Page 35 of Bray
“How long have you had that mattress?” he asked.
I took a moment to think about it. “Since I moved in.”
He grunted. His hands were casually on the steering wheel, his gaze darting to me on occasion.
“How old were you when they ran off?”
He meant my parents, who left me with my grandparents and never came back for me. I didn’t hear pity in his tone, so I didn’t have a problem answering.
“Six.” I picked at a hangnail on my thumb.
“Definitely time for a bed that doesn’t fit a child.”
I’d add it to the list of things I needed to get, but it was well below my broken window.
“Heard from them recently?”
I shook my head. The windows were down on his truck and it blew loose hairs in my face, even though I had it pulled back in a ponytail. “They came for my grandfather’s funeral. Sent flowers for Gran’s. Last I heard, they were in California.”
“They joined a cult, right?”
“Religious retreat,” I corrected, giving him the side eye and a smirk.
He huffed. “So, a cult?”
He was right and I just didn’t want to say it. I shrugged. “Pretty much. I’m just thankful my grandparents took me in.” My mother had met my father at the county fair. He’d been a carnival worker. She fell hard and fast and left town with him, only to return a few years later with me in tow. When I was six, they’d been “called up” to join Heaven’s Gate and having a kid was a burden, especially one who needed to go to school. When I was old enough to question why my parents abandoned me, I looked up the group online. I learned that while their quack doctrine was based in faith, the foundation of it was a plural lifestyle, and children were married off young. Like, illegally young.
“I should probably thank them for abandoning me instead of growing up in a cult only to be married off at sixteen to a man with two other wives,” I muttered. It sounded ridiculous, but in a place like that, it was probably inevitable.
Sometimes it was hard to not hate them. My grandparents were more mother and father to me than the ones who made me. Gran and Grandad had been in their late sixties when I moved in and probably hadn’t anticipated raising another child.
“I’d definitely thank them,” Bray muttered. “Then punch them in their noses for giving you up. But I’m the lucky one, because now you’re mine.”
He grabbed my hand again and brought it to his lips.
“Back to the new mattress,” he continued as the truck jostled over the washboard pattern of the dirt road. “If you haven’t already figured it out, I’m a big boy and need room to spread out. Even though I do like you sleeping on top of me.”
He turned to me and winked.
That answered that.
“Or we can stay at my place,” he added.
“You live with Hayes,” I countered.
They’d all grown up together in the main Wilder Ranch house. I’d always loved going there to play with Lainey. The noise and insanity in that place wasincredible after being an only child with two elderly grandparents.
With Zeb still in college, he was the only one who lived at home when he wasn’t at school. They all had their own places except Bray and Hayes lived together. I doubted Hayes would be thrilled with a surprise woman around.
“That’s true. No way can he hear your screams when I fuck you.”
I gasped. “I donotscream,” I replied, mortified.
He grinned and offered me another wicked glance. “Sorry, kitten, but you’re a screamer. Don’t be embarrassed. I love it.”
I was embarrassed, but I tamped it down because he didn’t once make me feel like any way I reacted to his touch was wrong.
“Then your place it is,” he said, as if the decision was final. “With a new mattress.”
