Page 87 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
Hawk thought it the worst kind of sickness and perversion that his brother hated him for being an outlet for their father’s evil temper, and he’d never been able to find it in his heart to feel sorry for Alejandro, though he’d tried. Years of rancor had dug a chasm between them, a bottomless abyss that could no longer be bridged, and with the kind of cruel twist Fate so enjoys, Alejandro had turned out much like the man who sired him.
Aloud he only said, “I wasn’t a good brother. Or a particularly good son.”
“Are they still alive? Your parents?”
Hawk closed his eyes. “No.”
Hawk’s mother had suffered the same fate as Xander’s; the scope of their father’s murderous brutality wasn’t limited to his two sons. By luck or cunning only Alejandro’s mother had escaped her marriage to the Alpha alive. She’d lived a good life after her husband’s demise—he died, finally, the day Xander decided to fight back—and only a few years ago, she had drowned in a flash flood during the Season of the Inundation, when she was swept away picking mushrooms before she could climb into the trees.
“I’m sorry,” Jacqueline murmured. “I wish there were more people in your life who loved you. You deserve it.”
His face warmed with pleasure. Like you? he wanted to ask. Do you?
She was silent a moment, then said, “Okay, since we’re sharing stories and you’re too chicken to ask—”
“Cat. I am a cat. Do I need to demonstrate my essential catness and pounce on you like you’re a ball of twine?” He hissed and lightly bit the back of her neck, eliciting a giggle.
“Excuse me. Since you’re too catty to ask . . . I’ll just go ahead and tell you.”
Hawk froze, his hand on her arm. She burrowed down deeper into the pillow, sighing again.
“My mother had three nervous breakdowns by the time I was ten years old.”
Feeling the invisible steel band that had seized his heart slightly loosen, Hawk slowly exhaled.
Not “I love you.”
Idiot.
“The first time I was five. I remember it because it was my birthday. There were all these people in the house: cousins, friends, my father’s military buddies. My dad was between wars then, so he was home with the family. He used to remember our birthdays by which war he was away fighting at the time we were born. Mine was Granada . . .” She faltered, her voice took on an odd, flat tone. “And . . . and Garrett’s was Cambodia.”
Garrett. Her older brother.
He’s the reason I’m so messed up. He’s the one who broke me.
The steel band around Hawk’s heart began to tighten again.
“I was just about to blow out the candles on my birthday cake when we heard the scream.”
Hawk held still, not even daring to breathe. The little hairs on his arms stood on end.
“Everyone turned. There was my mother, standing in the doorway of the kitchen in this beautiful, tailored yellow dress, her makeup flawless, holding a pair of sewing shears in one hand and all her hair in the other. She looked back at all the staring faces and said, ‘Heavy. It’s so heavy.’ Then she opened her hand and her hair floated to the floor, forming this forlorn red drift around her feet. After that, after she’d been taken away to ‘rest,’ I used to lie in my bed at night and wonder what had been so heavy. I just knew she wasn’t talking about her hair. I think I knew even at five years old that what she really meant was life. Life was just so goddamn heavy her mind couldn’t hold up under the weight of it, and it just kind of collapsed like an origami bird under an angry fist.”
Hawk slid his hand down Jacqueline’s arm, slipped his fingers between hers, and squeezed.
&n
bsp; “She came back after a while, and the family pretended everything was fine. It wasn’t, of course, but we were polite and never talked about anything that mattered, which was the only way we knew how to love one another. Two years later, she cracked again. I can’t remember why. But . . . another few years went by. And this time when she cracked, the final time, I remember the reason.” Jacqueline’s voice grew small. “Though God knows I wish I didn’t.”
Hawk drew her closer. The room had taken on a tension, a sense of anticipation, as if the air itself were waiting to hear what she would say next.
“She wasn’t supposed to be home. It was her bridge night. My father was away on some stupid sortie or something, who knows, but we always knew how to contact him in case of an emergency. I was ten by then, and Garrett was twenty-five, still living at home, still jobless, so he was supposed to be watching me. And he was. He was always, always watching me.”
Something in her tone set off a warning bell in Hawk’s mind. Every nerve in his body stood at high alert, shrieking a song of horror, so that when he finally heard it, he already knew.
“It had been going on for years, of course. The first time was right before that fateful birthday party. He was my brother, and I loved him, and I believed him when he said he loved me, that it was our secret and I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t understand . . . why . . . but I still loved him. Even though it hurt. Even though I always cried.”
“No,” Hawk said, choked, into her hair. “No.”
