Caught on Camera (41 page)

She waited, slipping her hands over his as she did. “What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”

His shoulders slumped, and his face took on the insecurity of a small child, his eyes begging for understanding. “I was just like him,” he ground out. “Diagnosed as severely dyslexic at the age of six. I know exactly what he’s going through.”

Shock kept her eyes from blinking and her mouth from producing saliva. JP was dyslexic?

“I’m sorry.” He cupped her jaw. “I should have found a better way to spill that. But the thing is, there is no better way. I’m severely dyslexic. No one knows but my family and Beverly.” He gave her a small smile. “I’m also aware it’s not the most impressive thing to learn about someone. But I can’t turn my back on Daniel. He’s a Davenport. My brother.” His voice cracked with the last word. “And even if I can’t be there as a true brother, I have to support him any way I can.”

His hand was still on her jaw, so she reached up to hold his hand in hers. “Not impressive? My God, the things you’ve accomplished are amazing. What you want to do for Daniel only makes you more beautiful in my eyes.”

She smiled, hoping to coax him to do the same, but it didn’t work.

“Lexi wants to keep him a secret, but she needs help.” His lips twitched as if to smile, but didn’t quite make it. “I’ll help any way I can, but I’m not sure the story won’t come out. Especially with me stepping into office.” He looked off past her shoulder, and his voice changed to take on a faraway quality. “I’m also not sure if she wants to keep it quiet because she’s ashamed of him, or if she really just doesn’t want him to have to deal with the media frenzy the way the rest of us do.”

“Why would she be ashamed of him? It’s not his fault.” And then she got it. JP had felt that way. Her heart pounded so hard she was sure he would hear it. If not, he had to feel the vibrations simply from touching her. She licked her lips. “Is that how you felt?”

Blue eyes swiveled back to her, and she wanted to cry for what she saw.

“Oh, honey.” She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. “How could you have ever felt that way? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No?” His laugh was hard and cold, but he locked his own arms around her. “Every day up until I was diagnosed, my mother spent hours with me. Playing games, reading. She called me her perfect little boy. I never asked why I was more perfect than my older brother, but at the time, I loved being doted on like that.”

Vega almost couldn’t stand to hear the decades-old pain pouring out of the man she loved, but knew he had to get it out. She stroked his hair and pressed a kiss to the side of his face. “Tell me the rest,” she whispered.

“The rest.” He sighed. His arms tightened around her. “Fine. Around the same time they figured out what was wrong with me, we moved to DC. My dad’s mom came with us. She became the one I spent all my free time with. She did my exercises with me, homeschooled me for a few years, then helped me with homework every night so I could go to school the next day and fake it long enough to come home and do it again. My mother spent most of her time with Dad. She hired Beverly as an assistant and got regular updates about me from her.”

Pain ached throughout every part of Vega. There had to be more to it than what he was saying. She’d seen how Emma loved her son. How proud she was of him. “Maybe the timing was just a coincidence or something? Didn’t she help your dad a lot with his political career?”

JP stiffened under her then pushed out of her arms. His face wore no warmth. “Neither she nor my father ever spoke of my disability again. To this day.”

Ouch
.

Wow. She sat there with her arms empty, unsure where to put them, and could not imagine bearing that kind of pain alone at such a young age. She lifted her hand to touch him, but he pulled back, suddenly eyeing her as if she were the enemy.

She lowered her hand. “Is there more?”

At first he shook his head, then he looked away and blew out a breath. “It’s just…I’ve never told anyone that.”

“I know,” she murmured. She could see that she meant that much to him. Which made the fact she still had to walk away even harder. Yet she wouldn’t be the one to cause him any additional pain, especially not after what she’d just learned. She wouldn’t ask him to stand by her when her history could ruin him. Walking away was the right thing to do. But before she went, she had to know one thing more. “Can I ask you something?”

His laugh was sardonic. “Why would I keep anything from you at this point?”

“Are you taking office only because of your mother? Is this your attempt to win her approval after all this time?”

“Of course not.” He stood and moved to the balcony.

She followed. She may not be able to be there for him in the future, but she would do anything she could before she left. “Then what is it about? Because politics isn’t what you really want, is it?”

JP stood at the railing, his hands curled over the top of the wrought iron, his arms locked at the elbows. “Why would you think that?”

“I watch your face anytime it comes up. I saw it tonight as your mother hugged you and said you were finally getting what you always wanted. In fact, I’ll have to edit that shot, because no one in the world could look at it and believe this is what you want.”

“I’m doing what I was born to do, Vega.” He glanced over at her, his eyes asking her to support him. “I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

She’d kicked off her shoes earlier, and liked the height now separating them. Wanting to give him as much strength as she could, she slipped under his arm and put her back to the city. She lifted her face to his. “Quit making choices based on your mother, JP. Do what
you
want. What is it you would do if none of this other stuff was in the way?”

JP studied her, staring down into her eyes, and saw the same love he felt staring back at him. She really did get him. He used his thumb to caress her cheek, then over her eye, tracing one perfect brow. He loved touching her. “You mean other than spend the rest of my life with you?”

Her inhalation was short, but he didn’t miss it. She might care for him, but she wasn’t ready to discuss forever yet.
Damn
. Yet he couldn’t stop now, not after he’d put it out there.

“I love you, Vega. Surely you know that. And yes, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m sorry to put it out there so bluntly, but I had to tell you. It feels like I’m running out of time.”

Her pupils dilated, and he could sense her desire to flee. She nodded. “We are running out of time. Let’s not ruin it by pushing for something we can’t have. You have to trust me on this. I would be worse for you than Daniel’s parentage coming out. I swear. If not…”

She shook her head and moved as if to step away from him, but he tightened his arms, trapping her to his chest. The tear glinting in her lashes broke his heart. “Tell me what you’re afraid of, baby. We’ll figure it out together.”

The tear slipped loose and trekked down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand before he could do it for her. “I think I should go.”

Her words lacerated his heart. She was going to run. And without understanding why, he knew this time would be forever. “Tell me you love me,” he pleaded, hating himself for it at the same time the words clawed from his throat. “I know you do, I can see it. Tell me.”

She bowed her head, her forehead landing against his chest, but she remained silent.
Dammit
. His chest rose and fell with his breaths. What had he done wrong?

Thoughts of not being good enough flitted through his mind, but he pushed them aside. He was a success, and he could take on anyone who wanted to challenge him. He couldn’t be any better for her.

Only, she was still going to leave him.

With a soft moan, Vega pushed against him and he dropped his arms.

“I need to use the restroom to clean up,” she said. “And then I’m going to go.”

He watched her hurry inside, and fought the urge to chase her. He wanted to tie her down and force her to share with him. Force her to admit she couldn’t just walk away unaffected.

But he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t push her again. He’d laid his heart on the line and she’d said no thanks. He was finished begging.

He glanced at the corner of the piano that had the chunk missing, and shook his head at the irony. He would never beg again.

Ten minutes later when Vega hadn’t returned, JP could wait no longer. If she was leaving, he wanted her gone.

Stalking down the hall, he drew up short at the light leaking through his open bedroom door. With cautious steps, he moved to the doorway and peeked inside.

Vega sat on his bed, his old tackle box in her lap, digging through the trinkets he’d stored there so many years ago. As she poked her finger inside, moving items around, tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto her chest.

It took everything he had not to go to her, but he couldn’t do it anymore. If she wouldn’t give him her heart, he had to hold on to his.

But he also couldn’t walk away.

She pulled out a piece of paper, read it, then spread it out flat on the comforter. Next she held up a Matchbox car and smiled. The Jaguar was a replica of a car his father had once driven. In the fourth grade, JP had taken it to school for show-and-tell.

When she got to the tattered copy of
The Three Bears
, held together by the thread his mother had sewn through the spine, she turned it over and over as if doing so would reveal all its secrets.

“She read that to me so often I could repeat it verbatim by the time I was four.”

“O
H!”
T
HE BOOK
slipped from Vega’s fingers at JP’s words. She hadn’t known he was there. She glanced around then, trying to figure out how she’d gotten into his bedroom, before remembering she’d caught sight of the open chest as she’d returned from washing her face. She’d been unable to walk out of his life without seeing what items meant so much to him that he’d kept them all these years.

She swiped at her cheeks and worked on a smile. “Who read it to you?”

“My mother.” He remained in the doorway, looking relaxed, but Vega didn’t miss the clutch his fingers had on the doorframe. “She read it to me every day.”

“Did your grandmother teach you how to read the words once you started learning?”

He shifted and crossed his arms over his chest, resting one shoulder against the jamb. “No one has read that particular book since I was six.”

Oh. She gulped. Another tear rolled over her cheek for the little boy he’d once been. Picking up the book again, she placed it on top of the paper listing the specifics of his diagnosis and reached back into the box. Pulling out a string, she held it up to him in question.

His smile was small but real. “I used to do a magic trick with that. There should be a knot in there to go along with it.”

A bleep of laughter gurgled up her throat. She put the string, as well as the knot, on top of the book, and lifted out an envelope with colored pieces of paper tucked inside. She peeked in then pulled them out without waiting to see if he minded. They were report cards from fourth and fifth grade. Straight As on every one.

“Wow,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

“I was a driven child.” He shrugged. “And I think those teachers had me figured out. They made adjustments so I didn’t have to read or write in class as much, and I took a lot of my tests orally.”

“Sounds like you were in a good school.”

“I guess.”

She wondered if his mother had seen to that or if it had been purely accidental. Rarely are things quite so random.

Next was a slightly curved, worn piece of paper, folded the right size to slip into a young boy’s back pocket. She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “I think I might have found a love letter.”

He didn’t respond.

Nervousness shook her fingers as she unfolded the yellowed paper. Written in a child’s shaky hand, she read the words
Dear Santa
and glanced up at him. He stood by the bed now.

“I didn’t know how to spell, and I still got some of the letters backward, but Cat wrote it out for me first. I copied from hers. It took me three hours to get it just right.”