Faked (Ward Family #2)(49)

"Did you figure out your mom?" he asked quietly. His hand found my hip, and he squeezed. I loved that he did that. At Richard's house, when he could sense I was uneasy with our little charade, he'd give me one small press of his hands to let me know he was there, that he was on my side.

Maybe the fact that he did it again at that moment was why I could answer. "Sometimes I think I have."

"Raging narcissist?" he asked.

My body shook with laughter, and I leaned down to give him a quick kiss. Bauer didn't even attempt to deepen it, which somehow endeared him to me even further, another fraction of my heart that he claimed by letting me talk about this serious thing. And talking about his own without prompting.

"There's probably a lot of truth to that," I agreed. "Brooke was a lot younger than our dad—who we share with Logan. It was a second marriage for him, and I think, I don't know, Brooke liked the idea of his old-money enough to overlook the age thing. When my dad had his heart attack, she was suddenly a widow with four young girls, and he hadn't quite left her the money she imagined was sitting in a bank somewhere." I'd picked apart our childhood from every angle over the years, witnessed the varying ways my sisters and I felt the ramifications of her leaving, yet it still made my throat tighten up to try to talk about it out loud.

His hand moved gently over my back. "We don't have to talk about it."

I smiled at him. "No, it's fine. Just thinking about the irony of what I'm going to school for, and I don't like talking about my own childhood issues."

"She left you, princess." His wandering fingers pushed under the hem of my sleep shirt, sweeping in small circles around the bumps on my spine. "It's shitty, and she's shitty, and I think what you're going to school for is fucking incredible, and there's something amazing that you didn't let her ruin you."

My eyes burned. "She didn't even really say goodbye when she dropped us off at Logan's. I think Molly knew she was leaving for good, but Lia and I were too young."

His eyes looked enraged on my behalf, but he didn't say anything.

"I think it," I continued quietly, "it makes you feel really forgettable, you know? And small. How small we must have been in her eyes to be able to walk away so easily."

I sniffed, tilting my chin up because I would not cry on my last night in this wonderful little haven with Bauer.

He shook his head. "You're just about the least forgettable person I've ever met, Claire."

One tear escaped. Not because what he said made me sad, but because I'd never admitted that to anyone before. And I was giving it to him in the quiet stillness of that cabin, and his reaction was exactly what my heart needed to hear.

I didn't want Bauer to forget me. And I didn't want to forget him either.

He gently brushed away that tear that slipped down my cheek, and it unlocked the last thing I'd left unsaid. It had stayed hidden so far back in my head that it was almost impossible to form the words.

"I'm glad she left," I whispered.

Bauer went still. His forehead creased slightly, but other than that, he waited to see if I'd say anything else.

"I love my family," I said fiercely. "The one we've built is so amazing, and because I can see that, see that what I went through can help someone else someday, I'm glad she left. We're better off without her."

My words hung between us, and I could see it on Bauer's face. He knew that I'd just told him something secret, something that came from a quiet part of my heart that I'd never given to anyone else.

His smile was small and sweet, and the way he was watching me made me blush in a different way. It wasn't sexual. Bauer looked ... fascinated. Enamored. Like a man who was falling in love. And suddenly, I found it hard to swallow.

For as long as I could remember, I wanted someone—his brother—to look at me in that exact way. To see beyond the fact that I was just one of a set, someone who happened to look like Lia, and really see me. See what made me different and unique and Claire. Someone who thought I was the least forgettable person he'd ever met.

Knowing what I knew now, ever having feelings for Finn felt like a betrayal of his deepest wound even though I could've hardly known that.

And now, knowing what I knew, I didn't want Finn to see me that way. It dawned slowly, warm and pure and wonderful, that I only wanted Bauer to look at me in the way he was.

"If I doubted how incredible you were before," he said in a gruff voice. His hand pulled from my shirt so he could cup the side of my face, and I leaned into his palm. "You're going to do such great things, princess. I probably would've turned out better if I'd had someone like you to save me."

Even though I fought it earlier, another tear escaped, and his face pinched in a pained expression when he swept it away with his thumb.

I dipped my head and kissed him slowly, first his top lip, then his bottom, sucking it into my mouth before pulling back.

His expression was slightly dazed, and I couldn't stop the way my heart was racing.

Maybe we were a strange pairing, one that no one else would put together, but I could see it. And ... and with the way Bauer was looking at me, I think he could see it too.

"Maybe we can save each other," I whispered. I held his gaze and watched it slowly ignite and then burn so intensely that I fought not to blink, simply because I didn't want to miss a second of the way he was looking at me.