“Yeah, I know. And I’m sorry for violating your privacy.”
“Considering why you did it…it’s okay.” She slid the laptop onto the bed next to her, so he took it and set it aside.
Then he slid in next to her and was surprised when she cuddled up next to him as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Hell, maybe she didn’t want sex, so his “no sex” rule was a moot point anyway. She probably just didn’t want to be alone. Not with everything going on.
Her entire life had been turned upside down and he could be a support for her. He wanted to be.
“Tell me more about your family,” he said quietly, putting an arm around her, glad when she curled into him even more. He hadn’t had a lot of peace in his life, but holding her like this soothed something inside him.
“Well, you know my mother died.”
“Yeah.”
“We had a very complicated relationship. If she was alive, I don’t know how I would deal with the lies she told me.”
“Lies?”
Hadley sighed softly. “I don’t even know if she would consider them lies, but she told me that my dad was an asshole, that he wouldn’t want me in his life. That he’d never gotten over his first wife, the one who died. That’s Brooks’s mom.”
Axel was silent, just letting her talk.
“According to Brooks, and even according to my dad, he wasn’t the best father to Brooks growing up. He wasn’t abusive or anything, just kind of absent, drowning in his own pain. And that’s between us,” she added, shifting slightly so she could look up at him.
He nodded once. “Whatever you tell me stays between us.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then continued as she laid her head back on his chest. “My mom moved us to the West Coast when I was really young. She was…oddly competitive with me. I didn’t really understand it until I hit about fifteen. She was hypercritical of my appearance and now I can see that she simply hated getting older and took out her issues on me. She worked out four hours a day—yes, four—and was constantly worried about how she looked, what she ate or how many wrinkles she had. That kind of stuff, it never really mattered to me, probably because of her obsession with it. And the thing is, she was gorgeous. I mean, simply stunning.”
Even if Axel hadn’t done some digging on his own, he would have believed it because Hadley was too. It didn’t matter what she wore, nothing could hide her beauty.
And even if it sounded cheesy in his own head, a lot of that had to do with who she was on the inside. She’d made them stop to save a dog on the side of the road when her own life was in danger. She always seemed to be thinking of others and he could admit that he was already addicted to her.
Chapter 13
—Good things take time.—
Hadley wasn’t sure what possessed her to open up so much to Axel, but she was just laying it all out there. If he could be honest about what he did for a living, she could be honest about where she came from and who her family was.
“My mom would do kind of weird stuff,” she continued, cringing a little as she said all this out loud. “Like whenever I had friends over she tried to be their friend or flirt with boys from my class. Pretty gross stuff, if I want to be blunt. The overt flirting is why I stopped bringing people over finally. Honestly, I know kids have it way worse. My mom was dysfunctional, and…okay, she didn’t really care if I had food to eat, but I think that had more to do with her viewing food as an enemy.”
“Jesus,” Axel muttered.
She let out a small, humorless laugh. “Yeah, it was kind of messed up, but I will say, the only thing she ever let me do was horseback riding. Once she saw how good I was, she wanted to put me in competitions and she actually paid for lessons and encouraged me in her own weird way. She kind of treated me like a show pony and she loved showing off how good I was to her friends, but I didn’t care because it was the one thing I loved.” Hadley didn’t think of her mom often. Or she tried not to. So it was weird to be talking about her now, but also kind of therapeutic.
He continued rubbing her back softly. Then he said, “So what’s it like now that you have a family? A bigger family, I mean. One who seems to support you.”
Pushing up, she sat next to him so she could look at him while they talked. Being cuddled up with Axel was heaven, but she liked looking into his blue eyes. “It’s different. Especially since all of Brooks’s friends treat me like a little sister. I really like it. Actually, I love it, but I found that I have to draw some boundaries with them because they seem to think I’m fifteen and not twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two,” he muttered.
She pinched his side. “You’ve always known how old I am.”
“Yeah, but it makes me feel ancient right now.”
Axel took one of her hands in his, linked his fingers through hers, and she melted a little more.
“So, tell me about your mom,” she said. “You only said that you guys weren’t close.”
His expression went carefully neutral so she decided to lay her head back on his chest, sensing that looking into his eyes made it harder for him. He shifted, wrapping his arm around her again, and she just wanted to burrow into him. She hoped it would be easier for him to talk with her lying this way, without feeling like he was being scrutinized.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she murmured, resting one hand on his chest. Even if she was really curious. Because she wanted to know everything about this man, everything that made him tick. He’d already opened up to her in such a huge way, she wouldn’t push anymore. Not tonight anyway.
He slid his hand down along her side and hip until his big hand was more or less grazing the top of her butt. Holy hell, that shouldn’t get her worked up, but it made her wonder if he planned to do anything else or if cuddling was the only thing on the menu for tonight. Some of her friends from school would have no problem making the first move, but she wasn’t feeling brave right now. After the other night, after the way she’d stroked him off, she wanted him to make the move this time.
His fingers flexed once against her hip, sending a rush of heat through her. The man was huge all over. She could clearly see the outline of his erection, but he seemed content to simply lie there with her.
“I want to tell you about my past too. I have no idea who my father was, and honestly, I don’t think my mom knew either. She was sort of like your mom, I guess, trying to recapture her youth, or just hold on to it. She liked to party and she didn’t mind leaving me home alone. If it hadn’t been for a neighbor, I wouldn’t have eaten most nights. We lived in this shitty little trailer, so I was what you would consider white trash. I didn’t really understand that until I hit middle school.”
He was silent for a long moment and she gently kissed his chest, hating the thought of him going hungry. He was quiet for a while and she thought he might be done.
“She partied too hard one night and went home with the wrong man,” he finally said. “The guy killed her.” His voice was completely devoid of emotion.
Stunned, Hadley pushed up so she could look at him. “Axel, I’m so sorry.”
He lifted a shoulder, the sheets rustling with the movement. “It was a long time ago. I was sixteen then. So I was put in the system for a couple years, and got pretty lucky. I only lived with two families, and they weren’t great but they also weren’t abusive. I think it’s because of my size. They pretty much left me alone, cashed their checks, and I got to finish school in the same school district I’d lived in with my mom. Trust me, I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse.”