Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [57]
“But you don’t anymore.”
He shook his head. “Because now I understand that you didn’t ask me about my life so that you wouldn’t have to answer questions about yours. You said, ‘Let’s keep the past in the past,’ and I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ I had no idea that you had so much to hide.”
“What about you? Were you hiding anything from me?”
The odd look that flashed through his eyes surprised her. And when he said, “Of course not,” she didn’t believe him.
“Jake?”
“I didn’t have a great childhood. I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not hiding anything.” He frowned. “Fine, here’s the abbreviated version of my life. As I told you before, my parents divorced when I was ten and Dylan was seven. My mother left, and my father raised us, so to speak. He wasn’t really around that much. He was a businessman, an investment banker. Everything for him was about numbers and bottom lines. He didn’t have patience for anything that didn’t add up. He had high expectations that were impossible to meet, especially for Dylan. He was rough on my brother. He made life impossible for him. Every night the dinner table was a battlefield.”
“So you tried to make things easier,” she ventured.
“It didn’t work. My father and brother couldn’t get along, and to be honest my father was a bully. He’d go after any sign of weakness. Even when Dylan was just a little kid, my father would taunt him about his failures, if it was missing a ground ball at second base or marking the wrong answer on a math quiz. Sometimes I’d try to distract him by doing something even worse.”
Sarah leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. “Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything, spilling something on the floor—he hated that—turning on the TV when we were supposed to be studying.” Jake stared down at the floor. “Whatever.”
“You are totally lying,” she said. “You didn’t do those things—Dylan did. You just tried to take the blame for him.”
His head jerked up. “That’s not true.”
“I don’t think it’s in you to screw up. You have this innate sense of right and wrong.”
His gaze burned into hers. “When it comes to you, yes.”
“When it comes to everything,” she countered. “Even if you tried to mess up to distract your father, I bet you didn’t do a very good job.”
“Okay, we’re done.”
“No, no, wait,” she pleaded, realizing she’d shut him down. “Okay, I’ll buy your story.”
“It’s not a story.”
“Tell me the rest. Please.”
He drew in a deep breath and then said, “Things got worse for Dylan when I went away to college. My father kicked him out of the house when he was sixteen. Dylan wound up coming to live with me. He slept on my living room couch for two years in an apartment I shared with a few other guys. I got him signed up at the local high school and that was that. He was my responsibility.”
“Your father didn’t try to get Dylan to come home?”
“Hell, no. I think he was happy we were both gone. He threw some extra cash at me until Dylan was eighteen, and then he said he was done support
ing either one of us.”
“Your father sounds like a harsh man.”
“Cold as ice.”
“It’s no wonder you’re such close brothers. I’m sure Dylan would do anything for you.” Their tight relationship also explained why Dylan was so protective of Jake when it came to her.
“We’d do anything for each other,” Jake amended.
She gave him a thoughtful look. “I came between you, didn’t I? You said something about that before.”
“Dylan didn’t trust you, but I wouldn’t listen to him. He’d always been a cynic about women. He never got over my mother walking out on us. He went crazy when you moved in with me, and especially when you got pregnant. He pressured me to ask you more questions, to make sure I knew who you were before I married you. But I didn’t want to ask you questions. I didn’t want to rock the perfect boat we were on. So I blew him off. I told him to get out of my life if he couldn’t be happy for me. I didn’t see him again until the day you disappeared. He came back as soon as he heard you and Caitlyn were gone.”
“You chose me over your brother. I’m amazed.”
“It just goes