Page 42 of Sold to the Single Daddies

“Was Mason in the system with you?”

She let out a relieved breath when Lucky latched on and went quiet as he fed. Then it looked like she replayed Tate’s question in her head and I watched her shoulders sink with what looked like the weight of the world.

“No.”

Mills sat on the floor in front of the bed and I made a point of sitting closer to her, close enough to gently lean against her leg. Irested my hand next to her foot and let my fingers lightly brush over her smooth skin every so often.

“Um… No. Mason stayed with his parents until they died. We had the same mom. She had me and things were bad enough that she lost custody. Instead of fixing her shit to get me back she just started again with a new man and baby. Of course, nothing was all that better but they got away with it the second time around for some reason. Mason never got put in the system. When I found out about him, I did what I could and then I took him in as soon as I was able.”

Mills’ frown was even darker than usual.

“Your mom just let you stay in the system. What a piece of shit.”

Surprisingly that brought a smile to Reagan’s face.

“Yeah, she was. She wasn’t even the worst, though. I went through a few homes that made my shitty mom look like a dream. Even still, I was lucky compared to what some kids deal with.”

We were quiet for a moment and I wondered if my brothers were thinking about the same thing I was. It wasn’t hard to imagine Reagan as a little girl with her big eyes. She would’ve been fucking adorable. The idea of anyone hurting that little girl made me want to break shit. Then my brain naturally went to the same place it’d been going more and more often. My own sisters had gone through hell with our mother. Right under our noses and we’d never noticed… With disgust, I wondered if we would’ve let Reagan suffer, too. Would we have missed the signs the same way we had with our sisters? It scared me to think about how bad things would’ve had to get in order to get our attention.

Mills sighed.

“Our parents were great to us when we were growing up. I always thought we grew up like a fucking sitcom. I assumed the same would be true for our sisters but it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t?” Reagan looked at the three of us and frowned. “It wasn’t.”

CHAPTER 29

Reagan

“We’ve learned a lot about our parents over the last couple of years and it hasn’t been pretty.” West chewed on his bottom lip and grunted. “They treated us like we were royalty most of the time but apparently our mother was abusing them all in one way or another. She sent Nellie away pregnant at sixteen and never told any of us she didn’t leave by her own choice. She tortured poor Maxie. And we never knew a thing.”

I looked down at Lucky and shook my head.

“Lucky will never go through anything like that. He’ll never spend a single night wondering if anyone in the entire world loves him. He’ll always know. That’s one reason finding y’all was so important to me. I want him to know what it feels like to have familial roots. I want him to be tied to a place. I’ve always felt like a balloon with a string just shy of anyone’s reach. I floated from place to place without a single attachment for most of my life. When I took Mason in, some days it felt like he was saving me as much as I was saving him. He tethered me.”

I could feel the haunted look on my face and tried to make it something less depressing. I could tell that none of them were buying it, though.

Tate reached over and squeezed the back of my calf.

“Lucky for you, we have long arms. There’s never been a balloon I couldn’t reach.”

Tears made my eyes burn and I turned away from them to hide the emotion his simple words had made me feel. I doubted he meant the words as seriously as they felt to a woman like me but I didn’t care right then. I just wanted to feel the warmth they caused.

“Tate’s right, kitten.” West pulled my feet into his lap and held them. “You aren’t floating away from here. You and Lucky are home.”

I let out a watery laugh.

“I don’t know. It seemed different tonight at the diner. You guys made it pretty clear that while we may be staying here, we’re far from being home. And it’s probably my fault. I want a family so desperately I probably hijacked y’all’s.”

Mills growled and shook his head. “I was wrong. I acted like an ass and I’m sorry. You belong with our family, angel.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Who are you and what did you do with Mills?”

He grunted.

“Funny.”

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