Elkin Brothers Christmas: The Complete Series by Leslie North

Author:Leslie North [North, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-22T18:30:00+00:00

14

Anna knew it would be so easy to give in to Gabe.

With his hands on her face and his stormy eyes locked on hers, she wanted nothing more than to tell him everything. Every last, awful detail. It would be cleansing, in a way. She wouldn’t have to keep that part of her life carefully separate.

But she hadn’t come here to unburden herself about her past. And tension between them was the last thing she wanted. Tiredness pressed down on her shoulders, a bone-weary feeling that had dogged her for years. It was easier to give him an edited version of the past than to convince him that he didn’t need to know.

Because he did need to know. Anna’s stomach turned as though she was standing at the edge of a high cliff, waiting to fall, knowing it was inevitable. If she was going to live with the way she felt about him, then he had to know. Better now than later when her past could only do more damage.

“My parents went through a bitter divorce when I was young,” she said, finding it the easiest way to begin. They’d divorced because it was the first time her father had been in prison for longer than a year. The information rose to the tip of her tongue, but just as quickly died away. It was one fact that didn’t come under the share category. “I had to take care of myself because my mother was working nonstop to provide for us, and my older brother was always busy.”

She could still remember the stepstool in the kitchen that she would pull up to the stove to cook macaroni and cheese before she grew tall enough to do it unaided. The extra food from school had come home in a plastic bag that was painfully obvious—all those packages of oatmeal and granola bars and things to tide her over through the weekend. Anna had tried her best to stuff the food deep into her backpack, so nobody else would see, but those telltale bags were handed out in the lunchroom. There was really no hiding it.

And her mother hadn’t just been working. She’d been bringing lots of different men home. Those men would stay the night, leaving early without being quiet. “I was on my own a lot.”

Gabe studied her, compassion in his eyes. It wasn’t pity, no—she’d seen plenty of that. It was empathy. But how long would that last? Gabe would never really understand what it had been like to grow up the way she had. He would never know what it was like to watch her older brother follow his father’s footsteps into a criminal’s life. All those facts simmered beneath the surface, never far away, but she couldn’t let them free.

Not to Gabe. Not to anyone.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t have had to be alone.” Hearing that from him made her feel painfully vulnerable, like he could see inside her mind to all her roiling thoughts. No. Letting people in like that was a recipe for disaster.

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