Page 53 of Heartbreaker
I stand on my tiptoes to get as close to eye level as I can with him. “You are not your father, John Brooks. You are your own person. You have your own victories and you make your own mistakes, but despite those mistakes, it doesn’t make you more like him. It just makes you…you.”
John smiles softly, kissing me. “Thank you, Sav.”
“Why doesn’t your mom leave him?” I ask, not expecting the soft chuckle in response. John takes one of my hands in his, threading our fingers together and bringing the back of my hand to his lips.
“My parents are divorced. Now.” John rolls his eyes. “My father left the day my sister turned eighteen. Took everything with him and moved into one of the wealthiest neighborhoods on the north side of the state. That was…Shit, that was almost five years ago.”
“He left on your sister’s birthday?”
“Waited until Mom couldn’t ask for child support anymore.”
“What a dick.”
“Ari and I are close, and my mom and I have been working on our relationship. I’ll never understand why she stayed, and for a while, I resented her for it. We didn’t need him. I would’ve done whatever it took to help her make ends meet.” John fiddles with the ring on my right-hand ring finger—a gold band with a bead-shaped blue topaz stone secured by four prongs, gifted to me by my parents when I graduated high school. When his eyes find mine again, they’re softer. “I begged her to leave him, offered to help with the bills, with whatever she needed. She always told me no. I just wanted her to get Ari out of that situation. When I was gone, I thought it would give her the push she needed to leave…They were living separate lives, but she stayed anyway.”
“Until he left her.”
“She and Ari came back from lunch to find his shit gone and divorce papers on the counter.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. And I was in Europe with EWE. I’ll never forget that phone call.” John bites down on his bottom lip, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head as if to rid himself of the memory. “Savannah, I don’t talk about this because I still haven’t dealt with it all. My dad kicked me out at seventeen because I wasn’t going to college. He said he wasn’t going to have a son who paraded around in tights for a living and kicked me out two weeks before graduation. I still feel guilty for leaving my sister behind in that mess. And the shit with my dad, I’ve never gotten closure. We don’t talk. We haven’t talked in years.”
This is a lot of information to process, but it explains so much. John Brooks is a quiet man. He’s loud and boisterous when he wants or needs to be, but over the last month, I’ve come to see him in a different light. I’ve seen a side of him most people don’t. His home, quiet and neutral and serene, reflects the things he’s been craving for so long. He has no keepsakes because there are none to have. No photos because they all remind him of the man who abandoned him. He keeps his family hidden the way he was taught to do, because I imagine his father wasn’t someone who wanted the whole town to know the truth, but also because he wants to do everything he can to protect his sister. The longing I’ve seen in his eyes when he looks at my family, wishing for the same. It all makes sense…
“Do you want to talk to him?” I ask, unsure whether it’s the right thing to say.
John rubs a hand through his hair, chewing on the corner of his lip. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say to Leeland Cabot.”
Cabot? I thought his last name was Brooks.
“Brooks was my middle name,” John says, as if he can read my mind. “I dropped Cabot when I turned eighteen because I didn’t want to be associated with him.”
“And what about your mom. How is your relationship with her now?”
“We’re still mending fences. I helped her buy a house a few years ago. Helped Ari pay for college, get a car, all of the things our dad should’ve helped with. I don’t—I don’t say all of this to make you feel any certain way, Savannah. I want you to understand why I am the way I am, sometimes. I’ve had to step up and make sure my family is taken care of. And I don’t—”
“You don’t have to handle this alone, John. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know that. I’ve known that, but it’s not always easy to talk about.”
“Well, whenever you want to—whenever you’re ready to—tell me more, I’ll be right here.”
“How did I get so lucky to find you?” John asks, tugging me into his arms and kissing my forehead.
We barely make it out of the car before my sister comes barreling out of Mom’s house. She sweeps Savannah into a tight embrace and says, “John hasn’t shut up about you from the moment he met you.”
“Oh, really?” My girlfriend’s brow raises in question, glancing my way.
“Well, a month or so later, I guess. You know he used to be a bit of—”
“Okay, that’s enough gossip,” I say, breaking them up and giving Ari a warning glare. But she doesn’t care. She threads their arms together and sticks her tongue out at me over her shoulder, guiding Savannah toward the house. I shouldn’t be surprised—I’m not, in fact—I had just hoped I’d have some more time to prepare myself before Ari outed me.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to the man I was on the second day of 2011 and tell him all the things he had to look forward to just by waiting a little bit longer for the woman Ari just dragged inside. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for him, though, because nothing could accurately relay the way I’ve felt the last two months. We’ve kept the truth about us quiet for no other reason than to enjoy the beginnings of our relationship without being under a microscope. The only people who know the truth are Amos and Xander, because we thought it was only right to inform them, and Brody and Raelynn. No one else has batted an eye at us spending almost every day together, thanks to the storyline. It’s made it easy to ignore the scrutinizing eye of Drake. Little does he know, his bet only hurried along the inevitable, and I don’t plan on ruining this good thing to keep a couple of hundred dollars in my bank account. He could offer me triple, and I still wouldn’t risk this. And after this weekend, there’s nothing that could ever make me want to walk away from this woman.
“You don’t need to book a hotel room so you can sleep in the same bed as your girlfriend. You’re adults, Brooks,” my mother says the moment I walk through the front door.
Well, hello to you, too.
