Page 107 of Fierce-Jax

“I’ll get to that,” she said, her shoulders tensing. “Please, let me talk about Alec. You need to know. You should know something that only my parents do.”

He wanted to see her face as she talked. Watch her eyes and see if he could read what was going on behind them.

They’d said no secrets, but he was going to be slammed with one hard.

He knew it.

He felt it.

He had to brace for it.

And had to control his reaction to it and if he had a right to be upset because he was positive that was going to happen.

“Talk to me,” he said.

He’d moved into the corner of the couch and was angled toward her now.

She was frowning as if she didn’t like that move, but she tucked one foot under her thigh, her hands in her lap, her fingers moving around and plucking at imaginary threads.

“Alec said he suffered abuse as a child. His father drank a lot and would hit him and his mother. There was lots of verbalabuse too. He said his father always called him a pussy for being smart and not playing sports. People always asked him if he was gay or if he preferred men to women.”

“Was he?” he asked. “And hiding that fact from you?”

She sniffled. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve never told my parents this part. They only know what I found out after Alec died. But I have never discussed parts of my relationship.”

“Go on,” he said.

“We had a normal sex life,” she said. “Nothing that would make me think he wasn’t into women. It’s not like the two of us are together, but it was good. I’d think I’d know if he was gay or into men and I just didn’t see it. I only said that to give you an idea of his childhood. It was bad. The things he said to me about the abuse and his mother doing nothing about it, but she was receiving it too by the sounds of it.”

“You’re positive,” he asked.

“I’m not positive of anything, but the signs were there,” she said. “At random times he’d react to something. Like someone or something scaring him. If a person jumped out to scare you, how would you react?”

“I’d come out swinging,” he said. “I might yell, but I’d fight back.”

She laughed. “Me too. I’d scream, but I’d still be ready to fight back. Or I’d run depending on what it was.”

“What did Alec do?” he asked.

“He froze. He covered himself to avoid minimal damage.”

“Like someone who was used to being hit and knew it was useless to fight or hide,” he said.

“Yes. You can’t make that stuff up. I believe he suffered abuse at some point in his life. He said his mother never stuck up for him. The verbal abuse was more than the physical, but it was there.”

“Did he ever show signs of violence with you?” he asked.

He’d seen enough of it in his career to know the cycles of abuse.

“Never,” she said. “Despite everything that happened to him, he just left them and wrote them out of his life. He became a doctor. Anexcellentdoctor. But he’d always make comments about how much debt he had and how hard it was to pay down. As if he regretted choosing that path because it’d hidden other things.”

“Did he know who you were?” he asked. “Your father?”

“Not right away,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone, but in this area and the name, it was a joke in some ways. I made sure the car I drove wasn’t a luxury model my father sold. Things like that. I didn’t tell Alec who my father was until I was halfway through my pregnancy. The stress he was under to provide for us was putting a lot of pressure on him. The guilt of keeping it from him was weighing on me.”

“What did he say when he found out?” he asked.

“I thought he’d be relieved, but he just got nasty about it,” she said. “That I kept it from him as if it was some joke on my end. Did I want him to feel any worse about himself than that? That now he couldn’t measure up and it explained why my parents didn’t want to meet him.”