“Exactly,” Liam says, scanning the expression on my face.
When I first met Pierce and Liam—and Reed—in Florida before my rookie season, I thought they were, as my dad put it, “pack kids who grew up with economic disadvantages.” He and my mom never liked Pierce. They tolerated Liam. And they never knew Reed. When Reed died, and they moved in with me and I got traded to Nashville, I learned that they weren’t just poor kids from the wrong side of town.
There had been some serious childhood abuse.
They downplayed it, for sure. But half the stories they told about growing up involved broken bones and beatings. I thought it was normal boy roughhousing. But it wasn’t that at all..
Like the time Pierce was eight and one of his birth pack alphas caught him stealing a candy bar; they spanked him with a belt in front of his little brothers and sisters.“I wasn’t in trouble for stealing, but for getting caught and shoving the whole bar in my mouth and not sharing it.”They had laughed, like it was a big joke.
Liam told me about the day Reed became an alpha, and his father beat him so hard he pissed blood for a week.
Or the time Liam came home from school to find a twenty-dollar bill and a note saying his pack was going to Universal Studios without him.
When we first got together, Pierce had nightmares. He rarely slept. That’s when Liam first mentioned childhood trauma.
“What exactly are you saying, Liam?”
“Look, don’t be mad, but—”
“I think we’re past that point.” I cut him off.
“I’ve been trying to find out more information about her. And it doesn’t paint a great picture.”
“You’re spying on her?”
“Yes. And don’t be fucking naive. You’ve had people trying to get close to you in the past who don’t have good intentions. Rochelle and Marcus?”
I cringe at their names. It was my third year in the league. I hadn’t known they were pornstars with this PR stunt of trying to sleep with a celebrity in every state.
“OK. Point taken. What are you trying to say about Ash?”
“Remember what Pierce was like when we first moved in with you? How he’d go from zero to nuclear over nothing? How he couldn’t accept kindness without suspecting an agenda?”
“Because his childhood was a nightmare.” The realization dawns on me. “You think Ash…”
“I think she’s dealing with something similar. Maybe worse, because Pierce got out. He left. He had us.” Liam’s voice drops lower. “I think she’s still in it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”
A knot forms in my stomach as everything clicks into place. Her vague answers about her past. Her constant alertness. I’d mistaken some of it for omega traits, or just quirks. But viewed through this lens, it becomes a pattern.
“She lives with her father.”
Liam just nods at that.
“You think her father is… what?”
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
“So, we go get her.”
“Take a breath. We don’t know anything for sure. And we don’t want to spook her or put her in a more dangerous situation.”
I do take a breath. And another. A dozen more.
“I think I love her, Liam.” Another thing I didn’t know was true until it came out of my mouth.
He lets out a long breath and sinks back into the pillows.
“Let’s take this slow. What’s that thing about hearing hoofbeats and thinking zebras? This could all be, I don’t know, my imagination. Pierce…” The rest of that sentence dies in his mouth.
