Page 71 of Risk

I take a seat on the barstool across from him, keeping hold of Balboa, who seems quite content in my arms. Using my training, I school my features to neutral, but give him a warm smile to encourage him to continue talking.

“Shit. I really don’t know how to say this. It’s not something I talk about often, and in recent years, there’s only been one person I’ve told it to.”

“Zeus?” I ask softly.

“Yeah. I was drunk and at my lowest.”

It hurts me that he was ever low. And that to tell whatever this is to another human being, the one man he considers family, he had to be drunk to share it.

He looks away, staring out of the floor-to-ceiling window to the left of us—one of the many windows that encapsulate his apartment. I feel like whatever it is he’s seeing right now is not the same thing I’m seeing.

He scrubs his hand over his face, sighing, and I’ve seen the move enough times on other people to know he’s rubbing away a memory he doesn’t want to see.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I say gently. “It’s okay.”

He looks at me. “No, you’re living with me. You’re carrying my children. You, more than anyone else, have a right to know the kind of man you’re doing those things with.”

I feel like he’s trying to scare me, but I know for sure that there is no way Zeus would have allowed me to live with him, let alone have Kaden in his life and around Cam and the girls, if he thought for one second that Kaden was a danger to anyone.

“Okay,” is all I say. There’s nothing more I can say until I know what I’m working with here.

The ball cap comes off his head. His fingers run through those overgrown dirty-blond strands before the cap is tugged back down, pulling the brim lower, covering his eyes.

Because whatever he’s about to tell me, he’s ashamed of it.

I love my career path in life. But sometimes, I wish, in my own personal circumstances, I could switch my brain off to the psychology of people.

“You know I was in foster care. That I grew up in the system until I aged out.”

I nod. I know this because it is something he’s told me himself. We didn’t have a full conversation about it. He just casually mentioned it once. I know that’s how he deals with the big stuff, the things that have happened to him. He mentions them in a casual way because these types of conversations are hard for him. Painful, I’d say, from the tightening in his shoulder muscles. The clenching and unclenching of his hands.

“The reason I was in the system was because…” He stands, then moves behind the barstool. I’m guessing the island wasn’t enough of a barrier between us.

His big, strong hands grip ahold of the back of the stool. I can tell how tight he’s holding on from the whitening of his knuckles.

He clears his throat. “I was in the system because my father had murdered my mother and he had gone to prison and there was no family who wanted to take me in.”

I’m not shocked. I’m not a person who can easily be surprised.

I make sure to keep my expression neutral.

He slowly lifts his eyes to my face. I’m not sure what he’s looking for as his eyes do a quick scan of my face—maybe dismay and pity. But he should know better. He knows I don’t judge people. And that has nothing to do with my job. That’s the way I’ve always been.

Well, that’s actually a lie. I have judged someone. My father. I’m understanding and accepting of the man he was throughout my childhood and the father he wasn’t, but he’s trying to be that now. But for a long time, I wasn’t understanding. I was a hurt kid who had lost her mom and wanted her once-loving father to care for her. But instead, he folded in on himself and turned to alcohol.

“I’m sorry that happened to you and your mom. Neither of you deserved it.”

He’s still staring at me. The only thing that tells me he heard me is a slight tilt of his head.

“Did you hear what I said?” His words come out as coarse as his voice sounds. Like he’s annoyed with me.

“Yes, I heard you. Did you hear me?”

His jaw tics. “My father murdered my mother. He was an abusive, disgusting excuse for a human being, who used to beat on her any chance he could. He didn’t even have the excuse of being an alcoholic.”

That last part was intentional. My father wasn’t a physically abusive or cruel drunk, except to himself. He was just fuckingabsent, even when he was physically there. But Kaden’s trying to piss me off. And I’m human, so of course, it annoys me, but I won’t rise to the bait.

“He was just a sick motherfucker who got his kicks from beating on a woman. And one day, he beat her just too fucking much, and then she was dead, and he was in prison.”

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