he leaned down and pressed a kiss against her forehead as Grey offered her the one thing that he couldn’t give her.
An answer.
Chapter 35
“Haven’t you ever wondered why they’re doing this?”
“What are you talking about?” Kylie asked, as she tried to figure out how she was going to fix this.
Hunter didn’t deserve this and if she’d thought for one second that her family would drag him into this, she never would have-
“Haven’t you ever wondered why your parents do these horrible things?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Kylie mumbled, but something about the way he watched her told her that he knew more than she wanted him to.
“How about this?” Grey suggested. “For the next twenty minutes, you and I will talk and if I’m able to convince you that I can help you, then you tell me about the first time that you realized that there was something wrong with your family. But if after twenty minutes, you think I’m full of shit then I’ll never bother you again.”
“I-I don’t need therapy,” Kylie said, because the last thing that she wanted was for anyone else to find out what happened.
“You need someone to talk to,” Grey said, as Hunter wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against his body, making this harder.
“I just want to drop this,” she said, because she knew what would happen if her parents ever found out that she told someone. They would make her life a living hell and they would go after Hunter, accusing him of all the sick things that they’d-
“She thinks she’s protecting you,” Grey said, earning a glare.
“I have to-Wait! No, put me down, Hunter!” she started to explain only to panic when the ungrateful man that she was protecting stood up and promptly dropped her back down on the couch as Ryan got up and headed for the door with a sighed, “I’m going to do damage control.”
“We’re going to have a talk, Miss McCann,” Hunter said with a heavy sigh as he knelt down in front of her.
“Hunter, you don’t understand what they’re capable of. They’ll ruin your life!” Kylie said, desperate to make him understand.
“A long fucking talk,” he stressed, with a sad shake of his head.
“No, Hunter, listen to me,” Kylie said only to end up glaring when Hunter placed his hand over her mouth as he leaned in and said, “You’re worrying over nothing,” before she pushed his hand aside.
“Hunter, you really don’t understand what they’re capable of,” she said, trying not to panic.
“Hunter will be fine,” Grey said, waving it off like it was no big deal.
It was a very big deal!
“You don’t understand!” Kylie said, desperate for them to listen to reason before it was too late.
“I probably understand better than you think,” Grey said with a sad smile.
“Look at me, Kylie,” Hunter said, cupping her face in his hands. “You’re safe.”
“But my family-”
“I’m your family, Kylie,” Hunter said, pressing a kiss against her forehead. “Not them.”
“Which is why I can’t let them do this to you, Hunter,” she said, placing her hands over his as she tried to make him listen to reason.
“You give them way too much credit,” he said, pressing one last kiss against her forehead before he pulled back with a sigh and sat next to her.
“There’s no need to worry, Kylie,” Grey promised her.
“What the hell do you know about it?” Kylie asked, moving to climb off the couch, done with trying to explain this. They were never going to understand why she needed to-
“They blamed you for everything, didn’t they? Every mistake they made, every time something didn’t go their way, they had a bad day, or someone pissed them off, they took it out on you. They also shifted the blame to you when other people found out what they were doing, the rumors they spread, and the things they did to them. They blamed you for everything,” Grey said, watching her as he pulled an old coin out of his pocket and began flipping it over the back of his fingers.
“Yes,” she said weakly.
Nodding absently, Grey said, “Nothing you did was ever good enough, was it? It didn’t matter if you got all A’s on your report card or did everything you were told; it was never enough.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Kylie said, releasing a shaky breath, thinking of all those times she’d tried to so hard to make them happy, hoping it would be enough, but it never was.
They always found something wrong.
Always.
“Your