“How could I? Every time I looked at her, from the moment she was born…I made sure I lived close by, so I could be there for my brothers, yes, but mostly so I could be there for her.” He shook his head. “When my dad divorced Mei, I’d about had it. I was somewhat financially stable. I was going to demand a paternity test. Take him to court if I had to. Anything to bring some stability to her life.”
“Then he died.”
Misery moved over his face. “Then he died.”
She was silent for a minute. “What happened when she was nine?”
He wrapped his arms around his knees. “She came home from school one day, crying. It was close to Mother’s Day.” He motioned his hand in the air. “When kids make dumb little tin can pencil holders. She was sad she had no one to make anything for.”
“God, I hated those days.” Akira mimicked his pose. Decades later, she could well remember sitting in a corner on the days when other kids had been making crafts. Neither of her parents would have welcomed a gift.
“Me too.” Jacob ran his hands through his hair, messing up the brown waves. “Jane, she kept in touch after she left. She would call on Kati’s birthday and Christmas—still does. But they weren’t close. Kati wouldn’t have thought to make her something and send it to her.
“So I called her and told her it wasn’t fair to Kati, if I was her dad, that she not know. I told her I was going to have a DNA test. She wasn’t thrilled, but she didn’t put up much of a fuss.”
Instinctively, Akira knew why Jacob hadn’t just broken the news without proof. The little girl who had been sobbing at Harvey Campbell’s funeral had loved their father. Jacob wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her memories based on a hunch and bad timing.
Jacob’s voice was shaking as he spoke. “I got one of those kits off the Internet. Swabbed her mouth. Told her it was a little game.”
She knew the answer already, but she spoke it out loud. “You weren’t her dad.”
His lips turned white at the corners. “No. I wasn’t. I’m not.”
She stroked her hand up his back, knowing exactly how he had felt. Some men might have been thrilled to be told they weren’t a baby’s father. Not Jacob. “You were devastated.”
He looked at her, his eyes swimming with unshed tears. “It was like someone took her away from me. In the back of my head, I assumed, you know? And then that was gone. I was just a sibling. A half-sibling. She wasn’t mine.”
Akira didn’t often find herself in the role of comforting anyone. So it felt a bit awkward for her to tug him down until she reclined on her pillow, his head lying on her chest. Her fingers tangled in the cool silk of his hair. “She’s still yours.”
He gave a shuddery breath and pressed a kiss against her nipple. Not in a sexual manner, but she couldn’t resist the tingle that ran through her.
“Who knows about this?” she asked.
“Jane. Me. Now you.”
“Why would you tell me?”
“Because I wanted to. Because you made yourself vulnerable to me.”
She shifted. “This isn’t on the same level as my telling you about my name.”
“That’s not the only time you’ve made yourself vulnerable,” he replied quietly.
Intuitively, she knew he wasn’t just talking about these past few weeks, but the fact he’d always been a weakness in her otherwise impenetrable armor.
That he was so obviously aware of this dynamic made her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Maybe also because I wanted you to understand better why I was the way I was,” he continued, his words raw. “Why I’ve been so careful, all my adult life. I couldn’t be like him. Selfish. Hedonistic. Impulsive. Do you see?”
She didn’t respond, but she ran her fingernails up his back, soothing him as best she knew how. By his shuddery sigh, she could tell he liked that, so she did it again.
She did see. She understood why he was a little fucked up and broken inside. She saw why he had walled himself away from her, from anyone who jeopardized his responsibility to his family. She understood why he had hated himself for being so attracted to her.
She saw all of those things, including the sure knowledge she was in big, big trouble. Because she wanted this man, in her bed and in her life. And she couldn’t have that, couldn’t risk hurting him as much as his asshole of a father had.
Selfish…check.
Hedonistic…check.
