Page 62 of The Hardest Hit
“You’re taking her to Tokyo with you?”
Evan realized his error. “Did I not mention that?” He cleared his throat and tried to break eye contact.
“Evan, you’re serious about her?”
“We haven’t been dating that long, but, I mean...”
“I don’t know Evan, a serious girlfriend—maybe I ought to talk to Grandma about this. We can’t have you risking the family name and fortune on someone from Georgia of all places.”
He stared at her open-mouthed, then caught the evil glint in her eye.
“Oh my God, you almost gave me a heart attack.”
She broke down in a peel of laughter, collapsing onto the couch. He pulled the throw pillow out from behind him, put it to its named purpose, and chucked it at her. She seized it and, still laughing, rose to her knees to pummel him about the head with it. He stiff-armed her, laughing at her attempts at pillow-i-cide.
“Evan!” bellowed his grandmother and both he and Dominique stopped. “What are you doing?”
The tone of her voice cut straight through to the child part of him that felt eternally guilty, and Evan straightened up on the couch and tried to correct whatever Dominique had done to his hair. Eleanor glared at both of them, and behind her, Jackson looked like he was laughing.
“Answer the question!” barked Eleanor, and Evan blinked at her. Behind her, Jackson’s expression changed to annoyance.
“We were just…” He looked at Dominique, at a loss for what to say. “Goofing around,” he finished lamely.
“You are both too old for horseplay. Go fix your hair. Dominique, for God’s sake, take your feet off the furniture!”
Eleanor was breathing heavily and she was glaring at both of them, but as he rose she pinned him with an angry stare. He edged from the room, feeling as though he’d somehow done something wrong.
“I’m allowed to smother Evan,” said Dominique in her most petulant tone as he left. “It would be a lot easier if he would stop resisting, but it’s allowed.”
“Stop being childish,” snapped Eleanor.
In the bathroom, Evan stared in the mirror, repetitively smoothing his hair and trying to figure out what he’d done wrong. This wasn’t like when they were kids. He hadn’t been mad. He hadn’t lost his temper. Dominique hadn’t been mad either, had she? She had been laughing. Right? He hated this feeling. He felt ashamed, and he didn’t know why.
He stared at himself in the mirror. He was lying. He could see it in the set of his mouth.
He knew why he felt guilty.
When they had been children—no, when Dominique had been a child—he had treated her the same way his father had treated her mother. Owen Deveraux had been an abusive, raging, alcoholic who had been twelve years older than his younger sister. Genevieve, like Dominique, had fought back and both had been protected by Eleanor, but Evan knew that there had been times when those protections had failed. They had failed to protect Genevieve from Owen and there had been at least one occasion when they had failed to protect Dominique from him. Evan still remembered the expression on Dominique’s face after he’d slapped her. He remembered her, gangly at seventeen, her expression both shocked and scared, as the thin line of blood trickled down from her nose and over her lip. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d felt afterward had never really gone away. Even now he still felt the acid sense of disgust. The fact that Dominique was willing to be in the same room with him was something that he continued to be grateful for. The fact, that in the last year, she had started to be willing to bealonein the same room was some sort of miracle.
He knew why he felt guilty—it was because he should feel guilty. Eleanor had every reason to keep him on a short leash. Just because he hadn’t done anything wrong this time, didn’t negate their entire history.
He straightened his tie, squared his shoulders, and put on the Deveraux face. He had to go out and be in the same room with them. There was no reason to make everyone uncomfortable with excess emotion.
They were all waiting for him in the study. Dominique looked up with a smile and patted the couch seat next to her, but he went to get a drink from the bar and then leaned against the windowsill.
“You’re not sitting on the couch, Ev?” asked Aiden, getting up from his spot in the wing chair across from Eleanor. Evan shook his head. “Good. I hate having to look at Grandpa. He gives me gas.”
Evan glanced at the portrait of their grandfather hanging on the wall across from Aiden’s chair. Henry Evan Deveraux glared at all of them with a dismissive smile and gray eyes that most closely matched Evan’s own. There was a matching portrait in the dining room as well. It felt like even in death Henry managed to loom over them. Eleanor rarely spoke of him. But Owen, after he hit Evan, would laugh at Evan’s tears, then scream at him.Stop being a pussy. You thank your lucky stars you never had to live with Grandpa. Is that how you want me to treat you? Like Dad?Evan had learned to stop crying.
“So what horrible thing has happened now?” asked Aiden, dropping onto the couch, dangling his feet off the end to avoid their grandmother’s wrath, and putting his head in Dominique’s lap.
Jackson took Aiden’s chair. He had no remembrances of Henry Deveraux. It never bothered him to look at the man Evan was named after. Eleanor sat with her back firmly to the portrait. Her ankles crossed.
“Aiden and I have been following up on Evan’s Nazi situation,” Jackson said.
“Yes,” said Dominique, twisting Aiden’s hair into spikes. “You said Evan broke his jaw.”
“He did,” said Aiden approvingly. “Did I tell you that?” he asked, twisting his head to look at Evan. Evan shook his head. “I meant to tell you that. He’s going to do time and have dental work. It makes me laugh.”
