of his story. His best friend knew about his parents’ careless disregard for their only child. But he’d never spoken the words aloud to anyone. He’d never laid it out in black and white.
“Soren,” Bridget said, the two syllables like a salve to his heart.
He held her gaze, unable to look away. “It’s not like I grew up in squalor—quite the opposite. I never went without. Both my mother and father come from money. Old money. I went to the best schools, lived in expensive homes, but neither of my parents had the drive or the desire to be anything more than ornaments on the social scene. A child threw a wrench into their lives. There was a forced marriage, followed by a bitter divorce before I’d even taken my first steps. The wealth allowed my parents to hire people to care for me. Well, the word care is a stretch, but I did have one kind nanny—Janine. She’s my secretary now. She tries to keep me in line when I’m not with…”
“Tom and his family?” Bridget supplied.
“Yeah.”
“Do you see your parents very often?”
He stared into the darkness. How long had it been since he’d heard his mother’s moneyed trill of a laugh or caught one of his father’s blasé remarks?
Years.
A message on his phone the day he’d graduated from college.
He’d invited them to come to Boston.
A mistake.
When he’d looked out into the crowd, he’d only seen the Abbotts and the two empty chairs Grace had saved for his absent mother and father.
Something’s come up, and I won’t be able to make it, Soren.
That something? A party on a yacht docked in St. Croix.
At least the son of a bitch had called. His mother had blown the day off entirely. He’d come to learn she’d been shopping in Monte Carlo.
“No, I barely saw my parents when I was growing up. The divorce gave them shared parental rights, but that only meant that I was shuttled from one penthouse to another. But they were never there. They’d timed their travels perfectly to avoid me. Once I was sent to boarding school, I was truly out of sight and out of mind. During those years, I had more contact with the court and the law firm that oversaw my finances. Once I graduated from law school, I stopped taking their money and built my own private equity firm.”
“Why didn’t you practice law?”
The vice clamped around his heart tightened. “I decided to use the knowledge I’d gained in school to start my company. I wanted to make money—a lot of money and do it quickly.”
And he wanted the power to tear this world apart the way his soul had been shredded by the two people who should have nurtured it. He’d funneled that ruthless energy into any company that didn’t make the cut. But he wasn’t about to admit that.
“It must have been very lonely,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“It was.”
Here in this abandoned cabin, he revealed himself to her—this woman who he’d known for less than a week. She’d worked her way into his psyche. By sharing this slice of his tortured past with her, it unburdened his heart and loosened the hold of the anger and disappointment he’d harbored for so many years. But he couldn’t share the darkest part—the kernel of torment that never left. Even in the best of times, it nudged and cajoled him. It whispered in his ear before he succumbed to slumber each night.
You are a Traeger Rudolph.
Cut from the same cloth as your parents.
The brutal truth?
If not for the Abbotts, he’d be no different from his mother and father.
But he couldn’t reveal that. No, that fear had woven itself around his heart so tightly that it had become part and parcel of who he was in the depth of his soul. And while he felt a strange relief sharing his past with this enigma of a vixen, he couldn’t reveal this part to her or to anyone.
His most ruinous flaw.
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to your mom and dad?” he said, needing desperately to change the subject.
Bridget stared into the hearth’s dying light. “They were on their way to celebrate their anniversary. They’d booked two nights at a hotel downtown. It was a big deal. I remember my mother putting on lipstick. She never wore all that much makeup, so I knew this little getaway was a big deal. My parents were college professors, so we didn’t grow up with