Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
COLSON
Me?
That was what Sophie had said she wanted. A reply so shocking that I chuckled immediately after I heard it.
“Don’t laugh, Colson. You have no idea how difficult it was to admit that.” Her hand moved to her stomach as she stood in front of my desk, the three feet of solid wood the only thing separating us. “This conversation is so far outside of what I’m comfortable with.”
And this conversation was completely unexpected. I hadn’t anticipated this direction or the shift from feeling rage at her arrival to empathy in her presence.
Troy and Jenner were extremely involved in our business and well aware of our future endeavors. It had never crossed my mind that Sophie’s relationship with the Gordons was different.
I’d just assumed, and … I was wrong. And I’d flipped that switch so fucking fast because of my past that I didn’t give her a chance to even slide in through a crack.
But she had found one.
Am I glad she did?
I still had so many goddamn questions. “Explain why it makes you uncomfortable.”
Her hands flattened against the top of my desk, her arms extended, her upper body almost leaning through them.
“I never want more with any man. More doesn’t cross my mind.
Ever.” A burst of air came through her lips.
“It’s painfully difficult to admit that.
Which you wouldn’t know since I’ve told you nothing about my past.”
A past I’d been curious about. But if it was painfully difficult, then it came with scars.
“I should tell you to wait until you’re ready to talk about it …”
“You don’t have to. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. Am I technically ready? That’s a bold statement that may never be true.” Her head dipped. “But it’s only fair that you understand those layers of me.”
My stare went past those gorgeous sapphire eyes and went as deep as I could reach. And when I came up with nothing, I voiced, “Show me those layers, Sophie.”
She pulled her hands away like the desk was burning her, and she backed up, heading for the couch on the opposite wall. She stopped when the edge of the cushions hit behind her knees, and she took a seat.
“Your past is full of manipulation. Mine is bursting with abandonment.” Her body folded, and she hugged her stomach with both arms. “When I was eleven and Hayden was nine, we were taken from our home and put in foster care. That’s where we spent every night until we graduated high school and turned eighteen and the state of Florida no longer had power over us. ”
“Sophie, I …” I shifted in my chair. The comfort of the cushiony leather now felt like cement. “I had no idea. I’m—”
“If you’re going to follow that up with I’m sorry, please don’t. It’s the last thing I want to hear.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
She let several seconds of silence pass.
“Hayden and I have different dads. We’re not positive who his father was, there were a few possibilities, according to my mother, and she said she didn’t have the phone number for any of them.
As for me, there was no question. I was a spitting image of my sperm donor.
He lived with my mom until the first ultrasound and then took off. ”
What a fucking asshole.
“Sounds like a stand-up dude.”
“It gets worse.” She pulled up a leg and hugged her knee to her chest. “When Hayden and I were taken from our house, the state tried tracking my father down to give him full custody. What they learned was that he had died from an OD two years before. If my mother knew, she never told me.”
“To protect you, perhaps?”
She huffed. “Don’t give her that much credit. She doesn’t deserve it.”
A shit dad and a shit mom. Jesus.
“Why did your mom lose custody?”
She lifted her second leg and surrounded both.
I had never seen Sophie look so vulnerable. I also had never seen her look so beautiful.
“She was arrested for shoplifting. It wasn’t her first offense. It was her fifth, and they found narcotics in her purse.”
“Fuck.”
Visuals of Sophie’s life with her mother began to fill my head. Instability. Drugs. Men probably coming and going. I assumed she had raised Hayden and herself, and nothing about that was easy, not as young as she had been.
A childhood like that would harden someone.
And in her eyes, I could see just what it did to her.
“When her previous offenses came into play, she was given fifteen years. The best part was that she hadn’t stolen food to feed her starving kids at home. She had stolen jewelry so she could pawn it and buy more drugs.”
My head shook—out of anger, out of awe at what Sophie had endured; I didn’t know.
“Were there any good moments that you can recall?”
“No.” She paused. “She was gone long before she was put behind bars.”
She took a deep breath, and I could feel the abandonment in the way she filled her lungs.
“My dad came around every once in a while. Mostly to steal drugs from my mom or to take a shower—whatever he could get from her. Each time, he would make me so many promises.” Her voice started to rise.
“We’ll go to the park. We’ll drive bumper cars.
We’ll play Putt-Putt. All lies.” She seemed to sink even deeper into the couch.
“But I didn’t know that then, so I would count down the minutes while I was at school and run home, only to find the apartment empty, realizing that he’d taken off again. ”
She leaned her head back on the cushion and didn’t look at me as she added, “He promised he’d be back for my eighth birthday.
He wasn’t. Then he called and said he was coming for my ninth birthday.
He never showed up for that one either. But a week after it passed, he called and apologized for missing it and said he was sending a big package in the mail.
” She finally glanced at me. Maybe it was due to the break in her gaze, or maybe because the emotional layers were thickening, but the pain in her eyes was really surfacing.
“As I’m sure you can guess, the package never came, yet I still ran to the mailbox every day for a month.
” She pursed her lips. “Now that I’ve seen his death certificate, I know he died about a week after he called me.
So, for three weeks straight, I waited for a gift from a dead man. ”
“Sophie …” My voice was so low.
“I was hit from both sides, Colson. That feeling”—she let out a small gasp—“it doesn’t leave you.” She tucked in even smaller. “It burrows. It grows. And when it comes to men, all I ever ask myself is, Will they leave too?” Her hair swung into her face as her head shook. “I can’t fathom it.”
“But Hayden’s never left. He’s been your constant. Right?”
She nodded. “Along with the rest of the guys—Troy, Jones, Callum, Talon, and Leo. We all grew up in the same foster house.”
She stared past me, as though she were remembering.
“And when Hayden and I walked through those doors, they became my family. My chosen family, who’s thicker than blood.
But that doesn’t make the hurt any easier.
That doesn’t take away the memories. That doesn’t mean, just because I had those guys, a childhood spent in foster care was simple and easy and carefree or that the years we had spent living with my mother were enjoyable.
Those first eleven years were”—her hand flew to her throat—“rough.”
I wanted to reach for her, but I stayed in my seat. “I can’t even imagine.”
“Some of the hardest parts were making friends in there. When that happened, they’d get adopted, and I’d never see them again.”
“More abandonment.”
Her exhale made her look completely defeated. “So, I kept my bubble small. Those guys, they were as desperate for assurance and predictability as I was. And that’s why they’re the only ones I’ve ever let in.”
I leaned into my desk and clasped my hands. “Which explains Lush.”
“I needed something for me.” She rubbed her lips together. “Where there weren’t any emotions involved. A place strictly based on pleasure, where the only thing I focused on was orgasms.”
Where she never had to worry about anyone leaving her.
Except that was what I had done the last time we were there together.
Something told me that same thought was on her mind.
Fuck.
“Can I ask some questions, Sophie?”
“Yes.”
My thumbs tapped the desktop. “I’m going to assume you’re not a Mrs., like my daughter calls you? Which is a topic that’s been brought up between us before and you never answered.”
“No, I’m not.”
I worried this was only going to dig up more complicated memories, but I had to ask. “Abbi’s father—were you close to him? Was he one who also … left?”
She wore jeans and a simple T-shirt that had no emblem; it was just white and cut off above her waist, showing hints of her navel. When her arms and legs dropped, I could see even more of her breathtaking skin.
“I don’t know who Abbi’s father is.”
I blinked several times, unsure how to proceed. “A random hookup? Yeah, I get that.”
“No. Far from that.” Emotion had woven through her during different parts of this conversation, but never as much as it was now.
“A woman named Dottie was the social worker of our foster home. She became like a mother to us, and her daughter was like a sister. Four years ago, Dottie called me and said a baby had been abandoned. That she had blonde hair and blue eyes and looked just like me.” As she blinked, that sapphire gaze was clouded with tears.
“She knew I wasn’t seeking motherhood—not yet at least. But something had made her pick up the phone to call me.
Something inside her told her that the baby had to be mine. ”
I was already pressed into the desk, but my upper body stretched across it even more. “Sophie, you adopted Abbi?”
When she blinked, the first drip fell. “I knew nothing about parenthood, only what I had experienced with Hayden while we were raising each other. I had just made partner and was in the midst of my career. I was working over eighty hours a week. And out here, in LA, I was all on my own, except for Troy.”