Because I was staring at his face, I didn’t see his hand move in the small, dark space between us, but I felt the sweep of his thumb across my lower lip, all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. “She was given a lot of prescriptions for pain. It started off legit, but she got addicted. I think being high helped her not deal with her grief, you know?”

Oh God, did I ever know. I stared at him, unblinking and whispered, “Yes.”

“The docs eventually cut her off, but she was hooked. She didn’t want to deal, so she moved on to other things—heroin and OxyContin.” His thumb glided over my lower lip again, causing me to shiver. “My parents tried to get her help, but there was no stopping what was coming. I was in boot camp when our mom found her in her bedroom. She’d overdosed. Died sometime during the night.” He drew in a deep breath. “For the longest time, I blamed myself.”

My brows knitted. “Why?”

“I thought maybe if I’d been home, I could’ve stopped her,” he replied. “Hell, a part of me still thinks that.”

“You can’t help people unless they want to be helped,” I told him. “Trust me. I know.”

“I know you do,” came his quiet response. “But that’s some guilt I’ll probably carry with me for a while, if not forever. She was . . . she was my little sister. It was my job to keep her safe.”

“Oh Jax,” I whispered. The knot was bigger in my throat. “I’m so sorry,” I said, and I knew it sounded lame, but I didn’t know what else to say.

His thumb did another pass and then his hand moved away. “There’s nothing you need to apologize for.”

“I know.” A moment passed as I dragged in a deep breath, and then I rolled back onto my other side, facing the closet door again. My heart ached for him and his family and a sister that never had a chance to become anything. We didn’t have the same past. No way. But there was a similarity there. Mom was who she was today because she couldn’t get past the grief and heartache, and I wondered, if Jax knew about the pageants, then did he know about the fire and about Kevin and Tommy? “I’m sorry you lost your sister and what you experienced overseas. You . . . you must be very brave.”

“I think it was more of not wanting to die or to see my friends die than it was being brave.”

That was a very modest thing to say. Since he shared so much with me, I felt like I needed to share something really unknown about me, but it was hard. It took a bit to get my tongue to form the words. “I’m a liar.”

There was a pause and then, “What?”

Even though it was dark, my face filled with blood. “I’m a liar. My friends back home—Teresa and her boyfriend Jase, and Avery and Cam. Cam’s Teresa’s older brother, and him and Avery are like the cutest couple in the world,” I rambled on, nervous. “Cam has a pet tortoise and he got Avery one.”