Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

“Being with you the last couple of hours? That’s the longest it’s ever been for me.” I held myself rigid, intending to pull away the instant I detected any pity.

Sierra just groaned. “You probably felt smothered because I am a very friendly sleeper. Sorry about that.”

She’d apologized to me because I’d bailed? As easy as it’d be to let that stand, I wasn’t one to blame others for my shortcomings. “Christ, Sierra. Don’t apologize. You need to know these weird things about me so you don’t think any of it has to do with you. That I’m fucked up.”

When she didn’t immediately respond, my leg started to bounce with nerves.

Sierra placed her hand around the top of my quad and squeezed—harder than I expected. It wasn’t harsh, but it did remind me to stay focused. “As long as you’ve opened this door, Boone, you need to take me through it all the way. Because I’ll be honest with you, I like the whole cuddle, snuggle thing. I want that with you. Not just after you fuck me, but when we’re watching TV, or like this if we’re just lounging by the pool. Earlier you said you can show me how you feel about me when we’re naked and our body parts are connected.”

I couldn’t help but grin at her vague reference to body parts.

“But shoving your dick in me is not the only way to show me that you care. I’m affectionate, so you’ll just have to deal with that.”

And here was the moment of truth. “And if I don’t know how?”

“How what? How to deal with me being affectionate?”

“Yeah. I’ve never had that.”

“You’ve never had what? Affection?”

“Drop the confetti and sound the alarm—we have a winner. Just don’t expect a hug as the prize for guessing correctly.” That didn’t make me sound like an emotionally stunted asshole at all. Jesus.

“I’m confused. So cut the sarcasm and talk to me.”

My Sierra. Patient and understanding…until my flip response forced her not to be.

She deserves better.

No kidding. Why the fuck had I even started talking about this? Did I want to chase her away?

“Boone,” she said sharply.

“It’s another fucked-up thing in my life to add to the others.”

“Tell me.”

“Junkie mom. Aloof dad. They both resented me and neither of them liked me much. So they didn’t bother faking affection. They yelled at me, or in my mom’s case, she beat on me, but did either one of them ever give me a hug? Nope.”

She let that sink in before she murmured, “Never?”

“Never. Not once. And this isn’t something I’d exaggerate, because who the fuck wants to admit that to anyone?” Before Sierra asked if I’d ever confessed this to anyone else, I kept talking. “My mother was ‘drugs not hugs.’ Bad thing about her being high was she didn’t give a damn about eating so I went hungry. The good thing about her being high was she didn’t take out her bad mood for not being high by beating the crap out of me.”

“And your dad?”

“He wasn’t around until he had no choice but to take me in. So he’s too fucking macho for that hugging shit. He couldn’t even give me a half-assed bro hug when I graduated from basic. It was the norm with him and I didn’t realize it was…abnormal until I had this weird fever dream during a visit to the ER. In my dream all these dads and sons were on this big baseball diamond, slapping each other on the back. High fiving. Hugging. And me and Dad were in the bleachers watching, not looking at each other. That’s when I noticed Dad didn’t have any arms.”

“Whoa. Heavy shit, Boone.”

“It wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination, just a fucked-up glimpse into my psyche. The total lack of emotion or affection would make me a textbook example of why Freddy sets fires or why Billy is a bully, except I didn’t let it become a thing. I didn’t let it define me or use it as an excuse. But from an early age I was adept at slipping lies into conversation so my shitty life was explainable instead of pitiable. In grade school, when kids complained about getting dumped off at their grandparents’ house for the weekend, I chimed in I was tired of it too…when I never spent a single night at my grandparents’ house. In middle school I’d call the cafeteria food crappy and refuse to eat it when the truth was I didn’t have enough money for lunch. In high school I’d tell people I didn’t have a car because my dad insisted we work on the classic he’d bought for me together. You already know I lied about having a girlfriend who lived out of town.” I groaned out of pure embarrassment. “Sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds…rough.”

I couldn’t look at her. And I closed my own eyes as if it’d keep me from looking inside myself.