“Really?” I snapped. “Not even your wife?”
His skin paled, and that raw look I saw while I was singing crossed his face again, except this time, it didn’t convey need or desire, just heart-shredding pain.
My heart jolted. “Jacob,” I whispered, my hand lifting to touch his face. “What is it?”
His jaw tightened, and he pulled away from my touch. “I’m not married,” he said flatly.
I reached out again, but he jerked away from me, his eyes shuttering closed like a door slamming. “Don’t,” he growled, the muscle in his jaw working overtime.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Who told you I was married?” he demanded.
“Nobody. I—” I sighed, trying to pull my thoughts together and calm my nerves, which by then were making my hands tremble. “It was when we met. You left the next day and gave me your number and the number for your club.”
“And?” he prompted.
“I called you, but you didn’t answer,” I explained. “I waited a couple of days, but you didn’t get back to me, so I called your club like you told me to. That was when some guy told me it was your wife’s birthday and that you’d gone to visit her.”
His forehead furrowed. “Did you get his name?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Ace.”
Jacob flinched as if I’d struck him.
“What is it?” I demanded. “What the hell’s going on? Was he lying?”
He scraped a hand down his face, suddenly looking as if he hadn’t slept for a week. “No. He wasn’t lying, but he was stirring the shit pot with a huge fuckin’spoon.” Jake took a step back from me. “Iwasmarried, Saint, but my wife passed away twelve years ago.”
The back of my throat heated, and suddenly, my knees felt unsteady, as if the ground had shifted beneath my feet, throwing me off balance. All this time, I’d had no idea about Jake’s past or his pain and loss.
“I don’t know what to say,” I murmured.
“Nobody ever knows what to say,” he retorted. “But then, what can you say? I was a widower before I was thirty.”
“Jacob,” I whispered, my fingers going to his arm, trying to offer him comfort.
He shook me off, and his lip curled in disgust at my touch. “I’ll ask Ghost to take you home and stay with you tonight. I need some space.” He raked his fingers through his hair, his eyes reflecting his sorrow.
He was pulling away from me again. Instead of taking me somewhere quiet where we could talk everything through, he was building those damned walls back up one brick at a time and creating distance between us.
And I was fuckingsick of it.
“I didn’t know, Jacob,” I bit out. “All I was told was that you’d gone to visit your wife, and I just assumed?—”
“The worst?” he challenged.
“Yeah, the worst,” I cried, wrenching myself away from him. “Just like you assumed the worst about Hunter.”
“It’s a well-known fact that you two are a couple,” he pointed out.
“We’ve never announced that. In fact, we’ve only ever said we were good friends. It’s the tabloids who ran with it and built it up. Did we let them? Yes, because it suited us at the time, but never once did I announce he was my boyfriend. But in contrast, I was told by one of your club members, one of yourbrothers, that you’d gone to see your wife. Why would I not believe you were married?”
His eyes blazed into mine. “You should’ve asked me!” He jerked his thumb toward his chest.
“And you should’ve askedme,” I threw back. “You’re such a fucking baby. You’re quick to blame me for everything, Jacob, but you’re not innocent in all this, either. You never told me about your wife, so how was I supposed to know you’d lost her?”
He leaned down until we were nose to nose. “I didn’t lose her, Saint,” he snarled. “She died. She had a heart condition nobody knew about, and one day, it just stopped beating. Do you know how fucking soul-destroying that shit is? Knowing the one thing you loved most about a person is the same thing that put them in the fucking ground?”
