On the Market (The Ballard Brothers of Darling Bay Book 1) by Herron Rachael

Author:Herron, Rachael [Herron, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: romance
Publisher: HGA Publishing
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A pause. “I think I already did.”

Liam shook his head. He wasn’t going to let her off that easily. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

She heaved a long sigh and slid off the couch to the rug. She dropped backward dramatically and stared at the ceiling. “That whole…”

“Yeah?”

Felicia turned her head and looked at him. “No.”

“What?”

“I told you already. If you didn’t hear then, I don’t need to repeat it.”

“Your biggest fear is that you can’t handle real feelings?” That was nothing. Everyone felt that way.

She didn’t answer— she just kept her eyes on his.

He shifted his weight on the sofa, wanting to lie on the floor next to her but feeling it might scare her. “What about nuclear war? What about plague? Or locusts? Or a plague of locusts?”

“Those are just things to worry about in the middle of the night. I can’t do anything about them. Feelings are something I should be able to do something about.”

“I wish feelings worked that way.” His didn’t, anyway. They were messy. Part of being human.

“Will you tell me what you said in the diary? Please?”

“You’ll take it out? If I tell you?”

For a long moment, Felicia was silent. Her eyes stayed on his, and he felt a hollow in the middle of his abdomen, an emptiness that food couldn’t fill.

Finally, she turned onto her side so that she faced him and propped her head on her hand. “Okay, I’ll keep it out.”

“Really?”

“If you tell me what you said. Then yes. Natasha won’t see it.”

Oh, god.

But why the hell not? After all, he’d pretended he’d been speaking to her when he said it. “I have this dumb fear about people leaving me. That they won’t think I’m lovable enough to stay.”

“Go on.”

He grimaced. “Do I have to?”

“Is this about the last girlfriend?”

“Brandy? I suppose so, that’s why it came up, but that’s not what it’s about.”

She stayed silent and kept her gaze on his. She nodded, and that was all he needed to know, that she was with him.

“Everyone knows our parents left, first my dad, then a few years later, my mom. But no one knows why. No one knows why our step-dad Bill kept us after my mom was gone. Except for me.”

“What happened?”

God help him. He wanted to tell her. “Before they split up, I heard my parents arguing. My dad thought they could make more money cooking if they went south, into the valley.”

“He was a cook?”

“Yeah, not like that. They cooked meth. One my first memories is my mother bundling us out of the house as fast as she could go, my dad screaming at her that it was safe. It didn’t blow up, but it could have.”

“That’s terrible.”

“That’s not even the bad part. My mom wouldn’t go south with him because he said he’d only take Aidan.”

He watched it register in her eyes. “Not you. Or Jake.”

Liam nodded. “He left, and she got as clean as she could. Everyone thinks that Bill married my mom because he loved her, but that was never true, at least in the romantic sense.

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