I was a broken man.Thanks to my past, I didn’t knowhowto love.Perhaps worse, I didn’t knowhowto form attachments or have a relationship.I barely kept my head above water with my son—and that was because Aya ran as an intermediary between us often.Too often.
Fuck.My throat squeezed shut, the memories of my father’s fists, the slice of his belt buckle, the burn of his cigarettes fresh somehow, even after more than thirty-odd years.The sensations jittered over my flesh, heat followed by icy coldness.
Jasmine lowered her eyelashes, but I saw the flash of hurt.This is what I did to people.This was why it was better for me to stay away.
“Need some air,” I mumbled, gaze zeroing in on the back door.Get out, calm down.Don’t mess it up for anyone else.
Get outside…
I shoved through the door and inhaled the tang of freshly turned earth and mown grass.My shoulders loosened, but I gripped the railing hard.I dropped my head down until my chin touched my chest.
Keep those emotions reined in.You can’t let them out.
I wanted Jasmine, but I couldn’t have her.Opening myself up to her was so much harder than filling the role Nash needed.Aya asked so little of me.And Levi was just a wide-eyed gummy-smile of sweet baby chubbiness.But Jasmine…she deservedintimacy.
Not just love but full-on sharing of feelings—a meshing of lives and pasts.And I never talked about mine.
Ever.
Except once with Nash, briefly.Besides my son, no one knew what I’d experienced or how my father’s actions broke me.Like Jasmine said, I couldn’t change the past.
What he’d done was done.Unchangeable.And I had no intention of sharing those dirty, dark secrets.
Chapter3
Jasmine
Ioffered a stiff smile as I set another platter on the table.Much as I tried to rearrange my face into happier lines, worry about Steve tugged too hard, not just at my heart, but into my soul.
Damn the man!Why couldn’t I let him—the possibility of us—go?He’d made it clear that I was a mistake.And yet, he kept coming back, looking at me…heat swooped up from my belly, landing once again on my cheeks like I was forty years younger and falling hard for my first crush.
I glanced toward the back door, but Steve still hadn’t returned.Something was off with him, and not just because he’d finally called me on my ridiculous behavior.That tension had been building between us for a long time, so I wasn’t surprised he wanted to root it out.
Typically, he was the most punctual of us all, but he’d stepped outside while I was cooking, and now, a good hour later, he hadn’t returned.I’d caught the flash of desperation in his expression before he exited, and while I wanted that to be about me, I knew it wasn’t.
“That’s all of it.Why don’t y’all tuck in?I’ll go see what’s keeping Steve.”I wiped my hands on my apron as I walked toward the back door.My steps slowed as I wondered if I’d upset him to the point he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me.Well, if that was the case, we’d hash it out.The kids deserved us to do so, and finding some common ground with Steve wouldn’t be any harder than living with Laurence.
It might be because I cared what Steve thought of me.I wanted…yearned…Stop it, Jasmine!
Shaking my head, I forced myself to open the door and took a bracing breath of the softer night air.Sure, we got storms from time to time, but this holiday wasn’t one of them.Instead, the air sat like a muggy lake over my skin, causing it to itch.
He stood with his back to me, grasping the porch railing so tightly that his arm muscles bulged.His head dipped low between his shoulders, reminding me of an enraged bull.
“Food’s on the table,” I said to his back.
“Good.Great.I’m going to stay out here.”
His deep voice always sent shivers through me, heating my blood—as it had from the very first time.The sensation was unusual.Not that I didn’t recognize it, just that I’d assumed sensuality and sexuality were behind me.Menopause changed a woman.
This damn man had gone and provedthatlovely fantasy a lie.I still had desires, still had needs, and Steve caused them all to flare, bright and hot.Even now when he wouldn’t look at me.Perhaps that’s why my temper flared, and I said, “You will march your butt inside and sit at that table and smile for those kids, Steven Lincoln, because they deserve it.”
“Don’t, Jasmine.I…can’t.”
He looked at me over his shoulder, and I caught the horror in his eyes.I swallowed as the enormity of that thing inside him smashed into my chest.
Something haunted him.Something not unlike the years of disrespect and taunts and, finally, abuse of my son I’d endured from Laurence.
“Oh, my dear.What’s been done to you?”I rushed closer, laying my hands on his arm.Strength and warmth exuded from the muscle.He shifted away.
