Page 45 of Mine to Keep

Jamison closed his eyes for a brief moment and inhaled sharply. The thick, rich scent of sizzling meat filled his lungs. He allowed the aroma to linger for as long as he could. He needed the pleasantness of it to crowd out the bitter emotions filling his heart.

He blinked. He had no desire to fight with his brothers, but they didn’t make it easy. “Have you ever once put yourself in my shoes?”

“I’ve thought about what it must be like for you. And I know, initially, I’d have been upset, too. But dragging it out this long, I don’t understand that.”

Of course, Seth didn’t have a clue because, at the end of the day, it didn’t affect him or how he looked at himself in the mirror. Jamison woke up every day and, before he let his feet hit the floor, told himself that he wouldn’t allow this to control his world.

But the second he brought that razor to his cheeks; he saw how different he was from the five brothers he had been raised with and how much he looked like the four siblings he’d hadn’t known he had. It wasn’t major things that stood out, but tiny details. Like the fact that he was the only one in his family who was left-handed.

Like Steve.

Like Steve’s sons, Orlando and Melbourne. Or the girls, Tallahassee and Miami.

Or that Jamison wasn’t as tall as his brothers, who were all at least six-one.

Steve was five-ten. Orlando and Melbourne were five-eleven.

Jamison could rattle off a dozen other tiny differences that many wouldn’t notice, but they smacked him right between the eyes, and they mattered to him because they made him feel as though he wasn’t part ofhisfamily. It sounded crazy, even to him.

However, inside, his heart and his soul had shattered into a million pieces, and he couldn’t find them all to put them back together again, no matter how hard he tried. It became this impossible game of trying to fit into something that he’d thought had been his home but had turned out to be a lease all along.

Yep. Crazy.

“We’re still brothers. Nothing and no one can take that away from us,” Seth said.

That was a true statement, but thingsweredifferent. They no longer shared the same biology. Not completely. There were differences, and as subtle as they might be, they existed, and Jamison couldn’t shake how distant it made him feel from his family. “I’m trying to make things right with you and all our brothers.”

“But not Mom and Steve,” Seth said as a statement and not a question.

“Why do you care so much about me having a relationship with him? Why does it matter to you?” Jamison tossed a bunch of the hot dogs and hamburgers onto a tray and handed them to one of the servers before placing more raw meat on the grill. He could stand here all day as long as he had a beer in his hand.

“Because it matters to Mom. I love her, and I love you. And believe it or not, it matters to Dad.”

Jamison took a nice big swig of his cold beverage. His father wanted him to bury the hatchet. He wanted his boys—which included Jamison since he’d raised him as his own—to stay as one big, happy family.

And Jamison wanted to give that to his dad. He just couldn’t stomach being around Steve. His therapist had once asked him if he felt abandoned by Steve.

His quick answered had been no.

But that wasn’t true.

Only Jamison wasn’t willing to admit that out loud.

“I’m here. And I’ll be at family parties. But I’m not going to welcome Steve and his kids with open arms. He didn’t want me in his life when I was born. If he did, he would have stuck around instead of letting Dad raise me.”

“It’s not that simple. And if you’d let anyone tell you what—”

“Don’t go there, big brother.” Jamison slammed the lid on the grill. “It doesn’t matter to me what the reason was. He wasn’t a teenager. He was a grown-ass adult who had an affair with a married woman. They both knew what they were doing, and Mom got pregnant. He didn’t want me. Dad did.”

“I’ve never met anyone as stubborn as you,” Seth said. “Except for maybe our mother.” He pushed from the counter and strolled toward a group of people who had gathered by the hot tub.

No sooner did Jamison catch his breath than his mother appeared.

Wonderful.

Well, rumor had it that she’d moved into Steve’s place. And itwasher party that she was throwing for her daughter-in-law, so he knew he couldn’t avoid her forever. He just hoped that he wouldn’t have to speak too much to Steve. That was always awkward and painful.

“Where’s Cheryl?” his mother asked.

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