Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

“I thought maybe I’d dreamed you.” He kissed the nape of my neck. “Thank you for coming. How was the wedding?”


“Boring. With a side of pompous. Everyone got gift bags. Like they were attending the freakin’ Oscars or something. It was ridiculous. I did sneak a shot of the ceremony with my cell phone and sent the pic to my dad with the caption—‘Freedom from Alimony!’”

I felt Boone smile against the nape of my neck. “Did Gavin see the humor?”

“Is it mean to say he always laughs at my mom?”

“No. Better laughing than crying or screaming.”

“Thankfully those days are in the past. For both of us.”

He started to move his hands all over me. More out of reflex than anything else. He pressed his lips into the back of my head.

Stalling.

Prompt him? Or let this play out on its own timeframe?

My concern for him won out. “What happened?”

“I don’t even know where to start. Probably because I didn’t know what to expect with him. I haven’t talked to you about it because it seemed stupid to speculate. That doesn’t mean I didn’t. I’d half-convinced myself he’d been born again and wanted to share his personal journey to salvation. I had awesome zingers worked up for that possibility.”

I snickered.

“I’d also prepared myself for the apology portion of the twelve-step program. Where he admits how he wronged me, swears he’s given his life over to a higher power and accepted the change, needing me to offer him my forgiveness. The last two possibilities were either he would tell me he was gay, he’d been in a serious secret relationship for a few years and couldn’t live the lie anymore. Or, he’d met the love of his life, decided to give up driving truck so he could marry this woman with four young kids that he planned to adopt and he’d be a stay-at-home dad.” He rubbed his mouth across the top of my ear and his fingers dug into my hips. “I wasn’t even fucking close to any of those scenarios.”

I waited.

“This is so fucked up,” he whispered. “I never imagined this stuff went on in my family. So he totally blindsided me when he said he’d been sexually abused from age three until he turned twelve.” He paused. “By his dad, Sierra.”

I rolled over and wrapped myself around him as he began to talk.

He’d stop and start, the shock still evident as he tried to process it.

My questions were slow in coming, mostly because I didn’t know what to ask. Although Boone’s grandparents lived in Wyoming, he’d never been close to them, which surprised me, given how I’d seen the other members of the West family act around their grandkids. Also given that Boone was their only grandchild. He wouldn’t appreciate me saying he’d dodged a bullet with their apathy toward him. And I wanted to kick myself for thinking that when the conversation took a darker turn.

“I guess my dad’s one edict to my mom was not to let me spend time with them.”

“He considered that his way of protecting you?”

“Oh, he admitted his neglect of me was intentional. Because he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t have those same tendencies as his father, so he left me with a drug-addicted and abusive mother…you know…to keep me safe.”

The sarcasm was as harsh as a slap in the face. Boone was never sarcastic.

I raised my head from his chest and looked at him. “Boone. Are you serious? He said that?”

“What’s worse? He justified it. Even now he acts like he made some big fucking sacrifice by purposely being a shitty father and staying away from me.”

“What did you say?”

“What could I say? I lost my temper.”

“I don’t blame you. Did you get up and storm off?”

“No. I meant to say I didn’t temper my responses. He took it in stride, but what other choice did he have?”

“Did…things end on decent terms?”

“We didn’t hug it out, if you can believe that.”

Even that flip answer hurt my heart.

“So yeah, it sort of ended on decent terms. With all the stuff he told me, I said I needed time to take it in. That wasn’t a total lie.” Boone traced my jawline. “You’re clenching your teeth, gorgeous.”

“Of course I am.”

“Tell me what’s going through your head.”

“Filtered or unfiltered version?”

“Unfiltered.” He leaned down and kissed me softly. “Always.”

I glanced down at his chest and started toying with his chest hair. “Just because his childhood had been stolen from him didn’t give him the right to steal yours. That’s what he did. He can lie to himself and claim it was to save you, but it was to save himself the embarrassment of having to tell anyone what his father had done to him.”

“I said the same thing. But it seemed really harsh to say.”