Page 75 of Loaded

He shakes his head. “I’ve always loved you, Hornet. You’d know it, if you just?—”

I stand up. “Jacob Kingsley.”

His frown is intense. “No one has called me that in more than ten years.”

It’s his real name. Not many people even know it anymore. “I know you, and I’ve known you so long that I know the you most people have never even met.” I put my hands on my hips. “I know you better than you know yourself.” I really do think that’s true. Insightful isn’t a label many people would slap on Jake Priest.

“And that’s why I love?—”

I shove my finger against his mouth and he freezes, his eyes focusing on my finger until I yank it away. “Stop. I mean it.”

“Beatrice.” He won’t stop looking at me like that. It’s unnerving.

“I’m toxic,” I finally say. “My family. My baggage.” Ishake my head. “You and I were never a good idea. Not for even one minute. Not then, and not now.”

“Even when we met, you knew what I was,” he says. “You always knew.”

“And that’s why we’re a bad fit. It’s why you’ve never asked me out before now, not even once. Not in all the years you’ve been a part of my life.”

“I was scared about losing you,” he says. “But I would do anything, fix anything, change anything to be with you.”

I sigh slowly. “Ah, Jake.” I wave him over and sit back on the piano bench. Then I drop my head against his shoulder. “You’re scared. That’s the first true thing you’ve said.”

“What?”

“Now that I like someone, and I mean,reallylike someone, you’re scared. Just like the little boy I met so many years ago.”

“What are you even saying?”

I’m staring at the music I wrote today, the music I’ve been too afraid to write for, well, for my whole life. “Jake, you have exactly one person you really trust.”

“You.” He nods. “You get it.”

“I do, and in all that time, if you really were in love with me, brash, brave, over-confident Jake, do you really think you’d never have asked me out? Kissed me?” I turn to face him.

He looks confused.

“Jake Priest doesn’t dither. He’s not crippled by indecision.” I press my index finger against his nose. “But now you’re worried that you’re about to lose me.”

His voice is broken when he whispers, “I can’t lose you, Bea.” It cracks when he says, “I can’t.”

“I know.” I wrap one arm as far around his shouldersas it will go. “And you never will. Not ever. Do you hear me?”

“But we’re not really family.”

I hate how small his voice is, and I hate that he doesn’t already know this in his bones. “No one on earth could be more my brother than you are.” Tears pool in my eyes. “Not even if I found out I had a secret twin whom Mom sold to the circus. You’d still be more my brother than he was. Nothing will ever change that. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter who I date or kiss or marry, you will always be my brother.”

“But Emerson left.” Now he’s crying. Jake Priest, whom I have never once seen cry when a camera wasn’t rolling, is sobbing next to me. “He just left, and now we never see him anymore.”

“Oh, Jake.” I wrap both arms around him, and he cries against my shoulder. “He’s not gone. You just haven’t gone to see him, and you haven’t invited him here.”

“He’s a Richmond now.”

“He is,andhe’s still a Fansee, just like you and me, in our hearts. In our souls.”

We stay like that for an awkwardly long time, but eventually Jake gets it together, and he straightens. “It would be great if?—”

“I don’t need to tell anyone,” I say. “The fact that you bawled on my shoulder will go with me to my grave.”

---