Page 19

He loved his family, but the hours and hours spent helping Annie had been a lot for him. He hadn't wanted to deal with being social, and he hadn't had to.

Dinner had been quick, with Annie almost falling asleep at the table. He'd taken over cleaning up while his guests and Cupcake had gone off to bed.

His house felt weird. There were two new couches. Rugs. His gym had a mattress in it now that he was planning to sleep on. Extra towels. Daffodils. It had to have been Bella who'd left the vase of daffodils on the coffee table. It felt cluttered. Foreign. Not him.

But when he'd seen Annie curled up on the thick rug with Cupcake, he'd felt good.

It was all right.

He could handle it.

Or so he'd thought.

Right now? He wasn't so sure.

"Jacob?" Phoebe's soft voice brushed across his skin like a caress, and he closed his eyes, breathing in the sensation of her voice on his body.

"Yeah?" He didn't turn around, but this time, it was because he was riveted by her voice, wanting that more than he wanted the fresh air.

"Everything okay outside?"

"Yeah."

She came up beside him, stopping by his left side. She stood quietly beside him. "The night air is magical," she said. "I've always loved being outside at night."

He glanced over at her, surprised. "Really?"

"Yes. I used to climb onto the roof of our apartment building when I was a kid. I'd sleep up there sometimes, until it was safe to go back home."

He considered that. "What made your house unsafe?"

"My birth father," she said matter-of-factly.

Jacob flexed his hands. "Did he hit you?"

"No. He just yelled a lot and hit things. There were a lot of holes in the wall from his fists, and all our kitchen cabinets were broken. I hate men who yell now." She laughed softly. "It's funny, isn't it? Because some guy my mom was married to for a few years was a yeller, I still hate yelling. The brain holds onto all the wrong things sometimes."

"Yeah, it does." He waited for a minute. "What happened to Annie?"

Phoebe didn't answer.

Jacob swore. "Never mind. It's not my business. Sorry."

"No, it's okay." Her voice was quiet. "You need to know, I guess, since it's relevant to our situation. But don't tell anyone. I'm trying to help get her free of her past, and I want people to look at her as my daughter, and not see things she's trying to move beyond."

He looked over at her. "I'll never look at her differently."

Phoebe smiled. "I think I knew that." She paced away from him and sat down on the grass. "I was a client of Eliana's."

Jacob swore again, this time loud enough that Phoebe smiled. "Yes, agreed. It's never a good thing to be a client of hers, but it was fine. I got away, and it's fine."

He wanted to ask more questions, because things like that were never just "fine," but he decided to let her keep talking.

"When Eliana helps a mom, she makes them create a will and designate a guardian for the kids. If they don't have family they trust, she will connect them with a woman in her program, because we already know how to hide, right?"

Oh, hell. He didn't like this at all. "Yeah."

Phoebe laid down on her back, clasped her hands behind her head, and crossed her ankles as she stared up at the night sky. She looked utterly relaxed and at peace, even though she was speaking about tough stuff.