Page 81 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

He puffed out a bitter laugh. “I got hit more than I got hugged when I was growing up, if that’s what you mean. He… acted like it was hisright,as a father, to put me in my place. One time when I was four, I ran into his office crying from a scraped knee, and he shoved me down on the floor. I was interrupting abusinesscall. Very important stuff.”

I suddenly felt like I had a lead weight in my stomach.

No.

Draven seemed… impervious. Like nothing, or no one, could fuck with him.

But once upon a time, this man had been a child, and he’d suffered abuse at the hand of someone who should have loved him.

“Didn’t your mom do anything about it? How did she tolerate that?”

“Too checked out to care,” Draven said, swirling the liquid in his glass and looking down at it. “Sometimes, when I was older—teenage years—she’d just transfer another few thousand dollars into my spending account whenever Dad fucked with me. Dad did it sometimes, too. Money was their answer to everything.”

“That’s sickening.”

His expression went dark.

“I told you, Max. You don’t want to know about my life.”

I went over to sit down at the edge of the mattress. My head was spinning hearing Draven’s story, and it filled my chest with a bitter feeling.

I kept quiet, and he took the lead.

“The moment I got my own house and full access to my share of the family money, I lived my life mostly as if the rest of them didn’t exist.”

He pushed at the handles on the back doors, throwing them open. Wind blew in from the night air outside, and the sound of birds chatter came in. Outside, the night was humid, right on the edge of a far-off storm.

Draven had been making changes in the backyard, too. Little solar lights dotted the edge of the cobbled patio outside the doors. They glowed in the night air out there along with some dangling lights coming down from the canopy of a tall tree, gently swaying every time the wind blew.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

The words seemed to bounce right off of him.

“And what was your childhood like, Max?” he said. “Happy family? Supportive parents? Small town charm?”

“Kind of. Yeah.”

I couldn’t even feel guilty about it. It was just true.

“Figured,” he said, not unkindly.

“I always loved my parents, and they always loved me. Lily and I fought a little as kids but pretty soon we were just glad to have each other. I played both football and hockey, depending on the year, and even though we were never rich, I never felt deprived of much.”

Draven was watching me, his eyes half-lidded, like he was envisioning my childhood as if it were some impossible dream.

He walked over a moment later and stood next to me at the edge of the mattress. He brought his fingers to my throat, just gently stroking them along my Adam’s apple, applying no pressure.

His eyes looked so beautiful.

So much hurt behind them, but so much…care, when he looked at me.

Was that even possible? I knew he didn’t see me as more than a piece of ass who needed protection.

“I’m so sorry for what happened to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I pushed. About the secrets.”

“There are more,” he said. “Ones that I’m not ready to tell tonight, and that I may not ever be.”

My chest felt heavy. But I nodded, understanding.

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