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Jase swallowed a strangled cough. “Tess, I . . . it’s just you don’t want to be with me. You really don’t want that.”
I barked out a short laugh. “Wow. So this is a new attempt. You’re not rejecting me, but it’s more like I’m rejecting you? Smooth.”
“It’s not like that,” he insisted. “Trust me. There are things you don’t know about me and if you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Returning my gaze to him, I arched a brow. “Did you kill someone? Cut up their body and feed it to hogs?”
“What?” His brows furrowed. “No.”
“Have you beaten or raped a girl? Have a stash of kids locked in a basement somewhere? Or you’re secretly a terrorist?”
His face contorted into disgust. “Fuck. No.”
“Okaay,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure exactly what you could’ve done that is so terrible then.”
He looked away, shaking his head. “You don’t get it, Tess. I can’t have you.”
“But you do have me,” I whispered, and then clamped my mouth shut. Did I just say that? Horrified, I could only stare as his eyes widened.
Oh my God, I did just say that out loud.
But it was true. Jase had me whether he realized it or not, even if he wanted me or not. I couldn’t change how I felt about him or what I wanted.
“I don’t,” he said, shadows forming in his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
But . . . there was an unspoken “but” that sunk deep within me.
Closing my eyes, I sucked in a shrill breath as pressure in my chest formed and expanded. I put it out there for him, so pathetically, and that was all he could say? Embarrassed beyond belief, all I wanted was to get away. “Please take me home.”
He remained still in the driver’s seat. “Tess—”
“Take me home!”
There was a heartbeat of silence as he dropped his hands into his lap. “He’s my son!” Jase shouted, startling him and me, and then he said lower, as if he couldn’t believe he was actually saying it, “Jack’s my son.”
Nine
I didn’t think I heard him right at first. I had to have heard something other than what he said, because there was no way Jack was his son. Jack was his brother.
But as I stared at him and took in the paleness of his face and the clarity of his gray eyes, I knew that what he’d spoken was something so rare, so unknown to probably almost anyone, that it was the truth.
I shook my head, dumbfounded. “Jack’s your son?”
Jase held my gaze a moment longer and then focused ahead. Several seconds passed before he spoke. “Shit. I . . . no one knows that, Tess. My parents do. Cam does, but he would never say anything. No one else knows.”
Unsurprised that Cam knew this about Jase, I was still a little shocked that he hadn’t told me. Then again, it had never been my business.
I really didn’t know how to process this as I stared at him. My thoughts raced. Jack and Jase did look an awful lot alike, but so did brothers. Jase was superclose with Jack, seeming to have a two-way bond with the boy, but so did a lot of brothers. Jase seemed to put Jack before a lot of things, but brothers did that.
But they weren’t brothers.
They were father and son.
Holy shit.
Lots of things suddenly made sense. Besides how he acted around Jack, there was our conversation earlier. How he seemed to know firsthand that some of the best things in life weren’t planned. And it probably explained why he no longer played soccer or had any plans of taking a job after college that would force him to move away. He wanted to be here with his son, no matter the status between them. It also explained why he didn’t keep girls around, because he did have a kid, and even if he wasn’t actively raising that child, he could be one day. And that was a lot to dump on a girl. I could get that. I was pretty shell-shocked.
Jase was a dad.
