“—but I’m ninety-nine percent sure your brother lost his virginity this weekend.”
She gasped. “What? Are you kidding me? How do you know?”
The guilty flicker in his eyes was all the answer she needed.
“He told you?”
“Not after the fact. But he asked for my advice beforehand,” Jackson admitted.
Mia’s jaw dropped, then slammed shut as her lips tightened in a thin line. It was a few seconds before she could speak again, and when she did, it came as an explosion of accusation.
“And you didn’t talk him out of it? You just gave him the go-ahead to have sex?” Her chest clenched with resentment. “He’s sixteen years old! He’s too young to be having sex! Why didn’t you try to stop him?”
Jackson answered in a calm, even tone, unfazed by the indictment. “There was no way to stop him, short of tyin’ him up, sugar. Trust me, I was a teenage boy once. All those lectures about abstinence went in one ear and out the other.”
“Did you at least try to talk him out of it?”
“No.”
Mia stumbled to her feet. “I can’t believe you encouraged my little brother to have sex!”
“I didn’t encourage a thing. He’d already decided to do it before he spoke to me, and nothin’ I could’ve said was gonna change his mind.”
She spoke through gritted teeth. “But you didn’t even try. You say you’re my boyfriend, right? Well, my boyfriend would have tried to stop my brother from making the biggest mistake of his life.”
Jackson had the nerve to smile. “Believe me, Mia, having sex for the first time ain’t gonna be the biggest mistake of his life. And as I recall, didn’t you lose your virginity at sixteen too?”
“Yes,” she grumbled, “but I was very mature for my age.”
“Bullshit. You were a horny kid, just like Danny.” Jackson’s features hardened. “And I find it mighty insultin’ that you’re laying the blame for this at my door.”
He was right. Rationally, she knew it wasn’t his fault—Danny’s hormones were to blame—but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from lashing out at Jackson. She was still so on edge from the encounter with her mother, but Brenda wasn’t here, and neither was Danny, and Mia’s anger and frustration needed a target.
Unfortunately, that target was Jackson.
“I think you should go.”
His mouth fell open. “Are you kiddin’ me?”
“I’m not in the mood to hang out tonight,” she said tersely. “I need to be alone right now.”
“Mia. For f**k’s sake. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t hogtie your brother and throw him in the back of my pickup to stop him from gettin’ busy, okay? But you’ve gotta face the facts—Danny is growing up. He’s not the fourteen-year-old kid who got dropped off at your door anymore. He’s becoming a man, and sorry to break it to you, sugar, but sex is a part of that.”
She was stunned to feel tears pricking her eyelids. God, she never cried, and now she was crying twice in one day.
“Please, just go, Jackson,” she mumbled. “I really need to calm down and clear my head, and I can’t do it while you’re here.”
The frustration burning in his eyes was unmistakable, but Jackson was a gentleman to the core, and so he didn’t push her the way other men might’ve done.
Instead, he nodded curtly.
And stalked out of the apartment without another word.
Chapter Fourteen
“Jeez, this is the wild bunch we’ve heard so much about?” Duke smirked and started pointing to each SEAL, starting with Seth and ending with Ryan Evans. “Mr. Married with twins over here, McCoy with the serious girlfriend, LT with the pregnant wife, and Mr. I’m-getting-married-next-weekend. Pansies.”
It was Team Eight’s last night in San Diego, and the four party dudes of the bunch had finally convinced their Team Fifteen counterparts to join them for a night out on the town. Jackson had initially turned down the invite because he was supposed to have dinner with Mia, but a major hole had opened up in his schedule after she’d pretty much kicked him out.
The last thing he’d felt like doing was going home to an empty house, where he knew he’d end up drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey and stewing over their ridiculous fight. So he’d come to the Hot Zone instead, a nightclub in downtown San Diego, in the hopes that if he was surrounded by his buddies, he wouldn’t be tempted to drink himself stupid and show up at the base tomorrow with a massive hangover.
Except the second he’d joined the others by the second-floor railing that overlooked the dance floor, he’d discovered that most of his friends were already calling it a night.
Carson set his beer bottle on the wide iron railing and shrugged in the face of Duke’s taunts. “Hey, just ’cuz my wife is pregnant doesn’t mean we don’t have wild and crazy sex every night. With that said…” He flashed a smug grin, his blue eyes gleaming in the shadows bathing the club’s upper loft space. “It’s time for me to go home and do some of that.”
Cash, Seth and Ryan followed suit, polishing off their beers in a rush.
“Yeah, I’m outtie too,” Seth announced. “My wife is a million times more interesting than you dumbasses. Besides, she lost a bet this morning so she owes me a BJ.”
The foursome bumped fists with everyone and said their goodbyes, then headed for the wrought-iron spiral staircase that led to the main floor.