Page 83 of Absolutely Pucked
He hummed, but I couldn’t tell if he was accepting or didn’t believe me.
“I think you should take the coaching job when Hugo leaves. You need to get out of this rut. Not just the dick rut,” he added, giving me a look. “An everything rut. You’re not being left behind, Ford. But you’ve spent a lot of years being comfortable holding back.”
Ouch.
“I know shit with your family isn’t good. I know how that trauma can threaten to ruin you.”
I brushed a hand down the side of Carol-Ann. It was a comfort thing—the memory of the nurse making me feel better because I was entirely alone. The weight of how important that had been in keeping me grounded. In keeping me from wanting to die.
“My stepdad is the one who made me lose my leg.”
Tucker was dead silent. “Sorry…what?”
I let out a trembling breath. “The horse?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly.
God. It was weird that I could tell Killian this story like it was nothing, but saying it to Tucker was like choking on razor blades. “My stepdad was trying to get the horse to trample me. We’d been fighting all day. A few days before it happened, I found out that he wasn’t my bio-dad. He’d adopted me when I was three.”
Tucker let out a little wheeze. “Dude. Why don’t I know this?”
“Because it’s a fucking shitty moment in my life, and I hate talking about it,” I all but yelled. Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. “I didn’t want you guys looking at me like I was this pathetic piece of shit who wasn’t wanted by anyone.”
“Ford. We have literally never,everfelt that way about you.”
I choked on a laugh. “Yeah, but if you thought that even my own parents wanted to kill me?—”
He moved, lifting on his hands and shifting his body to the coffee table. Scooting across, he came to a stop at the edge and reached for me, tugging me into him, knocking his forehead against mine.
“You are such a jackass,” he growled.
I couldn’t help a watery laugh. “I know.”
“What happened? What did he do?”
“I was mouthing off to him. The older my sisters got, the more he hated me. His fake kid. You know all about that,” I said. And Tucker did. He knew the part about my stepdad being an asshole. He just hadn’t known why. Or how far he’d gone. “My whole world just…crashed when I found out, you know? I was so angry. I wanted to tear all my skin off so the outside pain could match the inside pain.”
Tucker squeezed the back of my neck tighter. “I know that feeling.”
“A few days later, my attitude was the worst it had ever been. I was cussing, screaming, refusing to do chores. I liked being out by the stable though. He had a horse that was a rescue—it had been abused, so it was really skittish unless the pen door was closed. I liked talking to her. I felt kind of like she got me.”
“Only you would bond with a horse,” he said.
I shoved him back and flipped him off as he laughed. “Fuck you. I’m literally baring my soul here.”
“I know, but your story is sad, Ford. It’s really goddamn sad, and I want to cry.”
“Sorry.”
He punched me in the thigh. “Shut the fuck up. Finish it so we can move on to something else.”
I shrugged. “He opened the pen when I wasn’t looking, and when she came out toward me, he spooked her. I don’t know if he was actually trying to kill me or if he was trying to teach me some fucked-up lesson, but yeah. I almost died.”
“Is that why you relate to the little creepy ghost girl?”
Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. “No. My parents abandoned me at rehab, so the nurse who took care of me watched old-school horror movies with me. We both liked Carol Anne best. And I was kind of fascinated by the fact that she became immortal after her death through this one random movie. It’s…whatever. You get it.”
He laughed. “Yeah. It’s still weird as fuck, which suits you.” He went quiet for a second. “So, like, did you ever find your bio-dad?”
