Page 51 of Line of Resistance

It was yet another thing she understood completely.

Eloise cleared her throat, trying to ease the ache. “I lost my mom when I was just a baby. I don’t remember her at all.” She’d seen pictures and heard stories, but none of it really made her feel a connection to the woman who birthed her, and it made her sad. “Luckily, my dad was amazing. He was everything I could’ve ever wanted.”

Nate’s jaw set. “Was it lucky?”

The unexpectedness of Nate’s question made her sit up straighter. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

She’d known what it was like to be loved unconditionally. Been safe and protected by someone who always put her first. Someone who saw her for exactly what she was and never made her feel like she needed to be anything else.

Nate’s expression hardened even more, making him look almost angry. “Because now you know what it’s like to lose someone like that.”

That was one way to look at it, it just wasn’t the wayshelooked at it. And it said a lot about how Nate viewed connection and loss. “I think I would rather have had him for the time I did than to not have him at all.” She sniffed, blinking a few times to keep her emotions in check. “And I know what it’s like to really be loved because of him.”

Nate’s lips flattened as his eyes dropped. “I guess that’s the difference then.”

Eloise fought in a shaky breath, unable to take her eyes off the man in front of her. He looked nothing like the charming, confident guy who’d gotten her hopes up so many times before.

Right now he looked exactly like that broken little boy she didn’t expect to see.

“What’s the difference?” She knew it was a question she wouldn’t want to hear the answer to. Knew without a doubt it would break her a little, adding more cracks to her already aching heart.

But she had to know.

Nate worked his jaw from side to side, eyes going back to the items in front of him. “My dad was a piece of shit. My mom left us when I was a kid and he couldn’t cope with knowing she walked away from him, so he made drinking himself to death his full-time job.” He started to rake one hand through his hair but caught himself, sliding it against the shorter hair at his temple before dropping it to his side. “I never had what I needed. Clothes. Food. Heat. You name it, I did without. I was always dirty and didn’t have a real haircut until I was old enough to pay for it myself.”

Eloise’s eyes lifted to the top of his head, lingering on the dark blonde strands that were usually styled within an inch of their lives. “Oh.” She fought in a breath, trying to steady her emotions, but Nate wasn’t done swinging his wrecking ball against the walls she’d worked so hard to construct.

“I got a job the second I was old enough to work, so I finally had decent clothes to wear and food to eat.” He shrugged. “But I still didn’t have anybody who gave a shit about me. Not until I started dating this girl. She was really close with her family and at first I didn’t know how to act.” His nostrils flared. “But they took me in. Treated me like I was one of them. I went on vacations. Came to family dinners. They bought me Christmas presents for fuck’s sake.”

His anger was palpable. And confusing. “Wasn’t that a good thing?”

Nate’s eyes met hers, colder and harder than she’d ever seen them. “It was fucking fantastic. Right up until we graduated and they moved away.” His eyes dropped as he went back to moving around the items laid across the blanket. “I never saw them again.”

“What?” She said it so loudly her voice echoed around them. It was outrageous. Unimaginable. “They just fucking left you?”

Nate’s eyes came back to hers and a little of the anger and coldness had filtered away. “She decided she was going away to school and wanted her freedom.”

“Yeah, but—” Elise scoffed, trying to wrap her brain around how someone could do that to a kid with a life like Nate had. “Didn’t they know how you grew up?”

Nate gave her a jerky nod.

Of all the low down, no good, piece of shit—

Eloise sucked in a breath as a realization smacked her hard and unyielding.

Alaskan Security is my family.

That’s what he told her.

They were all Nate had. Everything he’d once lost.

And she was friends with most of them. Connected in a way that would force them to make a hard decision if things didn’t go well. The kind of decision that hadn’t gone in Nate’s favor once before.

It made sense he would figure that if one family cut him off, another could too. Obviously they would choose him, but maybe he didn’t know that.

Or was too terrified to even risk the possibility.

Her focus jumped to his, eyes meeting Nate’s as those last lingering pieces of the puzzle fit together. “Is that why you kept disappearing on me? Because you were afraid Naomi and Tyson would walk away from you if things didn’t work out?”

---