fucks, should ever go through.
“No, let me finish this before I lose my nerve. At first, I thought he was angry at Thomas. He led me to the car waiting outside and then—” she sucked in a breath— “he told me in no uncertain terms I was going home to Thomas’s home, the one he’d bought for us on the edge of town. He said if I was going to act like a child, he’d cut me off. Keys, I pulled a makeup wipe out of my purse so he could see what I’d covered up with cosmetics. My grandfather, the man who’d promised to take care of me, always, stared at me as if he didn’t care and told me I should be a better wife,” she sobbed.
Keys wrapped his arms around Palmer, wondering how much Palmer would hate him if he killed her grandfather. “Nobody will ever touch you again.”
“You don’t understand, Keys. He knew. He knew what Thomas did. Everything he did to me and didn’t care. When we pulled up outside my new home instead of his, that only a few months before I’d thought was the beginning of a fairytale, my grandfather didn’t even get out of the car. He leaned across me and shoved the door open, telling me to do my duty and be a good Coker female. I sat there stunned, unable to believe he was saying I was supposed to take the physical abuse. I’d never seen my grandfather raise a hand to my MeMaw. However, sitting outside the estate that was to be my prison, the rose-colored glasses I’d worn for years was suddenly ripped off. I saw the way my grandfather would rest his hand on the back of her neck. The way her smile wouldn’t be the same as when it was just her and I. That was the day he became grandfather instead of my PopPop.”
Keys remembered she used to have a nickname for the older man. “When did Thomas return?”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “A week later. He spent the rest of our honeymoon enjoying himself...with others. I had hoped that meant he would leave me alone.”
The way her little body shivered was his answer. “I’m sorry, baby. If I could, I’d kill the fucker slow and painfully.” As it was, he’d love to teach her grandfather a lesson. He was supposed to protect her, not send her straight to the devil himself.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m fine. I survived and as much as I hate, hated Thomas, I wouldn’t change being with him.”
To say he was shocked would be a major fucking understatement. He’d heard of Stockholm Syndrome. Hell, they’d seen victims come through after they’d rescued them who were clearly suffering from it. But not his Palmer.
“Oh gawd, you don’t think? Jeezus, Keys, I didn’t want him, ever. But that little boy right over there is everything to me. I’d suffer a million times if it meant I ended up with him.” She tried to shift off his lap.
Keys held her tighter. “I’m sorry, Palmer. There’s this primitive part of me that wants to wrap you up in the softest cotton and protect you from the world. Hoss baby too. I get it, though. He’s a part of you. I can see you in him so much that just looking at him makes my chest ache with longing.”
He figured if she was brave enough to tell him about her fucked up marriage, then he could tell her how he felt about her and her kid.
“I know. How could anyone look at that sweet boy and not love him?” she choked out.
Her head tucked under his chin, fitting there like it had done it a thousand times, instead of for the first time. Keys felt another chink in the armor he’d put around his own heart loosening. His brothers in the MC were allowed in, and his animals, but that had been it.
The feelings he’d felt for Palmer when he’d been a kid had been buried, but they’d been huge, like get the fuck out of town or risk going to jail for claiming a girl too young kinda huge. The moment he’d spied her pushing a stroller across the street, those feelings had exploded out of the cage he’d kept them in like it had been a paper box. The child that was part of her was now an extension of his, a boy he would protect with his life.