Built (Saints of Denver #1)(45)
Oh, Zeb had no idea how good I was at ignoring things. I was a master at denying I felt anything. It was my second greatest skill next to practicing law. He wasn’t going to get a choice in the matter if I really put my mind to pretending nothing was going on between the two of us.
I tucked some of my hair behind my ears and looked at Rowdy unwaveringly. “I’m not good with passionate people, Rowdy. I don’t know how to deal with someone who acts on what they feel, or how to handle someone who takes what they want with no regard for the risks. The fact that he jumped both feet in with Hyde even before knowing if the kid was his petrifies me. That kind of investment in another person, that level of unconditional love . . .” I shook my head sadly. “I don’t think I’m wired to return those kinds of feelings, and that will ultimately lead to a disaster. Someone will end up getting hurt and I lived with enough hurt when I was younger to last a million lifetimes. I don’t have room inside for anything else, which means I’m immune to all the things he stirs up, and that isn’t fair to him. He should have someone who is just as passionate and invested as he is.”
His eyes that were an identical match to my own widened and he set his beer down on the table with a thunk. He leaned closer to me and bit out, “That’s bullshit, Sayer. It’s utter bullshit and you know it.”
I blinked in surprise at the vehemence in his tone. It went completely against his laid-back personality to get so heated, especially at me. “Why do you say that?”
“Because as soon as you found out about me you dropped everything and moved your life here. You had no idea how I would react, if I was a nice guy or a complete *, and yet you took that leap blindly. You didn’t know a thing about me or my life and yet you were determined to be my family even when I acted like a dipshit when we first met.”
I sucked in a sharp breath and sat back in my chair a little bit as his words sank in. He wasn’t finished leveling the hard and uncomfortable truth as he saw it at me, though.
“Then you helped Asa out for me without blinking an eye. That fancy-ass lawyer friend of yours wouldn’t have even looked at his case if it wasn’t for you, and then not even a month later you took in a stranger. You moved a scared, broken girl into your home simply because I love her. You have done more for Poppy than either Salem or I have been able to do, so don’t try and tell me you don’t invest in people as passionately or as wholeheartedly as Zeb does because it’s bullshit.”
I couldn’t think of a valid rebuttal, which annoyed me to no end, so I sat back in my chair and glared at him. “Are you sure you didn’t take any law classes while you were in college?”
He wiggled his eyebrows up and down at me in his usual cavalier way, and I fought the urge to throw a chip at him. Going after Rowdy was the first completely out-of-character thing I had ever done. It was a compulsion, a craving for family and a place to belong and be loved, which was something I never had before. I couldn’t resist the pull any more than I could resist the draw and tug of endless attraction between me and Zeb. When I took Poppy in it wasn’t just because she was important to Rowdy, and he had become so very important to me . . . no, it was because I saw so much of myself inside the broken shell of the young woman. I knew exactly what it felt like to have someone try to strip you of your value and humanity. I knew all too well what it felt like to never measure up to someone who was supposed to love you unconditionally and yet all they did was tear you down. My father had never been uncouth or out of control enough to raise his hand to me or to my mother . . . but his words and his pitiless, dismissive actions . . . those nasty suckers had fallen just as heavily as the mightiest of blows. Poppy had her whole life ahead of her. I didn’t want her stuck in place and stuck unmoving from the past’s embrace like I was. I didn’t want her to shut off her heart. It was too beautiful and needed to be shared with someone who would cherish it. She deserved that.
“If you don’t put yourself out there to risk the hurt, then you won’t ever feel the pleasure either. There is no good without the bad, Sayer. Just look at the way I came into this world.”
We both got quiet for a second as he sucked in a sharp breath. “My mom was young, too young, when she had me. Your dad was older, knew better, and was married, with you at home when she got knocked up. The only two people that can tell
us what actually happened between the two of them are gone, but we both know that whatever the circumstances were, my mom was taken advantage of and left to deal with the consequences on her own.”
I gulped a little because I never wanted to admit to him just how manipulative and hateful my father could be. I didn’t want to think about the man who had raised me taking advantage of a helpless teenage girl, but it was impossible not to when the proof was sitting across from me sipping a beer.
“Regardless of the hurt my mom may have suffered, she loved me. She took amazing care of me and never let me go a single second without knowing I was loved and the center of her entire world. She focused on the joy I brought her, not on the pain that she had to go through to end up with me in her life. You have to be wounded in order to heal.”
Rowdy’s mom had been killed during an armed robbery when he was just a little boy, so I was surprised he had such bright and clear memories of her. My mother had killed herself when I was slightly older and yet most of the things I remembered about her were fuzzy and covered in a tint of gray and sorrow. There was no joy and pleasure when I thought about her, only sadness and resentment. I wanted her to be stronger for herself, but more than that I had longed for her to be stronger for me.