“I’m boring,” she continued.“Tell me about you.”
“You already know I’m a horse rancher on a stud mission.What else can I say?”
“Are those scars on your hands because of your job?”
“These?”He removed his right hand from the wheel for a few seconds, long enough to flex his fingers.“They’re nothing compared to the ones on my arms, back, and the backs of my legs.”
“What did you do to earn those?Roll around in barbed wire?”
“I did that once and, for the record, I was pushed,” he said with a hollow laugh.
“By who?”
“Beaumont.”He hadn’t intended to speak the man’s name with as much disgust and hatred as he did.
“Your father?”The shock in Cassie’s voice reverberated through him, reaching parts of him that had long been forgotten.
“Just Beaumont.”
“I’m so sorry, Hudson.”The compassion in her voice soothed those dark places.As much as he hated Beaumont, the scars weren’t the reason Hudson could never see himself as a parent.Physical pain barely scratched the surface.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.No need to apologize, and I sure as hell don’t need your pity.”
Her eyebrows rose.“Is that what you think this is?”
No, he didn’t.But he’d rather piss her off than go down that road—a road that meant revisiting a painful past and a loss so bone-deep that he’d never fully recovered.“Maybe talking about me is a bad idea.”
“And why is that?”she asked.“I mean, you’re a stranger, and here I am in your truck going God knows where.I’m putting trust in you, Hudson, whatever-you-said-your-last-name-is, and that’s not an easy thing for me to do.”She blew out a sharp breath.“And, by the way, I don’t feel pity for you.But I do think that bastard Beaumont should be in prison if he put any of those scars on you, especially when you were too young to defend yourself, because he wouldn’t dare try that shit with you now.”
Hudson and his siblings rarely spoke about the past or the pain Beaumont had put them through.They all dealt with the past in their own way.Hudson respected it.He wasn’t exactly the light-a-candle-and-stay-up-all-night-talking-about-our-feelings type either.Hearing the indignation in Cassie’s voice on his behalf when a whole town had looked the other way added more of that balm to his broken heart—a heart broken by far more than abuse and neglect.
“Once again, I find myself needing to thank you,” he said to her.“The past is where it belongs, in the rearview mirror.I’d much rather focus on the now.”
“We can agree on that,” she said.As if he needed more ammunition to tell him that hers was complicated.
Silence stretched on for what felt like hours but was no more than minutes.
“Speaking about the now,” he said.“I have moved back to this town I swore I’d never set foot in again.I’m here for the foreseeable future.”
“As a driver?”
Hudson laughed.“My siblings and I own the ranch.”
“Oh.”There was a long pause.“Do you get along?”
He was hoping Cassie would open up a little about herself if he offered enough personal information about himself, but that seemed about as likely as snow falling today.“Well enough.My oldest brother, Kade, can come on like a steamroller at times, but he always has everyone’s best interests at heart.We might not agree on everything, but I can always count on him to step up if I need anything—and I meananything.Same goes for my other siblings.”He paused a beat before adding, “As far as my half-brother goes, we’re still feeling him out.He’s come a long way toward proving himself to the others.I gave him the benefit of the doubt early on.”Instinctively, he asked, “Do you have any s…”
Hudson caught himself midsentence.
“Never mind.Forget I asked,” he said.
“No, I don’t…there aren’t any others.I was…aman only child.”
“As much as my siblings can be a pain in the ass, I can’t imagine not having them around,” he admitted.
She exhaled.“I can only imagine what it would be like for someone else to have your back.”
The weight of that statement sat heavily in the truck’s cab as Hudson pulled onto family land and in front of the cabin.