, and he and his partners usually parted amicably enough as a result.

There was nothing amicable about the wild feeling in his chest whenever he was in the same room as Journey.

If today had proven anything, it was that he couldn’t guarantee her safety. Elliott had outmaneuvered Frank once, which meant it was possible he’d manage it again. If he hurt Journey…

Frank’s chest went tight and his gut churned at the damage Journey might suffer if he didn’t protect her. It made him want to wrap her in a bulletproof suit and ship her off to New York to stay with her mother until he figured out a way through this. To stay safe.

Because he didn’t know what he’d do if she was harmed.

He couldn’t afford to let his feelings about her screw with his control, but that ship had sailed. He was self-aware enough to realize that. The only thing he could do was deal with the fallout.