“My mom was a single mother. She did the best she could, but she was young and unprepared for the challenges of raising a child alone. She had no support system, no money, and forget about my father.”
To this day, I still don’t know his name.
I pause, forcing a slow breath out through my nose.
“I loved her with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough. She was always looking for more. For someone to love her in a way I couldn’t.” The knowledge had been a burden even then. Knowing that no matter how many times I told her I loved her, no matter how many times I hugged her or kissed her goodnight, it would never be enough. I would never be enough. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I later learned she suffered from emophilia—a tendency to fall in love hard, fast, and often.”
Lucy’s silent, and I don’t dare look over at her, keeping my eyes fixed on the road ahead. On the desert. On the horizon. Anything to avoid the pitying look I know I’ll find in her eyes.
“The thing about emophilia is that it makes you overlook toxic behavior that would be a red flag in a healthy relationship.”
That was the worst part. Watching my mother break over and over for losers who didn’t give a fuck about her and sure as hell didn’t deserve her.
“None of those relationships lasted. They all went to shit for one reason or another, and then the cycle would start all over again.” She’d drag me from one shithole to the next, promising things would be different, certain she’d found the one. What a joke. As if one person could ever be everything to another. “She’d fall in love, and we’d move in with whatever asshole she was dating. And the places we stayed… Well, to call them run-down would be a compliment.”
My gut clenches at the memory of cheap hotels and filthy apartments, but I force myself to continue.
“Which is why one of my earliest childhood memories is waking up to find a rat lying on my chest, gnawing at a peanut butter stain on my shirt.”
I’d been frozen with fear. The terror of waking to find those beady red eyes staring into mine. The sharp teeth scraping my skin once they’d chewed through the thin cotton of my T-shirt.
I couldn’t have been more than four, but the memory haunts me to this day.
“That lifestyle—and one of the drunk assholes she fell for—killed her. It’s why I vowed to never fall in love.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lucy
My heart breaks for the man beside me and for the boy he was, forced to grow up too fast. This revelation—about his childhood, losing his mother, even the rats—explains so much. Why he doesn’t let anyone get close. Why he prefers one-night stands to relationships. Why he’s so particular about his clothes, his hair, his food.
Why the sight of Gizmo sends him into a freaking tailspin.
All of these things. All these pieces of the Miles Hart puzzle. They aren’t snobbery or arrogance. They’re a protective shell to prevent him from being hurt again. His way of dealing with the trauma of his past.
Trauma no child should have to endure.
“I’m so sorry, Miles.” I reach over and squeeze his hand, which sits rigid on his thigh. “I didn’t know.”
If I had, I wouldn’t have pushed so hard with the hot dogs. Or the beans. Or—a la verga—my stupid jokes about his sad, joyless childhood.
Shame burns my cheeks at the memory of that particular barb.
“You couldn’t have known.” He shrugs, striving for nonchalance. “No one does.”
He’s right, of course. The Hart brothers have always been open about the fact that they’re adopted, and though the media’s splashed their rags-to-riches tale all over the web, they’ve been tightlipped about their lives before Triada.
“Mama Hart and my brothers are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I may have had a rough start, but I have a great life now. I’ve got my own company. My own home. And, according to a certain snarky brunette, more money than God.”
He doesn’t need—or want—my pity. That much is clear from the hard set of his jaw and refusal to meet my eyes. Miles didn’t share this story, didn’t make himself vulnerable, to change the way I view him. He shared it in spite of the fact that I might see him differently after hearing it.
He shared it to get my mind off the Jeep’s dwindling fuel supply.
Which wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t a stubborn ass.
I really should have turned back when he pointed out the last gas station, but nope, my stupid pride had to get in the way.
Now we’re both going to pay the price of my foolishness.
