Page 49 of His Secret Betrayal
“Um, just Eve.”
He gives me a skeptical look. “Her name is just Eve?”
I nod.
“That’s really similar to Mom’s name,” he says slowly.
I laugh, although the sound comes out a little panicky as my heart rate triples. “Funny coincidence, isn’t it?”
He studies me for a long moment before frowning and turning back to watch his fishing line. “Yeah,” he mutters.
As the seconds tick by, each feeling more awkward than the last, I begin to wonder why Jax never talks about her. He would have been fairly young when Evelyn died—abandoned us—but he should still have some memories of her. And, just like Alek predicted, the time away from Evelyn this week has given me some perspective. Unfortunately, it’s also giving me a lot of questions.
“Why don’t you ever talk about her?” I ask quietly.
Jax sucks in a deep breath, giving me a sidelong glance that tells me I’ve taken him by surprise. “Mom?”
I nod. “You and Dad never talked about her.”
He looks away, making some adjustments to his fishing pole. I wait while the silence stretches between us. Most people would assume he’s ignoring me, but I know Jax well enough to recognize when he’s trying to gather his thoughts.
“I guess we wanted to protect you from the truth,” he finally admits.
That statement makes my chest tight, everything inside me going cold. “What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t a good person.”
“In what ways?” I push.
He hesitates. “Are you sure you want to know? Because she’s gone now, and I know you probably have this image in your head of what a mother should be like, but…that’s not how she was.”
“Tell me.”
Maybe I need to know the full, ugly truth so I’ll stop hoping one day I’ll come home and she’ll be the mother I’ve always dreamed of. Maybe he can help me accept that sometimes reality doesn’t always live up to our dreams.
“If she wasn’t ignoring me and Dad, then she was yelling at us. She had major anger issues, and a drug problem on top of that. Dad tried to get her help on numerous occasions, but she wasn’t interested. One time, he saved up enough money to get her into a really nice rehab. She disappeared with it, and came back two weeks later without a cent left. Waltzed right in while we were eating dinner like nothing even happened.”
The blood drains from my face, the new information leaving me gaping at him like a fish out of water. “What?”
He sighs. “Dad sent me to my room, but I still remember the way they screamed at each other. He told her he couldn’t do it anymore. That no matter how much he loved her, he had to put me first. When she left, it was one of the few times I saw him openly cry in front of me.”
“Damn.”
He nods. “She came back about a year later and swore she was clean. Told Dad all these pretty lies about how she did it for us, and she was going to be a good mom now. I had never seen him so ecstatic. He waslike a kid on Christmas morning, and then I watched that light dim over the next few months when he realized it was all a lie. She returned to her past behavior pretty quickly, and I think it gutted him.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I doubt anything could have prepared me for this story. But then Jax peers up at me with something shining in his eyes I’ve never seen before: hate. It’s there in the way his nostrils flare, his jaw clenching, and the way his body vibrates with resentment. It takes my breath away, because I didn’t think he was capable of it. Sure, he can be a bit stoic and grumpy, but that’s only a cover to mask how hard heloves. “Maybe it’s wrong to hate a dead woman, but I do. Watching Dad turn into a shell of the person he was made me hate her.”
“What happened next?” I’m not sure why I whisper the question when we’re out in the open, floating on a lake with no one around.
“She got pregnant with you, and Dad didn’t want to risk losing you in the process by making her leave. So, he let her stay.”
“Shit,” I murmur, my voice sounding as hollow as I feel.
He nods, his eyes going vacant. “I was too young to go to the hospital with them, so I’m not really sure what sort of complications arose during the labor. But when Dad came home without her, I remember thinking it was for the best. I thought, ‘At least now she can’t get her claws into Luke the way she has us.’”
Goddamn, the irony of that statement.
“Dad loved the hell out of her. Doted on her and worshipped the ground she walked on, and it still wasn’t enough for her to love us. Honestly, we’re better off without her. If she hadn’t died when she did, I probably would have taken you with me after Dad passed and raised you anyway. Even if I had to chase her away to do it.”
