“He hit you.”

I nodded even though it wasn’t a question.

“Often,” I replied.

“Does he still?”

I shook my head. “By the time I reached sixteen, I was two inches taller than he was. He’s also slowed down and weakened from all of the extra weight he’s put on over the years. One night he went to hit me and I caught his arm, twisting it until it nearly broke. That was the last time he tried to hit me or my brother.”

“Jason, right? That’s your brother’s name.”

I nodded again.

“Your mother never tried to stop him? Or leave him?”

I made a sound of disbelief at the back of my throat. “She might have tried a long time ago when we were young but I can’t ever remember it. She’s not a bad mother, per se, but was broken down by his verbal abuse long ago. She would stick up for us or try to keep us out of trouble from time to time.”

“Then why do you call her a social climber?”

“Because as much as she might have disliked my father’s treatment of all of us, she had no problem putting on a smile for all of her friends, throwing the most lavish events at Townsend Manor and all that shit.”

It was silent for a few moments.

“Jason got it the worst, though.” I looked up at Deborah. “My father targeted him.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Who fucking knows. Jason always had trouble in school. He hated reading, got terrible grades, and our father never let up on him about it.”

My chest tightened over the guilt I felt. Academics, sports, making friends had always come naturally to me. It was almost too easy, so much so, that I turned things like making friends or getting girls into a game just to make it fun. But Jason struggled in every area. He was almost my total opposite.

“My father died when I was just eleven years old.”

It wasn’t her words that surprised me but the way she’d said them. The tenderness she used when speaking the words my father. She’d loved him.

“How?”

“On the mountain there was very little work except working in the mines.”

The mountain. It was how she referred to where she grew up.

“But it was dangerous work. I remember when the layoffs started happening. My mother was terrified Daddy would lose his job. But he got lucky … or so we thought. After the first round of layoffs, he still had a job. We were grateful. Unfortunately, it was short lived. A month later, there was an accident. My father and two other workers got caught in a collapse. It took them two weeks to dig their bodies out. We were comforted by the fact that he probably died immediately in the collapse, and didn’t suffer.”

Lifting my head, I pressed a kiss to her lips. Not from passion but to comfort her.

She blinked away the tears that had accumulated in her eyes and laid her head back on my chest. My hand rose to her hair, stroking it. This was the most intimacy I’d ever shared with a woman, and our being nude had nothing to do with it.