When she finished, he looked down at his coffee, then back at her.
“He’s always needed an audience,” Jackson said quietly. “Even as a kid. If he wasn’t being admired, he wanted to be rescued. It didn’t matter which as long as the room still revolved around him.”
Carissa let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “That sounds familiar.”
Jackson gave a humorless half-smile. “When our dad used to compare us, Damen acted like it was cruelty to expect anything from him. But the truth was he only wanted the fun part of being exceptional. He never wanted the cost.”
Carissa looked at this man across from her, this brother who had been standing at the edge of family dinners for years with a patient distance she had mistaken for coldness. It occurred to her then that people often called disciplined men cold simply because they could not control them with chaos.
“I need a favor,” she said.
He waited.
“A real one.”
Jackson leaned back slightly. “Okay.”
Carissa folded and unfolded the napkin in front of her. In any other room, under any other set of facts, the request would have sounded insane. In this room it sounded inevitable.