Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(57)

“You’ve never had what? Affection?”

“Drop the confetti and sound the alarm—we have a winner. Just don’t expect a hug as the prize for guessing correctly.” That didn’t make me sound like an emotionally stunted * at all. Jesus.

“I’m confused. So cut the sarcasm and talk to me.”

My Sierra. Patient and understanding…until my flip response forced her not to be.

She deserves better.

No kidding. Why the f*ck had I even started talking about this? Did I want to chase her away?

“Boone,” she said sharply.

“It’s another f*cked-up thing in my life to add to the others.”

“Tell me.”

“Junkie mom. Aloof dad. They both resented me and neither of them liked me much. So they didn’t bother faking affection. They yelled at me, or in my mom’s case, she beat on me, but did either one of them ever give me a hug? Nope.”

She let that sink in before she murmured, “Never?”

“Never. Not once. And this isn’t something I’d exaggerate, because who the f*ck wants to admit that to anyone?” Before Sierra asked if I’d ever confessed this to anyone else, I kept talking. “My mother was ‘drugs not hugs.’ Bad thing about her being high was she didn’t give a damn about eating so I went hungry. The good thing about her being high was she didn’t take out her bad mood for not being high by beating the crap out of me.”

“And your dad?”

“He wasn’t around until he had no choice but to take me in. So he’s too f*cking macho for that hugging shit. He couldn’t even give me a half-assed bro hug when I graduated from basic. It was the norm with him and I didn’t realize it was…abnormal until I had this weird fever dream during a visit to the ER. In my dream all these dads and sons were on this big baseball diamond, slapping each other on the back. High fiving. Hugging. And me and Dad were in the bleachers watching, not looking at each other. That’s when I noticed Dad didn’t have any arms.”

“Whoa. Heavy shit, Boone.”

“It wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination, just a f*cked-up glimpse into my psyche. The total lack of emotion or affection would make me a textbook example of why Freddy sets fires or why Billy is a bully, except I didn’t let it become a thing. I didn’t let it define me or use it as an excuse. But from an early age I was adept at slipping lies into conversation so my shitty life was explainable instead of pitiable. In grade school, when kids complained about getting dumped off at their grandparents’ house for the weekend, I chimed in I was tired of it too…when I never spent a single night at my grandparents’ house. In middle school I’d call the cafeteria food crappy and refuse to eat it when the truth was I didn’t have enough money for lunch. In high school I’d tell people I didn’t have a car because my dad insisted we work on the classic he’d bought for me together. You already know I lied about having a girlfriend who lived out of town.” I groaned out of pure embarrassment. “Sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds…rough.”

I couldn’t look at her. And I closed my own eyes as if it’d keep me from looking inside myself.

After a few moments passed, Sierra said, “While I’m grateful you told me all of this, I want to know what it means for us.”

“It means I don’t know how to be the normal kind of guy…boyfriend…whatever. The hand-holding, cuddling-up, sleeping-together-all-night, Netflix-and-chill type. That’s part of why I freaked out. I’d started to feel that I don’t have anything more to offer you now than I did seven years ago.”

My breath left my belly when Sierra climbed on top of me. I could feel us chest to chest. Her face was so close to mine her breath drifted across my lips.

“Boone West, you look at me right now.”

My heart hammered when I peeled my eyes open.

I expected to see pity on her face; instead I saw ferocity that brought my heart into my throat. “The only difference between us is I’ve had my family show me love and let me love them back. You haven’t. That is not your fault.”

This understanding about the things that formed me, without judgment, without pity…this was my definition of love.

I studied her. This woman who f*cking owned me. “Sierra. I don’t know how to do this.”

“What?”

“Love.” My hand and my voice shook when I touched her face. “The other reason I freaked out? What if what I want from you is too much? Everything you are, everything I am when I’m around you…that’s the life I want with you. It’s always been you.”

Shock flashed in her eyes, followed by recognition. She whispered, “You knew. That’s what you meant the night you kissed me. You told me if we’d been together the way you wanted, you wouldn’t have been able to walk away from me.”

“It wasn’t a bullshit line. You scared the hell out of me, Sierra. Without thought, without knowing what it meant to me, you gave me a small taste of your affection—and we were just friends. I’d never had that and I almost couldn’t wrap my head around the fact it could be better.” I traced the arc of her cheekbone with my thumb. “Tonight proved that wrong. Jesus, woman. I…” I paused. Breathed. “I’m at a loss to even find words for how everything shifted in my world tonight.”