in breathless silence.
"Yeah, now you're afraid. Maybe you're smarter than I gave you credit for."
"Who... who did you kill?"
"He was always bigger than me," Jason murmured, his gaze distant as if he'd left her and traveled back through time to his boyhood, "even to the last. I was a tall kid, but I was very skinny. It didn't matter. He was drunk. I pushed him. He fell and hit his head on the edge of an ax I'd been using earlier in the day. For a long time, I kept searching my memory, wondering if somehow subconsciously I'd put that ax there on purpose. I killed my own father."
"It was an accident," she said, her voice trembling.
"It doesn't matter. He's no less dead than he would have been had I killed him intentionally. My rage got control of me. That's why I came here, don't you understand? So I couldn't hurt anyone else!"
"No!" Caroline cried sharply. "You can lie to yourself, Jason, but not to me. You've hidden yourself away in this jungle to escape a world you don't understand. It's not hurting someone else that frightens you so much, it's being hurt."
"I don't have to listen to this!" He moved to leave again.
"Then run away again, Jason, it's what you do best!" He continued to walk away from her as if her words had no effect on him. Driven by desperation, she shouted, "You're a coward, Jason Sinclair! You're afraid to care about anyone because you could be hurt."
"What do you know, really know, about me?" he asked, turning to glare at her. "Do you know what it's like to be hated by someone who's supposed to love and protect you? Do you know what it's like when even the place you live isn't safe? He'd come home drunk and fly into a rage about nothing—something I'd done or hadn't done or the way I looked at him. I never knew what would set him off. He'd beat me until I nearly blacked out. Sometimes I was afraid he'd never stop. If I tried to defend myself, it only made him madder."
She tried to touch him, but he shrugged her away.
-"He hired me out to work in a sugar factory when I was eleven so I could supply him with money to buy whiskey and women. I didn't go to school. I'd work in that boiler room for fourteen hours a day, stoking the fires under the kettles or turning the handle so the sugar wouldn't stick and burn. If I got home later than he thought I should, he'd beat me. If I didn't bring home enough money, he'd beat me."
The beginnings of tears burned behind Caroline's eyes at the image his words evoked. "Jason, I wish I could take away your pain."
"Well, you can't," he said with a great sigh that seemed torn from his very soul. "You never could. It's my own hell."
"What did your mother do?"
"Do?" he asked with a laugh. "She hid and hoped he wouldn't get tired of beating me and turn on her."
"She didn't try to stop him?"
"Like I said, you don't understand. My father was a very big man, big and mean. No one messed with Cullen Sinclair. What could my mother have done to stop him?"
"I don't know, Jason," she said, absently caressing her swollen stomach. "I only know that if anyone did that to my child, I'd have to try and stop them."
Without warning, Jason grabbed her by the shoulders, his hands biting painfully into her flesh, his eyes glowing with fury.
"Don't you dare judge my mother! You don't know what it's like to be terrorized night and day. I tried to fight back once when I was thirteen and he broke my nose. Look at this," he said, releasing her and pulling his shirt sleeve back to reveal a small circular scar on his wrist. "See, my father smoked a cigar, and one night he got really mad and...."
Caroline felt as if she might faint or be physically ill. Her head reeled and nausea rose in her throat. "Stop, please."
"Damn it!" he growled between clenched teeth, shaking her roughly. "That's not the worst he did, Caroline. Should I describe the scars he put on my mother or what he did to my sister?"
Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she tried to pull away, tried to flee from the bitter hurt in his voice and his uncompromising words. Finally he released her and she fell away, sobbing brokenly.
"You