Page 111 of On the Wild Side

“Still,” she says after taking a breath, “five seconds is a long time.”

“Anything less than eight seconds is failure,” I reply, sounding harsher than I mean to. “My standings are still fine for now, but I’m not happy. I have to sit out for at least three weeks.”

“Onlythree weeks?” she asks.

“You don’t get it. I’m not even allowed to practice for those three weeks while I heal. I’ll be rusty, and my body won’t know what to do. This isn’t good.”

“Muscle memory is a thing,” she reminds me.

Daisy’s snoring against me, and I grin at Abbi. “We bored her.”

“She’s tired. She was uncomfortable all night with that brace on.”

I frown and kiss Daisy’s head. “In the future, if either of you gets hurt while I’m gone, I want to knowimmediately.”

“Brady—”

“No argument. You two are my world, and if something’s wrong, I need to know. Not after I ride and not the next day. Understand?”

She lets out a gusty breath but reluctantly nods. “Yeah.”

“And if you have a bad feeling, just talk to me, baby.”

“I already felt like I was too needy yesterday, texting you all day.”

“You’re never too much. I want to know what’s going on in that gorgeous head of yours. I’m always available to you, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

She smiles softly. “Thank you.”

“Now, tell me about the nightmare.”

Her eyes widen, and she almost shrinks into herself, against the chair.

“Baby, tell me.”

She swallows hard. “There was a home I was in that refused to let me eat.”

You have got to befucking kidding me.

“Because I’m fat,” she continues softly so she doesn’t wake Daisy.

“You arenotfat.”

“I’ve always been curvy, to different degrees. I’m bigger now because of being pregnant with Daisy and hormones, but anyway, I was a larger kid. And this particular house didn’t like it. So, they withheld food. Oh, and I wasn’t allowed to use towels in the bathroom.”

It takes me a second to wade through the red-hot fury swimming in my head before I understand her last sentence.

“Wait, what? What in the hell were you supposed to use?”

“My clothes.” She shrugs, her eyes so fucking sad that I want to pull her close to me. But I have Daisy in my arms.

“Abbi.” I clear my throat. “You will never have to worry about anything like that ever again. Never.”

“I know,” she says with a nod.

“Even if something happened tous, I would make sure that you’re safe and taken care of.”

Her throat works as she fights tears. “I know that it’s all in the past. It just fucks with me. And then I woke up in a strange place, and?—”

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