Page 59 of Revere
“Nothing.” I clear my throat, letting my gaze drift out the window.
“Patience.” He turns my face to his, and I wish he weren’t so beautiful that it made me lose my senses so easily. “Be honest with me. What are you thinking?”
“I just—” I press my lips together and take a sharp breath. “When we were standing on the curb, I thought you were implying that you were taking me to your place.”
“I am. Unless you don’t want that.”
My eyebrows pinch. “You gave your driver the address for my building?”
“There’s more than one apartment in that building, Patience.”
“We live in the same building?”
Jacob shrugs. “Apparently.”
He releases my chin and turns to glance out the window, but I don’t miss that he doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as I am.
Before I can ask him why that is, he veers the conversation. “How was your family dinner?”
“Fine. Terrible.” I shrug. “It’s always eventful with my parents. But at least my brother is doing better… he spoke to me.”
Jacob glances in my direction.
“Alex has had some… trouble”—I’m careful with my choice of words as I try to clarify—“these past couple of years. He was in a psychiatric ward, and he hasn’t talked to anyone for a long time.”
“That must have been hard on you.”
I scan Jacob’s face for judgment, or at the very least, curiosity. Most people want to know my family’s deepest, darkest secrets when they learn my brother was in a psychiatric ward. But Jacob doesn’t ask any of those things. If anything, he sounds genuinely worried about me.
“It was.” The words nearly clog in my throat. “He was the closest person to me before everything happened.”
Jacob turns my wrist over, and the turtle bracelet Alex gave me spins around. I forgot I told him my brother got this for me the first time we met.
“Turtles represent resilience. Their shells protect them from the outside world. That’s what Alex and I were to each other growing up, each other’s turtle shells. The only one who understood what it was like to grow up—” I clear my throat, stopping from saying too much. “To have an upbringing like we did.” I spin my bracelet around my wrist. “He gave me this when he went off to college to remind me that he would always be there for me, no matter what.”
Except that’s not what happened. Because Sigma Sin nearly killed him. And my brother—the only person in the world I cared about—spent the next two years silently locked in a psychiatric ward.
“I’m glad you had him.” Jacob brushes the inside of my wrist. “And I’m sorry that you lost him for a while.”
I can’t figure out why he sounds genuinely sorry when he doesn’t know what happened. But I appreciate it, nonetheless.
Growing up, everything was about my brother. His future was the only one my parents actually cared about. And then, after his trial, I disappeared almost entirely beneath Alex’s shadow. I thought I didn’t mind because being invisible is easier than being seen most of the time.
Until Jacob looks into my eyes and sees me as more than an extension of my family.
The car pulls to a stop outside our building, and Jacob climbs out first, walking around to open my door. That small action is one more example of how I’m not dealing with the immature boys who frequent Sigma Sin parties back at home.
Jacob is a gentleman. A grown man who knows who he is, what he wants, and what he’s doing.
While I’m all nerves and inexperience.
It should terrify me. But as Jacob takes my hand and leads me onto the sidewalk, I want him to show me what the world islike outside the fragile cage I’ve been locked in my entire life. I want to finally feel something.
He guides me into the building, and the man at the front counter nods at him. “Mr. Gray.”
“Ray.” Jacob nods in return.
I don’t say anything. In the time I’ve lived in this building, Ray hasn’t so much as looked at me.
