“Well, the medical field, yeah. I became an EMT first.” Another smile. “Cam and I stuck around after the ambulance got there and watched them work. I knew right then that the medical field was for me.” Finishing up, she collected the supplies and threw away the trash. “I worked as an EMT for three years after high school before starting nursing school. I’d study between calls and go to class on my days off. Graduated with my bachelor’s degree two years after I started, and I’ve been an emergency nurse ever since.”
“That’s a great story.” He meant it. “You should be proud of everything you’ve accomplished.”
“I am.” She rewarded him with a genuine smile. “What about you?”
“Me?”
Poppy nodded. “What made you want to be a SEAL?”
It was the exact conversation he’d been hoping to avoid. Something he never, ever discussed. With anyone.
But as Jax sat there, staring up into her expectant gaze, he began talking. His mouth and vocal cords moving almost of their own accord.
“My mom was an addict,” he started at the beginning. As he spoke, he kept a close eye on her reaction to the dark, ugly truth. “She’d bring guys back to our shithole apartment night after night while I was locked away in my room.”
He stopped there, waiting for the pity or judgement to come as it had when he’d been younger. Kids teasing him for being white trash with a worthless whore of a mother.
But he saw no pity. He found no judgement. Only a look of intense focus as if she were hanging on every single sordid word.
“Pretty sure she was hooking for money to buy the drugs,” he continued. “Sometimes the guys would show up, get what they want, and leave. Other times, they thought it was fun to use me much like a dog uses a chew toy.” He swallowed the sudden rush of emotion forming from the life-altering memories.
“What about your dad?”
“You mean my sperm donor?” Jax huffed out a humorless breath. “That piece of shit took off before I was born. Couldn’t handle having a kid, I guess.” He shrugged. “Anyway, when I was five, she left me with her latest dick of a boyfriend to supposedly get groceries.”
“Where’d she go?”
“No clue.” To this day, he had no idea where she’d disappeared to that night. “She left, and I never saw her again. Not until a news story ran about a suburban mother and wife who’d been killed during a home invasion.”
“Oh, Jax.” Her tone was that of sympathy, not the pity he was still expecting to hear. “So…what happened after? I mean, who took care of you?”
“The guy she left me with apparently had a soft spot for kids. Don’t misunderstand, he was still a worthless dickhead. But he kept me fed and clothed. Made sure I went to school, and…he never hit me.”
Not once.
“Is that why you joined the Navy? To get away from it all?”
Perceptive beauty, aren’t you?
“Yes.” He nodded.
This next part made him feel vulnerable as hell, and Jax Monroe did not do vulnerable. Not anymore.
But there was just something about Poppy. Something that made himwantto share it all with her.
“The Navy was my out, but it also gave me purpose. I was able to take all that pent up anger and put it to use doing something good. I got strong.” Really strong. “And when I became a SEAL, well…that opened up an entirely new opportunity. One that allowed me to help the innocent. Those who couldn’t help themselves.”
“And take out the bad guys.”
One corner of his mouth curved. “Fuck yeah, I did.”
Poppy smiled, the look in her eyes one of acceptance and…dare he think it…
Pride?
“And Declan?”
“Declan,” Jax sighed his half-brother’s name. “Declan was home the day those men broke into their house. He was eight, I think. Anyway, they locked him in the closet while they raped and then shot our mother.”