Page 38 of Summer Heat
“Yeah.” She held her breath, grateful for the information he’d chosen to share.
“Jeffrey. He’s younger than me, and he was so much easier. Your golden child.”
“There’s no such thing,” she said softly, still holding his hand in hers.
“Tell that to her.” His body jerked inadvertently. “Apparently I came into the world with colic, and it went downhill from there.” He breathed more heavily now, the admission obviously painful. “I had problems in school, difficulties making friends, trouble concentrating, and then there’s anxiety. None of which was diagnosed back then. So she constantly told me I was a pain in the ass, that she wished I was more like my brother, and in the end, she chose Jeffrey.”
Lexie narrowed her gaze. “How so?”
“My parents divorced … and my loving mother took my brother and moved to England, never to be heard from again.”
“Oh, Kade.” No wonder he’d reacted so strongly when he’d found her with the photo.
“You know the strange thing? I never resented Jeffrey. Not once. I looked up to him.”
“I’m sure he felt the same way about you.”
Kade shrugged. “I’ll never know.”
“Have you ever reached out?” she asked.
“No. I wasn’t about to set myself up for rejection.”
More rejection, she thought, grasping his hand harder. She swallowed hard, unsure of what to say.
“But back to what you asked me, about the pizza and the mess?”
She waved away the question. It no longer mattered, in light of everything else.
“The answer is, I don’t know. I can’t control what my brain chooses to obsess over. And the medicine I take helps a lot. So did the CBT sessions.”
“CBT?”
“Cognitive behavioral therapy. It helps solve problems and change thinking patterns.” He shrugged, jerking out of her grasp, obviously embarrassed.
“Don’t pull away from me.”
“You should go.” He rose from the bed. He wore only a pair of track pants, and his bare chest heaved heavily as he breathed. “You will eventually. Might as well—”
“No.” Instead of being insulted, she understood. Enough people had left her for her to recognize the same fear in him.
She climbed out of bed. Coming up beside him, she placed a hand on his shoulder, the muscles hard and tense beneath her palm.
“Don’t assume I’m like everyone else you know or might have been with, because that’s just insulting.” This was no time to get into her history or her past. All he needed to know now was that she wouldn’t run away just because he didn’t fit some cookie-cutter mold. “You can’t scare me off,” she informed him.
He spun back around. “No?” he asked, admiration in his tone, appreciation in his gaze.
“No.” She rocked back on her heels so she could look up and better meet his gaze.
He shook his head and smiled, all the tension leaving his body in a rush of air. “You, Lexie Parker, are something else.”
She grinned, pleased she’d broken through his barriers and gotten through to him. “Yeah?” she asked.
“Yeah. The question is, what am I going to do with you?”
“I can think of a few things.” She waggled her eyebrows before lifting the hem of his shirt and pulling it over her head.
And those were the last words spoken for a good, long while.
