After almost two weeks mostly alone in the allotment cabin, the Fourth of July potluck and barbecue hosted by the Bedspread Inn was a welcome change of pace. Jeremiah sat on the bench of one of the two dozen picnic tables with his back to the table’s top and watched the festivities. Almost everyone who called Northstar home was here along with several dozen other people from Devyn and other nearby ranching towns. Now that the heat of the day had broken at last as the sun slipped closer to the western hills, people were beginning to congregate around the small stage that had been set up for the live band. Beside him, Heather sipped her Jack and Coke with a faint smile of contentment dancing about her features.
She’d spent a lot more time with him up at the cabin than he’d expected; she’d been up almost every evening for several hours, from the time she got off work around six until the sun went down. He suspected she would’ve tried to convince him to let her spend the night if the bunk wasn’t a twin and if she hadn’t needed to get up for work in the morning. On the two days she’d had off in the last two weeks, they’d sat out on the porch until after midnight, doused in mosquito repellant or inside at the table with windows open playing cards until the wee hours of the morning.
It was heaven.
“You wanna dance?” she asked after she drained the last of her drink.
“Love to.”
She bounced to her feet and held out her hands to him. He took them and let her help him to his feet, amused when she wrapped his arm around her, broadcasting loud and clear to anyone who cared to notice that they were together. If there were any trace of that fiery vindictiveness, he might’ve been concerned, but tonight, she emanated bliss.
Catching sight of her family, he wondered how long it would last. They sat apart from the Northstar crowd at a pair of picnic tables with a few people who’d come up from Devyn, and they watched him escort her toward the band with disapproving frowns.
He shrugged it off. What they thought of him and of Heather dating him wasn’t his problem unless she said it was. And so far, she didn’t seem to care what they thought.
Determined to push them from his mind, he tucked Heather into his arms and led her through a slow dance. They were surrounded by their friends and neighbors, and Jeremiah couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the Fourth of July.
As they danced, he couldn’t help but notice how warm everyone was to Heather. She was every bit as much a part of this community as any of them, and he knew she’d worked hard to earn her place among them. Her family, on the other hand…. It was hard to ignore how little they cared to interact with everyone else. He wanted to ask her about that, but he wasn’t willing to interrupt her enjoyment of the evening.
He was going to need to find out before too much longer, however, because he was beginning to suspect they were a big reason why she had burned through one man after another. If her bond with her family was as toxic as it seemed, how could she recognize a healthy relationship?
Maybe that was where he needed to start to keep her from walking away from him, too.
They danced without break until the sun dipped behind the hills and plunged the Northstar Valley into shadow. Jeremiah was thoroughly enjoying himself, but it was getting late, and he needed to get back up to the cabin.
“You’re not going to stick around for the fireworks?” Heather asked.
“I never do.”
“How come?”
“I don’t like fireworks.”
There must’ve been something off in his voice because she narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.
“Then I’ll go up with you.”
“You don’t have to do that. Stay here and enjoy the show.”
“I’ve seen plenty of fireworks displays. Missing this one won’t break my heart.”
“If you’re sure… I’d love the company.”
“Just let me say goodnight to my family. I’m sure they expect me to watch with them since I’ve ignored them all day.”
He nodded and located the Hammonds while she talked to her parents and siblings. It took him a while to bid them all goodnight as they were scattered around the yard chatting with their valley neighbors, and Heather should’ve been ready to go long before he was. She wasn’t, and as he made his way back to her, he caught the unmistakable tones of anger.
“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked her, resting his hand lightly against her back.
Her body was rigid.
“Stay out of it, Mackey,” her brother Brock snapped. “This isn’t any of your business.”
“She’s my girlfriend, and if she’s upset, that makes it my business.”
Brock lunged to his feet. “You want to start something? Bring it, little man.”
Little man? Jeremiah snorted. Brock was barely two inches taller than him and ten, maybe twenty pounds heavier. “I’m not bringing anything. Heather, are you ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
They started to walk away, but Brock grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him around. Before he had a chance to react, Heather shoved her brother hard enough to make him stumble over his own feet. When he took a step toward them again, she drew her fist back.
“Don’t,” she said in a low, warning voice.
Jeremiah glanced at her family. Her mother, sister, and sisters-in-law all sat quietly with their faces down-turned, embarrassed perhaps. Her father and older brother were more concerned with sneering at him than they were about the brewing fight. Jeremiah held their gazes with a sneer of his own, and finally, they looked away.
Wow.
“So that’s it?” her father asked. “You’re going to ditch your family again… for him?”
“I didn’t realize that needed clarification,” Heather remarked.
“Fuck you, Heather,” Brock retorted.
“Bend over.”
Brock lunged toward her, but Aaron—who had been chatting nearby with the Conners—jumped in front of him.
“Hey, now,” the sheriff said with equal measures of placating gentleness and commanding sternness. “None of that.”
“She started it.”
“I don’t give two shits who started it. It stops now.”
With a growl of disgust, Heather stalked away. As she turned away, Jeremiah saw her expression shift from fury to despair. He clenched his fist at his side as he stared after her. With deliberate movements, he turned back to her family.
“I know you don’t like me, and that’s fine. But don’t take that out on her.”
“Shut your mouth,” Brock growled, taking a menacing step toward Jeremiah with the rest of his family looking on like they would love to see them fight. “I told you once already. This isn’t any of your business.”
Jeremiah shook his head sadly. “You’re hurting her. Do you know that?”
“Better we hurt her than you.”
His jaw dropped. What the hell? Disgusted, he retorted, “Better no one hurts her.”
“Jere,” Aaron interrupted, “I thought you two were heading up to the cabin.”
“We were,” he replied.
Gratitude diluted his irritation, not only for the out Aaron provided but for his inclusion of Heather in his statement. It drew a line for the Browns, let them know that her relationship with Jeremiah was acknowledged and accepted by others. “She just wanted to say goodnight to her family before we left. That’s all. And instead of accepting her choice to be with me, they derided her for it.”
“Fancy word for a little man who never graduated high school,” Brock sneered.
Jeremiah sighed. “Fancy words, empathy—it’s amazing what you can pick up from reading. You oughta try it sometime. Good night, all. Enjoy the rest of the party.”
Even with Aaron remaining behind to talk to the Browns, Brock’s continuing taunts trailed after Jeremiah as he walked away. He wasn’t remotely tempted to acknowledge them. Rather than goad him into a fight, as Heather’s brother no doubt intended, they just made him tired. He was beginning to get an idea of exactly what Heather’s trouble with her family was.
“I don’t give a damn what you think about him. I say he’s not good enough for my sister,” he heard Brock say.
“Seems to me that’s Heather’s choice,” Aaron replied. “Regardless of how you feel about him, you need to put yourself in check. I suggest you start by making that beer your last. Good evening, all. I hope I won’t need to speak to any of you again tonight.”
Brock was lucky Aaron wasn’t like his predecessor. Rogers wouldn’t have hesitated to throw his weight as an officer of the law around and dragged him from the party in cuffs. Of course, he probably would’ve put Jeremiah in cuffs, too, for daring to respond at all.
Halfway to the table where Heather was sitting with Henry, Lindsay, Noah, and Archer—interesting that she’d gone to them instead of Ty and his family or Ainsley and hers since they were her best friends—Aaron caught up to him.
“That was big of you back there,” the sheriff remarked. “You’d’ve been well within your rights to hit him. What kind of brother says ‘better we hurt her than you’?”
“A shitty one.”
Aaron snorted. “Yeah. You got that right. But, that aside, I’m proud of you for the way you handled yourself.”
“Thanks.” Jeremiah grinned. “I’m glad Henry taught me how to properly defend myself, but I sincerely hope my brawling days—as short and pathetic as they were—are long over. I don’t want to be that person ever again.”
“I don’t think you were ever him to begin with.”
Since they’d reached Heather and Henry and family, Jeremiah acknowledged Aaron’s praise with only a nod.
“I gotta say,” Henry remarked, rising from the table to briefly embrace Jeremiah with a slap on the back, “you going out with this beautiful lady has certainly answered the question of why her family hasn’t ever tried to be a part of the Northstar community. They’re a bunch of judgmental dicks.”
“I coulda told you that,” Heather muttered.
She sat close to Lindsay with the older woman’s arm around her shoulders and glared in her family’s direction. She seemed to have calmed down some but not enough for Jeremiah’s liking; the now familiar instinct to lash out at whomever and however she could was back in place. Now that he’d seen what she was like without it, he wanted to find a way to bring her back to the place she’d been his first night in the allotment cabin… and fast.
“Well, you know what the Conners and O’Neils say about the family you choose being more important than the one you’re born to, right?” Henry asked.
“Yeah, I do. Thanks, Hen.”
“Aw, she’s even calling me Hen already.”
Playfully, she punched the younger Hammond twin in the arm.
“See, this is how big brothers are supposed to treat their little sisters,” he continued, unfazed. “Tease them a little and then let them beat on you for it.”
“How would you know?” his wife asked. “You don’t have any sisters.”
“True, but that’s common knowledge.”
“I wish I had brothers like you,” Heather muttered so quietly Jeremiah didn’t think she meant it to be heard.
Henry caught Jeremiah by the back of the neck and dragged him close, grinning as he glanced between him and Heather. “Well, you know, there is a way to make that happen. You see, one of my brothers is still unmarr—”
“Okay!” Jeremiah said quickly, ducking out of Henry’s grip. “I see Pat bringing out the fireworks, so it’s time for us to go. I’ve already caused one scene, so I’d rather not cause another.”
His companions nodded in understanding, but he didn’t think for a second Henry would let the matter drop. Not that he was going to complain. He was glad for the reason for the teasing and even more glad to have someone who loved him enough to tease him.
Heather drove up to the cabin ahead of him while he stopped down at the bunkhouse to retrieve his dog. When he arrived at the cabin, she was sitting out on the porch, staring blindly across the darkening meadow. As soon as he let his dog out of the truck, Murph raced right to her, and as a testament to her mood and the Aussie’s ingrained need to improve it, even the rattle of kibble in his bowl couldn’t lure him away from her.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you what your deal is with your family,” he said as he sank into the chair beside her, “but I think I have a pretty good idea now. Do they always treat you like that, or is it just me they don’t like?”
“It isn’t just you,” she replied quietly. “But them not liking you or me going out with you is definitely making the problem worse. I’m sorry, Jeremiah. I never wanted to drag you into the middle of my family’s dysfunction, and I certainly didn’t want them to make you the scapegoat for it.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t have any impact on how I feel about you.”
She finally turned her gaze on him and managed a faint smile. He leaned over and hugged her, laughing when Murph tried to wiggle into the embrace, too. He didn’t like the sadness in her eyes—it was worse than the fire—so he patted his leg, and she didn’t hesitate to leave her chair and settle in his lap. A sigh escaped her as he wrapped her tightly in his arms, and he pinched his eyes closed for a moment.
“I was wrong,” he murmured. “It does change how I feel about you. It makes me want to hold you until none of it matters. To find a way to make it go away.”
She was quiet for a long time, content to let him hold her. At least he could do that for her. She rested her head on his chest, which was a bit awkward in the camp chair since she wasn’t that much smaller than him, and idly, he skimmed his hand up and down her arm while he watched the afterglow of the cloudless sunset fade into a lavender twilight. They’d be lighting off the fireworks soon, and with his helpless anger over his encounter with Heather’s family, he was glad he was too far away to see any flashes or hear any of the booms.
As if she sensed the shift in his thoughts, she asked, “Why don’t you like fireworks?”
He didn’t immediately respond. Habit stopped him from talking about his phobia—to most people, it probably seemed silly—but being the Fourth of July, those thoughts and memories were already front and center in his mind, so what would it hurt to tell her about them?
“Does it have anything to do with your scars?”
“It has everything to do with them. It’s how my parents and aunt died.”
Twenty-two years removed, he had no trouble recalling that horrific night, but at least the edges of the memory and the pain of that loss had dulled.
“It was the Fourth of July. I was eleven, and we lived on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Huntington Beach. We’d spent the day out in the boat—water-skiing, inner-tubing, knee-boarding, swimming—and as much as I wanted to stay up to watch our neighbors set off their fireworks, I was wiped. We all went to bed early with music playing in the house to help drown out the noise. The boat was in the driveway, up close to the garage door, and I guess the spare gas can had a leak. A misfired firework landed in the boat, and it ignited the gasoline. Then the house caught fire.”
He swallowed. The memories and pain might have been diminished by time, but they hadn’t faded nearly enough and he doubted they ever would. He shifted his gaze from the failing twilight to Heather’s face; she’d sat up and was watching him as he spoke, and her expression was one of unveiled sympathy.
“I remember waking up to the screams of the neighbors and someone pounding on the door. And I smelled the smoke. My room was downstairs, but my parents and my Aunt Ruth were upstairs. I tried to get up to them to wake them up, but by then the fire was too intense, and I couldn’t get through it. And the smoke….”
He could still feel the burn in his nose and throat and lungs and the stinging in his eyes as if it had happened yesterday, and he shuddered.
“I passed out on the stairs,” he continued. “Our next-door neighbor broke down the door, dragged me out, and turned the hose on me, which probably kept my burns and their scars from being worse than they might’ve been otherwise. I don’t remember any of that—I woke up in the ambulance, screaming for my parents and my aunt. They didn’t make it out.”
“Oh my God, Jeremiah. I had no idea.”
He shrugged. “It’s not something I talk about much.”
“I totally get why. Christ. I can’t even imagine.”
“Some days it’s so real I can still feel the heat, but others… it seems like a dream or something that happened to someone else and I’ve somehow tapped into their memories. Anyhow, Grandma and Grandpa and Joe flew down, and after the funerals, I moved to Devyn to live with them.”
“Do you have any other family?”
“Just Zach and my paternal grandparents, but I’ve never met them, and Zach…. Well, I’m sure you can guess what that relationship is like.”
“Is he your aunt’s son?”
He nodded.
“Where was he when she died?”
“With his dirtbag father.” He snorted. “I remember Mom saying once that Aunt Ruth had a knack for picking losers. Mom was the younger of the two, but you’d never know it; she was the responsible one, always trying to look out for Aunt Ruth. Of course, she couldn’t stop Aunt Ruth from getting pregnant with Zach by the biggest loser of all. She was eight months pregnant when they got married, and it lasted all of four years. Zach was a few months older than Joe, and they got along great when they were little kids, but as he got older, Zach started spending more and more time with his dad. Joe’s relationship with him crumbled, and I never really had one with him.”
“How the hell did you ever get mixed up with him, then?”
“His dad was shot and killed when a drug deal went south, and he moved up here to escape. Grandma and Grandpa were dead by then, and it was just Joe and me, and we were in rough shape, barely scraping by.”
“Wait. When did your grandparents die?”
“Grandma of cancer a year after the fire, and Grandpa had a heart attack on a job site a year after that.”
She swore under her breath and slipped her arms around his ribs, folding her hands behind his back and giving him a squeeze. “I don’t know what to say other than life has been seriously shitty and unfair to you.”
“It’s gotten a lot better. This right here is pretty great.”
She tilted her head up and smiled. “It is, huh?”
“Yep.”
“I think I know how to make it even better.”
“Yeah? How?”
Tenderly, she pressed her lips to his. Then she shifted in his lap and hooked her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. God, she could kiss. He’d had a few girlfriends—not many compared to some—but at the moment, he couldn’t recall any of them.
“This is a good start,” he whispered when she released his mouth.
“A start? You mean you’re going to let me do more tonight?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t tease me, Jeremiah.”
Suddenly, the playfulness left her eyes, and she brushed one hand back through his hair while the other rested against his neck with her thumb against his jaw. Beneath her probing gaze, he felt naked and vulnerable, but rather than make him uncomfortable, it emboldened him.
“Are you going to let me stay the night?” she asked gently.
His voice refused to cooperate. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to spend the night with her tucked snuggly in his arms, to let the warmth of her body keep the memories from haunting his dreams. More than that, he wanted to keep her bad thoughts at bay, and since being with him soothed her as much as she soothed him, he nodded. He still wanted to take their relationship slow, but since he doubted either of them were going to be up for more than a few kisses, he figured they were safe enough.
“I am,” he replied, finding his voice at last. “I think we both need it.”
“Mmm. I think we do, too.” She let out a sniff of laughter. “Is it silly that you being up here by yourself bothers me?”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. What if something happened to you?”
“The Royal R is only a couple miles away if I need help in a hurry.”
“I know. It’s just…. What if you’re right about your cousin?”
Jeremiah shrugged. That thought had crossed his mind more times than he could count, but so far, Zach had been on his best behavior, and even if he did show up, Jeremiah wasn’t the same scared and impressionable kid he’d been the last time they’d met. When he said as much to Heather, she nodded.
“I like that you worry, though,” he murmured. “It’s nice.”
Murph jumped to his feet and leapt off the porch with a warning bark.
“They must be starting the fireworks down in the valley,” Heather remarked.
“It’s about that time.”
He held his breath, listening for anything that would confirm that but heard only the quiet sounds of the creek and the wind in the trees. Straining his eyes in the dark, he looked for his dog. Murph stood in the middle of the dirt road, growling, hearing something Jeremiah couldn’t.
“It’s all right, Murphy,” Heather called to the dog. “Just the fireworks.”
But Murph’s attention wasn’t focused toward the valley; he was staring in the opposite direction.
Echoes, Jeremiah told himself. The sound is echoing off the trees. That’s all.
“You up for a game or two of cards before bed?” he asked Heather abruptly.
“I thought we could just snuggle tonight instead, if that’s all right with you.”
“You bet. Come on, Murph.”
The dog gave one last growl before bounding up the stairs and racing into the cabin ahead of them. Heather wasted no time in stripping out of her clothes, and Jeremiah had to avert his eyes. She had an incredible body. So sleek and strong. He wanted to run his hands over her, to savor every line and curve and revel in the softness of her skin.
“Do you have a spare T-shirt I can borrow to sleep in?” she asked.
“Um, yeah. Here.” He dragged his duffel bag from under the bunk and pulled out a clean black tank top. “Will this work?”
“Perfect.”
He made the mistake of glancing at her when he handed her the tank top. She was naked but for her delicate black lace panties, and a groan of pure need escaped him. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Catching his look, she grinned with feminine pride, she slipped the tank top over her head, freed her dark, silken hair from its ponytail and shook it loose, then turned down the blankets and climbed onto the bunk. Realizing he was still fully dressed, he quickly stripped down to his boxers, clicked off the battery-powered lantern, and slid in beside her. When she draped her arm across his chest and her leg over his, he let out a breath.
Nightmares, sad memories, and dark thoughts wouldn’t stand a chance tonight.
* * *
Heather opened her eyes to a cabin faintly illuminated by a dim predawn and smiled as sleep vanished like a dreamy summer breeze, leaving her fully rejuvenated and wondrously serene. Considering that dawn was just beginning to brighten the world and that she’d spent the night on a cramped twin bunk with Jeremiah, it was amazing she was so rested. It was even more amazing because it had taken hours to fall asleep. He had drifted off within minutes, but she’d lain awake reviewing his heartbreaking revelations.
He lay on his stomach beside her, right on the edge of the bed with his face turned toward her. With sleep slackening his features, he looked even younger than he usually did. Despite all the tragedies and traumas in his life, he had somehow managed to maintain a heartening optimism and even a glimmer of innocence. It wasn’t too hard to imagine how a cunning, charismatic psychopath—everything she’d heard about Zach led her to believe he quite likely fit the clinical description of the term—had manipulated him.
Gently so as not to wake him, she sat up and let her gaze drift over the puckered scars on the left side of his back. It was only her unwillingness to risk disturbing him that kept her from skimming her fingertips over them. How horrible to not only lose his family like he had but to also bear the scars of that fire as a lifelong reminder.
As much as her family drove her nuts, to lose them like he’d lost his parents and aunt would break her. She loved them even though they probably didn’t deserve it most days. At the thought of them and the horrible things they’d said about Jeremiah last night, the ghost of a sensation tickled her left wrist, reminding her that she’d taken her wrist band off after Jeremiah had fallen asleep last night. With the blissful serenity slipping away, she snatched it off the corner post of the bunk where she’d set it and slid it on to hide her scar beneath it again, letting her eyes take in Jeremiah’s scars again as she adjusted the laces.
His scars, my scar…. We’ve both been damaged.
Suddenly, a need to be close to him overpowered her desire to let him sleep in peace. She slid back under the covers and wrapped herself carefully around him, and though a soft moan escaped him, he didn’t wake. She pulled the blankets higher around them to ward off the chill in the cabin and tucked her arm around him. The firm warmth of his body was comforting.
He was comforting—his very presence.
She tightened her arm around him. In her two years with Dustin, she’d never slept as peacefully or woken as rested as she had this first night with Jeremiah.
Why couldn’t her family understand that he was good for her and that that was more important than the mistakes he’d made in the past and long since atoned for?
She would not cry. She’d given them that power—and more—over her before, and she would not let them have it ever again. Pinching her eyes closed, she inhaled deeply, held it for several seconds, and let it out slowly.
“G’morning,” Jeremiah mumbled.
It took her a moment before she dared to look at him. She pulled her head back to focus on his face, and her lips curved when her eyes met his sleepy ones. “Good morning to you. How’d you sleep?”
“Great. You?”
“Same.”
Her treacherous voice cracked, betraying her.
And Jeremiah, in his remarkable awareness of her, caught it. Concern erased the drowsiness from his kind eyes, and he lifted his head. “What’s wrong?”
She sucked her lips between her teeth and shook her head, trying to show him he didn’t need to worry, but he wasn’t convinced. She sat up and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She tried to hold it back; he had more than enough traumas of his own to bear without adding hers to the pile. But the harder she tried to keep the despair and anger inside, the harder it railed against her efforts. Finally, she couldn’t hold it in any longer, and the words came spilling out of her.
“I’m so sick of my family giving me shit about you. I’m sick of them judging you for something you did years ago. And I’m sick of them expecting me to marry some perfect man and settle down with him in a perfect house and have three perfect children. I’m not fucking perfect, and I never will be. I’m….”
The words vanished, and she gasped for air to fill the sudden void created by their absence. She buried her face against her knees.
“You’re flawed?” Jeremiah finished for her. “Why? Because you don’t fit into your family’s idea of perfection?”
Unable to find her voice again, she nodded.
“Is that the reason for this?” he inquired, lifting her left wrist and drawing it to him.
She jerked her head up and snatched her hand back. He didn’t move to take it again. There was a disarming tenderness in his gaze that put her at ease, and letting out a breath, she extended her hand to him. His fingers were gentle as he took it.
Instinctively, she knew she could trust him with this secret as she had trusted no one else but Ainsley.
With a light touch that sent pleasant tingles rippling over her skin, he loosened the laces and slipped the wrist band off. She closed her eyes as he brushed his thumb over the thick white scar on the inside of her wrist. The cut had needed stitches, but she’d done her best to bandage it without them.
When he hadn’t said a word after at least a full minute, she opened her eyes and searched his face.
“You don’t look surprised.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive them for this. You may be flawed, but everyone is. Some of us are just more aware of our flaws than others.”
He lifted his gaze from her scar to her eyes, and it sent a shock of electricity straight to her core. She didn’t know how, but he understood—truly understood—in a way no one ever had.
“When did this happen?”
“When I was seventeen. It was the winter after Mike Thompson and Carol Landers were killed.”
“I only met Mike a few times—we didn’t exactly run in the same circles—but he seemed like a nice kid. Did you know them?”
“Yeah. I went out with Mike after Carol broke up with him, and I wasn’t friends with Carol, but I knew her and liked her well enough. I was having a particularly bad day—one of those days when grief just kinda hits you out of nowhere—and my sister was getting ready for the winter ball, going on and on about her stupid dress, and I don’t know why, but it pissed me off so much. I said some not-so-nice things to her, and Brock jumped in to defend her like he always does. We started yelling at each other, and then Brianna started crying, like she always did… and he punched me. Right in the mouth.”
“He what?”
“That’s how I got this,” she said, pointing to the tiny scar on her upper lip. Over the years, it had faded to the point of being mostly unnoticeable. She balled her right hand into a fist and showed him how the base knuckle on her middle finger was bigger than it should be. “And this. I hit him back—broke his nose… and cracked my knuckle in the process. I also cracked one of his ribs.”
“Jesus.”
“Brock likes to think he’s a brawler, but he’s a piss-poor fighter. Too much fire and not enough focus.”
“And you know how to box. When did you start?”
“Middle school. Thought it might win my dad’s favor, but I was wrong again. In his opinion, girls don’t fight. I kept it up anyhow, just to piss him off. It’s a bad habit of mine, doing things out of spite.”
“Bad habit, good habit—that’s a matter of opinion. Sounds like boxing has served you well.”
She smiled at that. “Anyhow, Curtis came in and broke us apart, and instead of yelling at Brock for starting the fight, he yelled at me for breaking Brock’s nose. I’ve never felt so betrayed in my life. Curtis was my brother like Brock’s was Brianna’s. Until that night. I ran out to the barn, and Mom and Dad sent him out to get me because they had to take Brock to the hospital—they couldn’t get his nose to stop bleeding. Curtis didn’t try very hard to get me to come back to the house, which felt like another betrayal. I found a knife stuck in a bale of hay, and I wondered… would my family even miss me if I was dead.”
The breath she drew was ragged. Damn, that was hard to say.
“I, uh… I pressed the point to my wrist. Just to see, you know? I don’t think I really meant to do it, but a barn cat knocked over a bucket and startled me, and I jerked the knife. It sliced deep, and damn….” She shook her head and rubbed her wrist as if she could massage away the memory. “It hurt. That shocked me, and suddenly, I realized what I was contemplating, and it scared the hell out of me. Then my horse Orion—he was my first—whinnied, and I went to his stall and cried on him for, God, an hour? That’s when I knew that I was on my own and that horses would be my way to take care of myself.”
“Have you ever told anyone?”
“Just Ainsley. I couldn’t stand to be in my house that night, so I went over to hers. I thought I’d be able to lie to her about how I’d cut my wrist, even hid the bandage under a long-sleeved shirt, but she knew something was wrong.” She combed a hand through her hair, shaking the knots loose. “To my knowledge, she’s never told anyone, either. Not even Christina. We both agreed Chris might let it slip to Curtis, and the last thing I needed was my family knowing.”
Jeremiah pulled her into his arms, and she let him, glad for his support and quiet understanding. Her eyes focused on the burn scar that curled over the curve of his neck, and tentatively, she reached for it. When he didn’t seem to mind, she skimmed her fingers over it. Her brows drew together.
“As horrible as my family is sometimes, at least they’re still alive.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t think your heartbreak is less than mine. It isn’t.”
“Isn’t it? I still have a family, even if they are assholes to me.”
“Yeah, maybe the only blood family I have left is a cousin who didn’t try to hide the fact that he wants me dead, but I knew my family loved me. I never doubted for even a second that they cared about my wellbeing. And now I have a new family who remind me on a regular basis that I matter. I have three brothers there to help with anything from working on my truck to finding the courage to ask you on a date. Can you turn to your family when you need help? Or do you avoid them because they’ll only make things worse?”
A tear slipped down her cheek. Then another.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry they have no idea how incredible you are. And I’m sorry they’ve tried so hard to crush everything that makes you incredible.”
More tears came, silent but healing. She didn’t know how long she cried, but Jeremiah didn’t say a word as he held her. Right now, he was exactly what she needed. He was probably what she’d needed all along. For the first time in her life, she had someone who could truly empathize, and the release that came with that realization was breathtaking.
After a while, the tears stopped, and as they did, the serenity she’d woken up with returned.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“I’ve been there. When my brother killed Erica and then turned the gun on himself, I lost the only thing I had left in the world.”
“Did you… attempt it?”
“No. Thankfully, I was in prison and I was never given the opportunity. But I wanted to, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to do it before the guards could stop me.”
“Thankfully,” she echoed. “I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“How you can be so grateful that Aaron arrested you.”
She tilted her head up to look at him just in time to see his lips twitch with the hint of a smile. He brushed the tears from her cheeks and bent his head to kiss her.
“You’re pretty incredible yourself,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner. And I’m sorry for what my brother said to you last night. That was low, even for him.”
He shook his head and kissed her again. “Don’t apologize for him or for any of them. I don’t care what they think of me. I know who I am and what I’ve done and how hard I’ve worked to be better. All I care about is what you think.”
She couldn’t find the words to adequately express what she thought. All she knew was that he made her feel like she was perfect just as she was. And that was everything.