“When your dad threw you out?”
Jed’s gaze sharpened, and Max remembered too late that he’d learned that from a heated argument between Kim and Nick long before Jed even came home.Jedhad never divulged what drove him from Ashton to join the Army. “Sorry. I like to put my foot in my mouth.”
Jed exhaled quietly, and the hard stare disappeared. “You’re okay. You’ve got nothing on some people I’ve known, but enough about me. How long did you live with Nick and Kim? Tess told me her room used to be yours.”
“A few years, off and on.” Max reached for a pillow and jammed it under his head. “I shared a house with a… well, with a boyfriend, and when that didn’t work out, I moved in with Kim until I figured I couldn’t live with your brother.”
Jed’s expression hardened again. “He kicked you out?”
Max shook his head as he tried to get comfortable. With his stiff and sore muscles, it was difficult. “Oh, no. I wanted to leave. Kim meant well, but you know what that house is like. In the end, it made my seizures worse. I have less here than I’ve ever had, at least before—”
He broke off as he realized his loose, postseizure tongue was about to say too much, but he wasn’t quick enough for Jed’s sharp mind.
Not that Jed said so out loud. His subtly arched eyebrow was enough to tell Max he’d caught the slip.
“They went away for a while,” Max said by way of explanation. “When I was a teenager, I was seizure free for three years.”
“What happened?”
“They came back. Shit happens, I guess.”
“I guess,” Jed echoed, but Max could see he was suddenly miles away.
Jed did that from time to time—slipped away to another place. From the tortured look in his eyes when he came back, Max could tell it wasn’t anywhere nice.
Chapter Twelve
JEDWATCHEDTess scamper around the bases set out in the school gymnasium. It was the second time he’d come to softball practice. In his peripheral vision, he could see Max coaxing Belle through her batting drills. Jed’s lips turned up in a faint smile as Flo watched the ball sail through the air with mournful eyes. She wasn’t allowed to play when practice was held indoors.
Sensing eyes on him, Max looked up and grinned. Jed grinned back before he deliberately averted his gaze. Things had been strange since Max’s seizure and the resulting round of musical beds. Max seemed to have bounced back unscathed, and neither man had mentioned the two nights they’d spent together, but despite them both returning to their own rooms, those nights hung over them like a warm haze of blurred boundaries.
Jed had spent a lot of time with people who were vulnerable and scared, but it was different with Max. Everything was different with Max. On the second night, lulled by the metronome of Max’s deep and even breathing, Jed had fallen asleep wanting nothing more than to climb inside him and pry the epilepsy right out of his damned brain.
But that wasn’t all that bothered him. Max had been all over the place the day after the seizure, slipping in and out of lucidity, and Jed wondered if he’d meant to tell him about the locked box under the sink. He hadn’t noticed the tattered plastic folder of old documents the first time he’d opened it, distracted by caring for Max, but later that day he’d returned to the box to stash the tramadol prescription he’d reluctantly filled. This time, he saw a crumpled folder, and this time, he couldn’t help but look.
He wished he hadn’t. He’d known from the beginning that something about Max didn’t quite add up—the vague back story, the mysterious, unexplained absence of any immediate family except Kim. Even the frequent, brief pause when someone called his name. Jed had put it down to the epilepsy, and his own overactive imagination, but the birth certificate and expired Irish passport in the folder said otherwise.
Max O’Dair wasn’t quite who he said he was.
Jed considered confronting Max with the passport. Then he considered closing the box and pretending he’d never seen it all, but in the end, he left his tramadol in the box and hoped Max would realize he’d seen it and come to Jed of his own volition.
Max hadn’t, of course. Why would he? It wasn’t like he owed Jed an explanation, and there were plenty of possible explanations for why he’d changed his name. And Kim too. Now Jed had started to pay attention, he was almost certain her name wasn’t her own either.
“Earth to Coop? I said, you should totally come and spend Christmas with us. My mom would love to have you. Are you even listening to me?”
Dan’s casual use of a long forgotten childhood nickname took Jed by surprise. He hadn’t seen much of Dan since he’d been back—PT and all the crap that came with it took up most of his time—but each encounter with him reminded him of something his mom had always said.
“The sign of a true friendship is one you can pick up after decades and nothing’s changed.”
Bullshit platitudes weren’t Jed’s scene, but he could see the logic when it came to Dan, and indeed, Dan’s whole family. If he had to acknowledge Christmas at all, there was nowhere he’d rather be than the Valesco family home. But it wasn’t to be. He opened his mouth to respond, but was cut short by Tess barreling into him.
She collided with his left side, her sharp knees and elbows jamming into his leg, and her head thwacking his stomach with a sickening thud. “Uncle Jed! I ran all the way around twice and you didn’t even notice.”
Jed gritted his teeth to keep the string of profanities inside. White dots danced in front of his eyes, he swayed, and for a horrifying moment he feared he would fall and take Tess with him.
Suddenly, Max was there. He pried Tess from Jed’s grasp, and after a brief, concerned backward glance, took her off toward the far side of the gym.
Jed stepped back, steadying himself on the wall. He felt Dan’s gaze on him as he took some long slow breaths.