Because I wanted to make it mine.Aware this was a frighteningly serious post-coital conversation but unable to shut it down, Akira lifted a bare shoulder. “I should have. My father’s turned my last name into a joke too. But…I don’t know. I wanted it to mean something more than what they intended for me.”
She felt rather than saw him nod. His chest vibrated as he spoke. “I understand wanting to rise above your parents.” Low and soft, the respect and validation in his words twined around her.
People respected her, but she didn’t crave it from most. Not the way she craved it from Jacob. The way she had always secretly craved it from Jacob.
Never let people see what you want.Fear made her pull away, her hair leaving a damp trail on his chest. “That’s right. Your parental baggage.”
“Yeah. My parental baggage.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, edging farther away so they were no longer touching. “Never would have pegged Harvey for being a little neglectful.”
He rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand, watching her far too closely. “More than a little. Why do you keep moving away from me, Akira?”
She froze. “I’m not.” Lies.
“You are.” Deliberately, he placed his hand on her belly. She flinched. “How many people know that story about your name?”
“My parents. Me.” She forced herself to meet his eyes, hating every second of this vulnerable experience. Stupid, but in relating that anecdote, she’d felt like she’d cut herself open and laid herself bare. “You.”
He stared at her, unblinking, for so long she was about to roll over and feign sleep. Then he opened his mouth, and she knew sleep wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. “Until she was nine years old, I thought Kati was my daughter.”
Akira stilled, her mouth half open. Jacob’s eyes had darkened until they were almost black.
Was he even aware he had spoken? His gaze was unfocused. “What?”
A muscle clenched in his granite-hard jaw. His words were pulled from him as if against his will. “When I was nineteen, I slept with my dad’s girlfriend.” He flicked a glance at her. “I didn’t use a condom.”
Akira drew in a deep breath. “How could your dad’s girlfriend…”
“Don’t blame her. She wasn’t much older than me. Twenty-two or twenty-three, maybe. And she hadn’t had the easiest of lives.” His smile was harsh. “I told you, my dad didn’t think much. Just acted. She came in for an appointment, and the next week he was introducing us to the love of his life and moving her in.”
Akira shook her head, flabbergasted. “How did you…how did it happen?” Because there were few things in life she was certain about, but Jacob’s belief in honor and decency was one of them. Sleeping with anyone’s girlfriend would be an anathema to him.
“I don’t really remember how. I was on break from college, we were home alone, we started drinking…” He was the one who cut physical contact with her now, sitting up and tucking the sheet around himself, as if to cover up his sins. “I fucked my father’s girlfriend.”
Her eyes widened. Dear Lord. Knowing how decent he was, she was certain the guilt from that single act of betrayal must have nearly destroyed him. She could still hear it, dripping from every disgusted word.
“To her credit, Jane broke it off with my dad that night, moved out of the house. But then a month later…” Jacob shook his head, a haunted look in his eyes. “She told my dad she was pregnant.
“I called her right away, as soon as I heard, and asked if it could be mine. She started crying. Said she didn’t know, she didn’t want a baby anyway. I told her she didn’t have to worry, I would take care of my kid.”
Akira’s fingers tightened around his, imagining the overwhelmed nineteen-year-old boy Jacob had been. Hurting for him.
“She said my father had given her the same speech. And then begged me not to tell the man anything.” Jacob’s chest rose and fell with his deep breath. “She said she was considering giving up her parental rights and letting my dad raise the baby. That we could have a paternity test, but she would rather have a respectable middle-aged doctor raising her child than a nineteen-year-old kid.”
“What did you do?” she asked, her voice hushed, matching his.
His eyes were filled with remembered pain when they met hers. “I went to him. I told him I had slept with his girlfriend and the kid might be mine.”
“He was angry,” she guessed.
“No.” Jacob’s laugh was short. “No. He chuckled. Said he would have done the same. Boys will be boys. How could I have been expected to resist a girl who looked like that?” He shook his head in disbelief. “How could anyone think that what I had done was right? I was wrong. We were wrong.”
Akira’s heart twisted. Fucking asshole. Jacob might have betrayed his father, but the man had betrayed him right back by showing his son that he was a shallow, pleasure-seeking jerk.
“My dad told me he didn’t care who the biological father was, he had always wanted more kids. He was better equipped to take care of a child than I was. I should forget about my little slip. I was dumb. Young. So I played along. Thought I really could forget.”
“But you couldn’t, could you?” Akira possessed a healthy amount of heartlessness, but even she would have had trouble cheerfully burying the knowledge of her child’s parentage when she saw the kid every day.
