Bad Boys Do (Donovan Brothers Brewery 2) - Page 127
“Ever?”
“Only when Tessa insists.”
She settled back into her seat and watched Jamie as he stared out the window.
“They were really great parents,” he said.
“I’m sure they were. Do you look like your dad?”
His lips turned up for a moment. “Yeah. My mom used to complain that she did all the work of having babies, and we got all of his genes.”
She didn’t know what to say. That she was sorry he’d lost them? Those words seemed so paltry in the face of what had been taken from him. “I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly.
“Me, too. I wasn’t…I wasn’t the son they deserved.”
“Oh, Jamie—”
“It was my fault, Olivia.”
“What was?”
“The accident.”
Her heart clenched and her lungs seemed to freeze. “What do you mean? You were there?”
“No. None of us were there. Tessa was spending the night at a friend’s house. Eric was already living in Denver. And I was out doing what I always did—getting into trouble.”
“So how could it have been your fault?”
Jamie closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard, but when he opened his eyes they were dry. “I told my parents I was going to a school dance, but there was no dance. Some rich girl was having a party at her house up in the mountains. I had a car, so I volunteered to be the designated driver. I wanted to do the right thing. But I didn’t. When we got to the party, I started drinking along with everyone else. But then we had to go. My friend had to be home by midnight or he’d be grounded. I was drunk. Everyone was drunk. So I called my parents. I told them I’d had a drink and I needed a ride home. Of course, Mom and Dad jumped in the car. But they never made it. It’d been raining for three days. There was a rockslide. They drove right into a boulder. Never even hit the brakes.”
He let Olivia take his hand, but he didn’t look at her. She tried to swallow her tears. My God. He’d been sixteen. He must have felt… “It was an accident, Jamie.”
“It wasn’t an accident. It was me being irresponsible. ‘Oh, sure, I’ll drive. I’ll just have one beer.’”
“You called them because that was the right thing to do!”
“No,” he said firmly. “The right thing to do would’ve been to not lie and go to the party. Or stay sober when I told my friends I would.”
“You did the right thing by not getting in the car with your friends and driving home drunk. Then you would’ve been dead.”
“I know. But at least my little sister would’ve been raised by a mom and dad instead of two clueless brothers. At least—”
“Stop. Jamie, you can’t blame yourself for an accident. Your family doesn’t blame you, do they?”
He finally looked at her then. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”
Oh, God. She saw it in his face then. The reason he’d pushed his brother and sister away. The reason he felt he owed them so much.
“I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t want them to hate me as much as I hated myself.”
“Jamie, no.” She reached for him, getting as close as she could in his car. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I was a coward. I never wanted them to know how worthless I was.”
“Don’t say that,” she managed to say past her tears. “It’s not true, Jamie.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m finally figuring it out. I think I deserve something better than how I’ve been living. At the very least, I want to live in a way that would have made them proud. I owe them that. My parents and my siblings.”
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