Page 125 of My Fiancé's Brother 2

I licked my lips, while my heart pounded a million miles a minute. “I can explain.”

He looked so pissed, so hurt, I wanted to burst into tears.

“No.”

“Jackson, please,” I begged. “I was unpacking. And it was there. I didn’t even know what it was until I started reading it and then…without even realizing it, I was halfway through it.”

He was breathing hard. “So what, you read half of that journal?”

I shook my head sadly. “I went and found it afterward and I finished reading the entire thing.”

His eyes were wide. He strode away from me and then spun around. “So, knowing that it was private by the very fact that I had hidden it in the attic, you knew that I didn’t want you to read that.”

“I know.”

“It’s not like I left it on the coffee table, Emily. I fucking hid thatbehind a rafter in our attic. I put it in the one place that you would never find it. How long did it take you to find it?”

“A while.”

“So, you understood that I definitely did not want your eyes to see that book, but you knowingly went looking for it and read it anyways.”

I openly cried. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” he looked at me with incredulity. “You broke my trust.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Intentions mean shit, Em. Actions tell me everything about you.”

He looked so pissed that it scared me. Not that he would hurt me, but that he would leave me.

“I wanted to understand you better,” I blubbered. “You were so closed off, and I didn’t understand you. I thought if I knew where you came from, I could figure you out.”

I looked up at this beautiful man who in his way was so strong despite having been broken so badly when he was little. Physically and emotionally. Somehow he had managed to put himself back together to become one of the most amazing human beings I had ever met in my life.

His voice was emotionless, borderline cold. “I never wanted you to know where I came from.”

I openly wept. “Why didn’t you want to share that with me?”

He looked incredulous. “Why didn’t I want to tell you about the worst years of my life?”

I took a deep breath. He was scaring me. He felt so distant, and his walls were so high right now. “Yeah.”

“You want to hear about how I was hated? How Irene told me every single day that I was bad, that I was garbage, that I wasn’t worthy? I hated it in that house. I hated every single fucking moment.”

I wept.

He wasn’t finished. “Or maybe you want to hear about Ted?About how he was the only one who remotely cared about me and I would've done anything for him. I took care of him as much as he took care of me. It didn’t matter how filthy that place was, how drunk he got, how fucked up he was, and he's the only one who loved me.”

My hands covered my mouth. I shook my head. Tears streamed down my face.

Jackson’s eyes were red. “Maybe you're interested in knowing that despite Ted’s love when he got drunk, he wanted to cause pain. God. Nothing hurt more than that first hit. Most of the time, I never saw it coming. He was a 200-pound man, and I was a 45-pound little kid, and he was a vicious son of a bitch. But if you are so interested, you should know that when he sobered up, he used to hold me and cry like a baby. Begging me to forgive him. And I was so pathetic, that I craved those moments. I lived for those moments. Sometimes I think I even provoked him because I knew it would lead to that place where he cried and told me he loved me.”

“Jackson,” I sobbed.

“You want to hear about how Ted walked me to school, sat with me when we watched cartoons, wanted to know about my day and then would wake me up in the middle of the night because he needed a punching bag? Or did you want to hear that I was so broken and fucked up as a kid that I preferred to live with Ted for the small scraps of love he could feed me over the hatred I received from Harry and Irene.”

I shook my head. Tears streaming.

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