Page 50 of Absolutely Pucked
He grunted and groaned as he arched into my hands. “Huh? Oh, no.” He snorted, and the sound was very bitter. “No. When I came back to the house, I never went near the stable again. But I’m pretty sure they built that horse a little mansion to say thanks for nearly killing me.”
I froze. “Um…why would they do that?”
“Sorry,” Ford said. “Fuck, sorry. I don’t mean to trauma dump.”
I quickly started rubbing his back again, urging him to sit more firmly against me. And he did. “I don’t mind. You’ve seen the sorry shit-show my life has become. If you want to talk about it?—”
“It’s not something I normally tell people. It’s…I don’t know. Humiliating, I guess. And I forgot you didn’t already know the whole story.” I went silent as he took a deep breath. “My dad wasn’t my bio-dad, but I didn’t know that until I was eleven. Something always felt off, and the more they brushed off my questions, the more I got angry and started acting out. He started getting violent and calling it discipline. He gave me a couple of shiners to take to school. Then he started playing pranks on me.”
“Pranks?” I echoed.
“Started putting hot sauce in my food to the point it was inedible and laughing at me when I choked. He put glass cleaner in my contact solution once. Fucked up my cornea pretty bad for a while.”
“What the fuck?” I whispered, horrified. My parents had been awful. Textbook narcissists who turned Tucker into the scapegoat and me into the golden boy who never quite measured up. But nothing like that.
Ford snorted. “Yeah. He didn’t fess up to that one, but when I got back home from the ER and smelled it, it was totally Windex. I started getting more and more suspicious because he wasn’t like that with my sisters, you know? One day, I refused to put on something nice when we were going out, and he blew up at me about it. I was done taking his shit, so I mouthed off, and my mom just…lost it. She told me that he wasn’t my real dad. That I was lucky he even gave me the time of day since I wasn’t biologically his. That I should be grateful for any attention he gave me.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed out. My parents had been monsters, but that was unthinkable.
“Anyway, things got worse after that. He no longer had to pretend, so his pranks and discipline got worse. Then the horse incident happened.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. “Theincident?”
He hesitated for a long, long beat. So long I thought maybe he was going to stay silent the rest of the night. I moved my hands down around his ribs, careful of his bruises, then slowly snaked them around toward his abs. They jumped under my hands, but when I tried to pull away, he grabbed my wrists and held them there.
“My dad scared the horse on purpose, and it trampled me. Shattered my leg into pieces. He laughed until he realized there was bone sticking out of my skin,” Ford said, his voice tense. “He took a really long time to call an ambulance. I thought I was going to die. He resented me for being someone else’s child, and I think he kind of wanted me to die. My mom eventually came over to see what was going on, and she called 9-1-1, and they sent some EMTs to get me to the hospital.”
“He tried to kill you,” I growled, pulling him tight against me. “He should be in fucking jail.”
His head fell back against my shoulder, and my hand slipped down lower. He sucked in a breath, but he didn’t stop me. I wasn’t brave enough to touch him the way I wanted to, but that thread of hesitation was slowly starting to snap.
“Maybe. I think he was hoping I’d just…I don’t know, disappear? Anyway, it was hell on earth after I got back home until they kicked me out. Living rough was hard, but being home was worse.”
“Did you ever find out who your bio-dad was?” I couldn’t help but ask.
He scoffed. “No. I managed to get a name out of her, but I could never find anything about him. He wasn’t on social media or anything, so I figured he didn’t want to be found.”
“I bet a PI could get you the info,” I said. Mine had gotten me all the info that Delia thought was well hidden. Not that it did me any good.
Ford laughed. “Babe, there’s not a chance in hell I could afford a PI.”
I wanted to tell him he could have mine. That I would use what little I had to pay Peri and give Ford some sense of security and closure. But I also didn’t think he’d be willing to accept help like that from me. Not when I could use that money to get out of his hair and let him get back to his peaceful life.
So instead, I wrapped my arms more firmly around his waist and began to massage his pecs. Ford groaned and leaned back harder against me. His ass wiggled slightly, and it was then I knew he could feel how hard I was.
“Is all this talk about childhood trauma turning you on?” he asked, and though I wasn’t looking down at his face, I could hear a smirk in his voice.
I couldn’t tell if he was serious, but I had no reason to be anything other than honest. “You turn me on. Um. And I swear I’ll never say that again if it bothers you.”
Ford was quiet for a long beat, then dislodged himself from my grasp and turned. The very end of his stump rested against the inside of my leg. It was softand pliant and warm, just like the rest of him. He licked his lips, then said, “Do you hate Tucker?”
The question was like a punch in the throat. It took my breath away, and I needed a moment to recover. “No.”
“Not ever?”
I snorted. “He’s my brother. There have been so many times in our lives I hated his guts. And yeah, for a while, I kind of bought into the bullshit my parents were selling me about him being the bad egg.”
Ford winced, and I didn’t blame him. “That’s shitty.”
