Page 37 of My Fiancé's Brother

I flung myself at his broad back, awkwardly wrapping my arms around him from behind. He stopped walking, and I tightened my arms around his solid waist.

“What’s going on?” he sounded amused.

I lay my face against the middle of his warm back. “I’m sorry.”

I felt him laugh. “For what?”

“That Ted hurt you.”

I felt his entire body go still. We stood there for a long moment, the side of my face pressed against the warmth of his back. I tried to inject light and happiness from my body into his. As if to heal his childhood wounds. To try and take away some of that pain.

I began to step back, but his hand reached up and pressed my hands into his stomach, preventing me from moving. I sighed and sank back into our hug. I matched my breath to his and concentrated on pushing all my positive energy into his body through his back. It might sound stupid, but I like to think that stuff like that worked. His hand remained on mine, trapping me against him.

Moments ticked by and we stood sharing our awkward hug. He made no motion to remove me. I squeezed him even harder. As if I could squeeze the pain out of him. My mom had taught me the value of hugs. She used to say that there was precious little in this world that a decent hug couldn’t fix.

I heard a car door slam and then the sound of Matt’s feet pounding up the stairs. I began to step back, and this time Jackson let me. I moved with haste back to the kitchen and bent over the island, staring unseeingly at my phone. All in an attempt to hide the emotion that I knew was fraying my expression.

“Hey,” Matt said. “How was your day?”

“Pretty good and you?”

Matt strode into the kitchen. “Good. Em, I can’t stay for dinner. I have to take some clients to a game.”

I glanced up. “Okay.”

“I just came home to change.”

“Do you want me to save you a plate?” To my own ears, my voice sounded wooden.

“Nah. I'll eat at the game.”

I glanced behind me. Jackson had disappeared. A moment later I heard his truck roar to a start.

Matt left in a whirlwind, barely affording me a second glance. I waited until 8 PM to eat dinner, but Jackson didn’t return. I sat at the island, turning over the thought of Jackson in my mind. I was still trying to put the crumbs of information together that I could garner from Matt and Jackson.

Jackson had lived alone with Ted, a man who was not even his father. His mother had died. So where was his birth father? Why had Ted, a man obviously not interested in loving or caring for a small child, continued to keep Jackson in his life only so that he could abuse him?

And what about all the trips to the hospital? A seven-year-old who was at the mercy of a violent drunk was an impossible situation to imagine. I could not wash away the image of a small boy wary and alert, hiding and running from a drunk and menacing man intent on causing pain. Why hadn’t the authorities protected him?

Matt’s father had been a police officer and had taken Jackson into his home, but apparently not full time. Why hadn’t he called social services? Why had the system failed Jackson as a boy, to the point that he was riddled with broken limbs and probably unimaginable emotional scars? The whole situation made me so angry on Jackson’s behalf. I wanted answers, but the past was something that both Matt and Jackson preferred not to talk about. I had a weird feeling that they needed to talk about their history, to bridge the issue that hindered them now.

These days, Matt was almost never home. He avoided Jackson and myself like the plague. Jackson seemed more patient about the entire thing. His energy was very neutral when Matt did show up, but there was not a lot of warmth between the two of them. They were both ontheir guard and were excruciatingly distant and polite with each other. Matt had adamantly expressed to me that he did not want Jackson to leave and Jackson continued to stay which told me they both wanted to mend whatever had come between them. I got the sense neither of them knew how to fix it, so we were left in this uncomfortable impasse.

I sighed and dumped my half-eaten plate in the sink. The fact that Jackson took off indicated to me that maybe my hug had been a little bit too much. Yet he hadn’t wanted me to let go. The man was complicated.

I sat downstairs until 11 PM reading the same page in my book over and over again, but neither Jackson nor Matt came home. Finally, defeated, I went to bed.

CHAPTER 12

“Why didI think that a party was a good idea?” I wailed from the kitchen. Fifty people were about to descend into my space in a matter of hours. I hated parties. I knew no greater punishment than to host a party.

Jackson stood shirtless at the door, drinking from a water bottle. The man liked to grind his body through the most intense, insane workouts imaginable and this afternoon was no different. Did people even realize that a body that looked photoshopped was the result of ruthless determination and constant work? No wonder the dad bod was coming back in style.

“I think you wanted me to have more selection than just Julie.”

I pointed a knife at him. “After this, you and your sex life are completely on your own. You're the last person that needs help in that department.”

He grinned. “Tell me what to do.”

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