Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

“Why?”


He was back to label-picking. “I didn’t trust myself to be around you, Boone. My dad was a sexual abuser. I had no way of knowing whether that…trait, tendency, whatever the fuck you wanna call it, had been passed on to me. Back then, I didn’t know half the stuff I do now, but a lot of this bad shit is learned behavior. It’s a pattern. It’s passed down. That sucks. I don’t have any idea whether my dad was abused or who did it to him. To be honest I don’t give a fuck. ‘I didn’t know any better’ is never a valid argument. But one thing I did know?”

He looked at me with the most haunted eyes I’ve ever seen.

“Whatever fucked-up cycle of abuse I’d been born into would stop with me. I’d never do to you what my dad did to me. Never. And to ensure that didn’t happen, I stayed away as much as I could.”

My last sip of beer threatened to come back up. With all of the implications of what I’d learned in the last hour about my family? That hadn’t crossed my mind. I never would’ve seen my dad as the perverted fucker who liked little boys.

Did you ever in your wildest imaginings believe your grandfather was a pedophile in an incestuous situation with your father?

No.

“Maybe this is the beer talking or maybe it’s just that we’ve come this goddamned far in being able to talk about it. I can honestly say I never had any pull that direction. Ever. But I’ll also admit I never put myself in a situation where it’d become an issue.”

“Including spending time raising your son.”

“Including that.”

I counted to ten before I responded. “So while you fought with your demons, trying to keep me safe from sexual abuse, my mother abused me and neglected me. Starved me. Tried her best to turn me into a feral animal. And that was somehow fucking better? Than you stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘I’ve gotta draw boundaries but here’s how we can do it’?”

“I know that now. I didn’t know that then. Back when your mom wanted you to live with me fulltime because she was pregnant, I couldn’t do it. That makes me a shitty parent on a whole different level since I chose to leave you in what I knew was a bad situation.”

“Yeah, you did. While I’m sorry that your past scarred you, now mine does too. That could’ve been prevented.”

His eyes took on a hard glint. “Or you could be in therapy for the rest of your life after all the sick shit I did to you because I hadn’t dealt with any of what had been done to me.”

Jesus, fuck, this was so messed up.

“I did eventually bring you to live with me.”

“Why did you bother? I mean, you were never home. Chet and Remy ended up looking after me. You just went on, business as usual. Things didn’t change a whole lot for me. Except I didn’t have my brother and sister underfoot—so I spent even more time alone. I still never had enough to eat. You never gave me money for anything. I had to get a fucking job at age thirteen. A job I had to walk four miles to. What lesson was the hardship supposed to teach me?”

“It got the job done, didn’t it? You’re no worse for the wear. Look at all you’ve accomplished.”

I tuned him out. Fuck, I was tired of hearing that response. I was no “worse for the wear” now. I’d gone without then. That’s what burned my ass. I was a child. I didn’t have clothes that fit; I didn’t have enough food or school supplies or gym shoes. Now if I needed that stuff I could get in my car that I paid for myself and buy what I needed, with the money I earned. But being a thirteen-year-old boy, without transportation, without money, without supervision…no wonder I stole a dirt bike and drove into town. Straight to the grocery store in Moorcroft, where I sat in the aisle and filled my hungry belly until the deputy came and hauled me away.

Had my dad come and picked me up and paid for the food I’d consumed?

No. Chet and Remy had.

Besides admitting I didn’t know how to read at age nine, that’d been the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to me. The next day, my uncles took me to the local farm discount store where I ended up with jeans, gym shoes, work boots, T-shirts, socks, underwear and winter gear. I’d hated that they’d had to buy it for me even when I’d been so grateful to have it. That’s when my uncles had started dragging me along to their jobsites after school and on weekends. “Keeping me out of trouble” they claimed, but mostly to make sure I wasn’t starving and alone.

“Boone?”

I looked back at my father and didn’t block the resentment from my eyes. Maybe he didn’t need it, but he’d brought it up so he could just fucking deal with it. “What?”