Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
brADY
“ D AISY!” Abbi is screaming and thrashing out in bed, and no matter what I do, I can’t get her to calm down. It’s the most terrifying, helpless feeling I’ve ever had in my goddamn life.
With my heart in my throat, I run my hand down her back.
“Baby,” I croon, trying to sound calm, but I feel like I’m going to come out of my skin. “Abbi, wake up. Daisy is safe. Wake up, honey. Abs, I need you to wake up.”
She jolts and whips around to stare at me with wide, horror-filled eyes.
“I want my baby.”
“Hey.” I reach for her, but she jerks out of my grasp and tears my heart out with her. I don’t ever want her to be afraid of me. “Daisy is safe at Erin and Rem’s house. Remember? She’s just a mile away.”
“I want to see her right now. Right now. ”
She’s hugging her arms around her middle, shaking her head, and stands from the bed stark-ass naked.
“It’s the middle of the night, Abbi.” I hold my hand out like I might to a scared, wild animal, not sure what in the hell I should do. I want to scoop her up and hold onto her, but she doesn’t even want me to touch her, and it’s tearing me apart. “Daisy is asleep. She’s asleep , baby.”
She shakes her head again, and the tears start to fall, her face crumpling.
“Ah, baby, let me hold you.”
“Outside.” She turns and heads for the door, practically running out of the room and down the hall.
It’s still cold as fuck at night, so I grab a flannel shirt and rush after her, running as she throws open the door and practically launches herself out into the night.
She’s gasping for breath as I wrap her in the flannel and hold her against me, my front pressed to her back.
“Breathe,” I croon, not giving two shits that I’m also standing outside completely naked in freezing temps. “Take a breath, my love. Come on, baby, I need you to breathe.”
“I know she’s safe,” she says through her sobs, gasping, “but Jesus, I want her.”
“We’ll get her first thing,” I assure her before kissing her head. “As soon as she’s awake, okay? I promise.”
She leans against me, crying and wailing so loudly that a coyote calls back from somewhere on the ranch. I rock her back and forth, letting her cry, kissing her hair and her temple, holding her tight.
Finally, she takes a long, deep shuddering breath and seems to quiet, listening to the night sounds around us as she trembles in my arms.
“Let’s go in,” she whispers.
I don’t let her walk. I bend down and scoop her up, and she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face against me, still sniffling and softly crying as I walk inside and shut the door behind us, pushing it with my bare foot.
“No bed,” she says.
So, with a nod, I carry her to the couch and get her wrapped up in blankets.
“I’ll be right back.” I kiss her forehead before I return to the bedroom, pull on the gray sweatpants from earlier, and then walk back out to her and sit with her.
“I’m sorry I made you cold.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the cold. All I care about is you , Abs.”
She leans into me, and I hug her close again.
“Baby, are you ever going to talk to me about this?”
“Yeah.” Her voice is so soft that I can hardly hear her. “I am. But I need a few minutes. What time is it?”
I glance at the microwave. “Just past three.”
“You should go back to bed. I won’t be able to sleep, but you should get some rest.” She kisses my chest. “You had a killer day yesterday.”
“If you think I’m going to leave you here on my couch and go get some shut-eye, you don’t know me at all, Blue Eyes.”
I feel her smile against me, and I start to settle for the first time since I first heard her scream out in her sleep. Jesus, Daisy has to help her through this on a regular basis? The fact that either of them has to deal with this kind of terror is absolutely not okay with me.
“I hate that it happened with you,” she admits and lifts her head to turn those tear-filled eyes up to me. “Because it’s not my finest moment, and I know it can be scary. I didn’t want you to ever see it.”
I frown down at her and finally drag my knuckle over the apple of her cheek.
“Abs, it was going to happen eventually. I must have to spell this out for you, and that’s okay. I should have done it a while ago. I’m not going anywhere. I love you and Daisy, and at some point, we’ll figure out the living arrangements so we’re together all the time. It would be hard for me to live in town because I work so much out here, and I know you have a business in town, so we’ll have to put our heads together and figure it out, but I want more of you, not less. The nights that I spend without you are fucking torture. So, yeah, I was going to be there for the nightmares eventually, and frankly, I think it’s better if I’m the one to help you through it rather than Daisy.”
Her eyes have filled as she stares at me, listening.
“Say it again.”
I frown. “Which part? I kind of had diarrhea of the mouth there for a minute.”
“The love part.”
I swallow hard and lean in to kiss her forehead before pulling back to look at her again, gently dragging my fingertips down her cheek.
“I love you. I tried not to. I really tried because I’m still not feeling great about being in a relationship when I still have to get on a bull in a few weeks and ride until October, but it seems that I just can’t control the way I feel when it comes to you. And I don’t want to hold back because being with the two of you has changed my life in all of the good ways.”
She’s crying again, but she’s smiling, too. “Same.”
“That’s all I get?”
She chuckles and brushes a tear off of her cheek. “I love you, too, Brady. And I know that Daisy loves you. For the first time in a really long time, I feel like a woman again. Not just a mom or a business owner. A woman. You make me laugh, and I know without a doubt that I’m safe with you.”
“You are.”
She threads her fingers through mine as she seems to gather her thoughts, and I’m reminded that I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than this woman. Even when she’s vulnerable and a bit of a mess, she’s absolutely gorgeous.
“I told you before, I was a foster kid all through my teenage years.”
Here we go. The hard stuff. Maybe she needed to hear that I loved her before she felt brave enough to confide in me with the hardest pieces of her life.
“Yes, you did.”
“I would say that my experience was very similar to Jake’s. Abusive. Mean. Pretty fucked-up.”
I clench my jaw, and she reaches up to cup my face in her soft hand.
“I know it’s hard for you to hear this, so if you’d rather not?—”
“I’m fine, baby. You can tell me. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to commit homicide, but you can tell me.”
Her lips twitch at that. “I was first raped when I was fourteen.”
“Jesus.” I want to stand and pace. I want to punch the goddamn wall. But I don’t because she needs me with her, and from here on out, Abbi will get anything and everything she needs or wants in this life.
I’ll make sure of it.
“I never told anyone because it was drilled into me that no one cared. I didn’t matter. No one missed me, and no one would check on me. And, for the most part, they were right. I was where I was because there was no one else in the world that wanted me. So, I was used and hurt and beaten. Often. I did get pulled out of one house because a teacher noticed that I had a bruise around my neck, and I really think that if I’d stayed there, I would have died.”
“Christ.” I can’t help it. I lean forward and rest my face in my hands.
“I learned to be small. To not get noticed. To keep things clean, eat what was on my plate, and stay in my room. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t get sick. I tried so hard not to get sick because I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone by having to go to the doctor.”
I want to kill them. All of them.
“It got a little easier in high school because I could join clubs and volunteer for things, so I wasn’t home as much. I had two different homes in high school, and both were close to the school, so I could walk back and forth, kind of come and go. So, by the time I was seventeen, the worst of it was over. By then it was just neglect. They let me live there in exchange for the money the state paid them. But the damage was done.
“When I turned eighteen, I left. On my birthday.”
My head snaps up. “Where the hell did you go?”
“Nate snuck me enough money to pay for a tiny studio apartment and food and utilities, and I started to work. I’d already had a job at a fast-food place in the summers, but my foster parents always took my paychecks. Claimed it was for the luxury of living there. If I didn’t turn it over, they beat me, so really I was just paying to not get my ass whooped every week.”
She shrugs, as if to say oh well , and all I can do is watch her.
“I discovered that I was a pretty good waitress, and I got good tips. I also got a night job as a cleaner for businesses. Offices and stuff like that. I really liked that job, and Mrs. Pitkin was super nice. She always slipped me an extra twenty bucks here or there because she knew I was saving up for a car.”
I’d like to send Mrs. Pitkin a hundred thousand dollars and kiss her on the mouth.
“If it wasn’t for Nate and Mrs. Pitkin, I honestly don’t know what would have happened to me.” Her voice has quieted again. “I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s true. I’ve never been one to try drugs, but I can see why people do. Because for those few minutes or hours, you can forget how fucked-up your life is. You can just escape it all. That small amount of help from those two wasn’t so small to me, and it gave me the edge I needed to try to make something of myself. Then, Nate and I got pregnant, and like I told you before, he wanted to marry me. Wanted to do the right thing. He didn’t care that I’d been used and hurt or that I came from absolutely nothing. He just liked me. He loved me. We were kindred spirits and got along so well. We had a lot in common. His mom, however, hated me.”
She frowns down at her fingers and then shrugs again.
“But that’s a story for another time. I don’t think I was ever touched in a kind way, sexually I mean, until Nate and I got together that night at his college party.”
“You were a virgin.”
She scoffs and shakes her head, but I take her hand.
“Abs, you were a virgin in every way that matters. What was done to you before…that wasn’t sex; it was violence. It was rape. That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”
Her lip quivers, and then she nods. “I guess you’re right. I never really thought about it like that. I was surprised, actually, that it felt good, and that we had fun while doing it. We laughed, and it was… nice. It wasn’t passion. It wasn’t an all-consuming burn that I suddenly couldn’t live without, but it was nice. And I love knowing that Daisy came from that.”
“Me, too,” I whisper.
“Nate was not the love of my life,” she admits with a whisper, “but he was my best friend, and he was so kind and good. He was really, really good.”
It doesn’t make me jealous to hear her talk about him. I’m grateful to him for taking care of her when no one else would, and I hate that he’s not here for me to thank him.
“I’m glad you had him, Abs.”
“Yeah.” She nods and smiles, wiping her eyes again. “You would have liked him. Anyway, tonight’s nightmare was a bit of all of that mixed together, and it always scares the shit out of me.”
“You woke up screaming for Daisy, as if someone had her, and you couldn’t reach her.”
Something dark moves behind her eyes. “That happens sometimes, too. It’s just more mind games. More fear. Because if something ever happened to her?—”
She lets out a hiccupping sob, and I immediately reach for her, pulling her against me. “ Nothing will happen to her,” I promise as I bury my face in her hair and kiss her head. “Nothing. She’s safe, baby. She’s tucked away on the ranch right now, and she’s perfectly safe. I won’t ever let anyone hurt either of you.”
“I know.” She sighs into me, obviously exhausted, and I lean us both back so we’re lounging and laid out on the couch, with Abbi’s head on my chest. “It’s just one of the reasons that I love you, Brady Wild.”
“What are some of the other reasons?”
That makes her laugh the way I wanted it to. “I’m not going to inflate your ego.”
“Come on. Give me three things.”
“No.”
“Fine. I’ll go first. One, I love your cooking. Seriously, you’re damn good in the kitchen, and I don’t mean that to sound misogynistic.”
She smirks, grinning up at me like a loon. “So noted.”
“Two, when you come on my cock, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
She barks out a laugh. “Glad I can oblige. What’s the third one?”
“You’re the best mommy, Abs.”
Now her eyes fill with tears again.
“Whoa, no more leaking. Come on, what are my three?”
“Okay.” She sniffs and blinks rapidly, fighting back the waterworks. “One, I really love your ranch, and I don’t mean that in a gold-digger way.”
I bust up laughing at that one. “Okay.”
“Two, that cock you mentioned, holy hell, it’s talented.”
“It’s not the dick, sweetheart. It’s the man.”
She rolls her eyes at that. “And three, you’re so kind, so good to us. Always.”
“Always will be, Blue Eyes.” I take a breath and kiss her hair. “Okay, let’s nap. Just for a couple of hours.”
“I guess I’m sleepy again.” Her voice is soft, and soon, her breathing evens out, and for a long time, I stare at the ceiling.
Someone should have to pay for what was done to her all those years ago. Someone should suffer, and it pisses me off that no one will. Only Abbi, and she’s the victim in all of this. I hate that it’s bled over to Daisy, too, having to comfort her mama when Abbi is in the trenches with the nightmares.
It makes my heart sick thinking about it.
I am in love with her. If I could, I’d magically build a house—any house she wants—out here at the ranch and move us all in there tomorrow. I’d marry her, have more babies with her, and make a family. Daisy can have all the animals she wants.
I want to make a life with this woman. She deserves that.
She deserves everything.
“Wanna talk about it?” Remington and I have been out on our horses all afternoon, riding fence and checking on the cattle.
“Talk about what, exactly?”
“Whatever it is that’s on your mind. You haven’t said two words today, and usually, I can’t get you to shut up. What’s going on?”
I shake my head and pull out my needlenose pliers to work on a nail in the fence post. “Just normal shit, man. I have to go to Cheyenne in two weeks to kick off the season, and for the first time in my career, I’m not excited about it. We have a shit ton to do out here on the ranch before we brand and castrate in a couple of weeks, right before I leave.”
“No,” he says thoughtfully, pushing his hat higher on his forehead. “That’s not it. Those are normal things. Whatever’s going on with you isn’t…typical.”
I glare at my oldest brother. “Are you a shrink now, old man?”
“Observant,” he counters. “I know you, maybe better than you know yourself.”
“I know you’re a pain in my ass.”
He laughs at that, then passes me a fresh nail.
“Abbi confided in me the other day about some things in her childhood.” I pause, staring at the fencepost. “I can’t tell you what she said because it was in confidence.”
“None of my business,” he agrees.
“But it fucked me up a little.”
“Enough that you don’t want to see her anymore?”
“Fuck no.” I stand, brushing my hands off. “Nothing like that. It just got in my head, and I know there’s nothing I can do for her now. I can’t go back in time to when she was fourteen and kill the asshole who hurt her, and I want to. I would do it in a heartbeat if given the chance.”
“You can be there for her now ,” he says calmly. “None of us have a time machine. All we can do is the best we can with what we have, and I suspect that she just wants you to care about her now. Seems to me, you’re pretty good at that.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the easy part.”
“I would disagree. It’s not always easy to love someone, not when you get down to the nitty-gritty, day in, day out of it all. It’s not easy. But you choose it because the easy is the best part of your life. And the rest is worth the work.”
“Says the experienced married guy.” I grin at him. “Erin’s been good for you.”
“Better than I ever thought it could be,” he agrees. “But it isn’t easy. It’s work. Probably more on her part because I’m an asshole most of the time.”
“True that.”
He glares at me, making me laugh.
“Thanks. I feel better.”
“Good. We have a lot of fence left to fix.”