The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch - Maisey Yates Page 0,18
was such a strange and interesting fantasy. To find out that you had family you didn’t know about.
Pansy had a big family. But there was no secret dad waiting for her to discover. Her mom and dad were just gone. There was no one else. There wouldn’t be.
“Were you... How did you feel to find your dad?”
“Are you a police officer or a psychiatrist?”
She looked down. “I’m just curious.”
“I heard about your parents,” he said. She popped her head back up. “I’m sorry,” he said.
It was such a simple statement. Not a whole lot of awkwardness or attempts at eloquence. Just a simple I’m sorry.
“It was a long time ago,” she said.
“Yeah. So was my childhood. Doesn’t mean it didn’t suck.”
“Did it?”
“It wasn’t great. I guess I was curious,” he continued. “I have these half siblings. And they had a different experience than I did. I spent the last few months kind of observing it. Like I said. I don’t really have anything else. So... Why not. Before I went to jail... I wouldn’t have cared. But the thing is, when everything went down, and my wife accused me of all that stuff, then framed me for stealing money... I realized that half my problem was I didn’t have anyone on my side. That’s what family is. It’s what they do. They side with you, right? My mom didn’t care. Not really. So yeah, I’d found out about Hank right before prison. Then as soon as I was out I came here. Because I thought...it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to get myself a team. If I could. I got more than I bargained for. I figured I would find some way to meet up with Hank. I knew that he had other illegitimate kids. I didn’t expect to be accepted by his other kids. The ones that were raised in his house. Or his wife.”
“That’s pretty amazing.”
“I haven’t decided how I feel about it yet. It all makes me a little uncomfortable, to be honest. I don’t really know how to do holidays without TV trays and someone shouting at the football game.”
It was too easy to picture. And the echo in that image, even if it was so different to her own life, was something she knew well.
Lonely.
She had been surrounded by family growing up. She’d had so many people who loved her.
But she hadn’t had her parents.
Her siblings, her cousins, Logan, they’d known. And in their house there was a shorthand for their feelings because they all shared them. Their grief might take different shapes when it bubbled up and escaped their bodies like a breath. Their actions might look different, but it was a common wound.
But outside the house? At school, in town, at slumber parties?
No one else knew. They might know she hurt, but now how she hurt.
That the ache to be held by a certain set of arms could be a physical pain. Arms that were gone from the world and would never hold you again on this side of heaven.
She knew.
And somehow she had the sense that even though he hadn’t lost a parent to death, West might know it too.
“Our holidays were always big,” she said slowly. “Basically held together by duct tape. But I think my brother Ryder felt like he had to do something for us. Because he was...he was the only one who could.” She didn’t know why she was sharing this with him, but there was something so vivid about the picture he painted. TV dinners in a lonely childhood. A mom who hadn’t even cared that he’d gone to prison for something he didn’t do. A bunch of strangers that were related to him genetically being his only hope of ever fitting into a family.
A wife who had framed him.
It made her ramshackle Christmas seem like it might be something more magical than she had imagined it to be. She shouldn’t have changed into her T-shirt. It made her feel soft. Human. She preferred the feeling of being...well, bulletproof. She was never going to feel ten feet tall, that was certain, but the other she was able to accomplish with the right equipment.
Right now, she didn’t feel anything of the kind. She felt sorry for the stunningly handsome, exceedingly fit man standing in front of her.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Do you want some food?”
“Sure,” he said, looking surprised.
“You’re fixing my garbage disposal so let’s have a truce. Just for now.”