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He frowned. “Assholes. Who the fuck does that to a kid they adopted?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s fine. I’d rather be abandoned than forced to grow up in a family that didn’t really want me, you know? I’m sure they did what they thought was best.”
He looked skeptical. “Was it? For the best, I mean?”
“Not always. I bounced around the foster system for years, and some families were…not so great. Some were OK.”
He didn’t need to hear about the ones who only took foster kids in for the monthly check, then spent all the money they should’ve been using for food on drugs and alcohol. She especially didn’t see the need to tell him about the ones who were overly…friendly.
“But I was fine,” she assured him. She’d learned to steal the food and clothes she needed. She’d become a master at blocking her bedroom door at night and evading handsy foster fathers. “I took care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was, oh, I don’t know, six. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned to thrive.”
She didn’t really want to tell him the rest of it. It felt wrong to give anyone this much of herself. It was weakness, and showing weakness would give him power over her.
But there was something about the soft look in his eyes as they moved over her face that seemed to be pulling the words from her even as she tried to choke them back. “I met a guy when I was fifteen,” she said, her voice sounding pained even to her own ears. “He was… older. More experienced than me in every way. And he was the best grifter I’d ever seen. Taught me everything I know. Well, almost everything.”
Jordan was also a narcissist, a user, a manipulator, and a thirty-year-old who had no trouble twisting the emotions of an innocent girl into knots so that she’d do anything to please him—even steal, cheat, and lie. All of which she did and did well.
He had no way of knowing she’d get so good at it that when she finally realized what a scumbag he was, she’d take him for everything he had and disappear without a trace.
She supposed she should thank him for all he taught her. But she wouldn’t. If she ever saw that fucker again, she was more likely to knee him in the balls than thank him.
Now, she hadn’t said a single word about how Jordan treated her, or about all the lessons she’d had to learn the hard way. But somehow, Knox must’ve picked up on the subtext in her story, because the look he was giving her could only be described as pity.
And he could fuck all the way off with that shit.
“Don’t give me that look,” she hissed. “I’m doing very well for myself, ok? I have plenty of money, and I don’t owe anyone anything. I’m free in a way that you’re not, even though you grew up in a fucking mansion. So, don’t you dare pity me, Knox Wilder.”
And in a fit of righteous indignation, she flipped over so that she wasn’t looking into his stupid, beautiful, gut-wrenching eyes anymore and scooted as far away from him as she could.
If he knew what was good for him, he’d just roll over and go to sleep without saying another fucking word.
But, no. Not Knox. The bastard was far too diabolical for that.
Without a word, Knox slid his arm around her stomach, yanked her back against his chest, and rested his chin on top of her head. The motherfucker was spooning her!
She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he just held her tighter. She was surrounded by his heat, his muscles, by…him. And it was too much. It was all too much. “Let me go.”
“No.”
“I mean it, Knox. I don’t need—”
“Tenley?”
She let out a disgruntled sigh. “What?”
“Shut up and let me hold you.”
“Fine,” she snapped.
“Fine.”
She fell into the deepest sleep she’d had in recent history in Knox’s arms, lulled into dreamland by the steady, comforting thrum of his heartbeat behind her.
CHAPTER 14
Knox’s dreams weren’t usually very comforting.
Being in prison didn’t really allow for the kind of deep, restful sleep that let his mind wander into a nice, comfy corner of Dreamland. On the rare occasions when he did sleep, he was generally awakened to the sounds of alarms, guards banging on cells with nightsticks, men groaning, yelling, shitting, fighting, and (sometimes) fucking each other. It was loud and disorienting and dehumanizing. Not a situation anyone would ever want to find themselves in.
