Page 74 of Caught Up In You (The Monroes 2)

Braxton’s back muscles strained as he held Cora up so she could place the angel on the top of the tree. She’d only needed a bit of guidance as she’d felt along the branches in front of her.

His back and shoulder were so much better, but lifting her so high was starting to remind him he still wasn’t in perfect condition. Still, he didn’t care and he wasn’t about to say a word. He loved this moment with her, loved these memories they were making.

“How does it look?” she asked as he eased her back down to the wood floor.

“You did great.”

“Oh, please. You bought everything.”

Braxton may have put a hurting on his credit card, but he’d do it again without question to see the happiness in her eyes. He hadn’t seen that bright light before. When he’d first met her she was guarded, hesitant, but the more they grew together, the more he was seeing a relaxed side, a side abandoned by cares and worries. Whatever had plagued her since she arrived in Haven seemed to be fading into the background. Or she was just adjusting so well, she wasn’t concerned with her old life.

Regardless of the reasons, Braxton was thrilled to know that he had a hand in helping her with the new life she’d wanted to find.

“I feel like we should have hot cocoa or something now,” she told him.

“My mother used to make me cocoa.” The words were out of his mouth before he even thought about holding them in. “She was amazing.”

“I didn’t mean to bring up memories,” she told him.

Now that the past was creeping up, he found he wanted her to know. He wanted to take that risk and bare himself to her. If he was going to put everything on the line, he needed to expose himself in a way he never had before.

“I told you my mother was killed.” Braxton fisted his hands and tried to hold it together and keep those images from his mind. “My father was abusive—”

“Oh, Braxton.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, though she couldn’t see him. “I need to get this out. I want you to know, I need you to understand what I came from.”

Reaching out, he took her hands and led her toward the sofa. The worry lines between her brows increased as she tightened her hold on his hands.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Braxton. I don’t want you to revisit a time that hurts you.”

“Everything happening between us matters too much to me to keep secrets.” He licked his lips and pulled in a deep breath. “Because you mean something to me, I care about you and I want you to be part of my life. And, I need to give you the opportunity to see what you’re getting

involved with.”

“If you’re implying you’re like your father, I won’t believe it. You’d never hurt anyone.”

Braxton let out a soft laugh. “Maybe not, but I could’ve easily gone that route. My life before the Monroes was up and down at best. The highs were high and the lows were . . . a nightmare.”

Cora’s hand slid from his and traveled up his arm, over his shoulder, and cupped his cheek. “You overcame your past. That’s what makes you so special.”

The warmth of her touch combined with her comforting words filled him with the courage he needed to continue.

“My dad was a strict military man. He wanted things done a certain way at a certain time and there was no room for error. He was toughest on my mother. I know now that he suffered from PTSD. That damn disease destroyed my family and turned my father into a monster.”

Braxton wasn’t going to go into how he was abused, how even the slightest things would set off his father. Going there was irrelevant and there was no need to make Cora feel sorry for him. That was definitely not the angle he was after.

“My mother would explain how he wasn’t like that before he’d been deployed, but when he’d come home he was a changed man.” His beautiful mother, always seeing the good in people, always wanting to make things right. “She stayed with him, in hopes she could fix him, that loving him through the illness would show him that she wasn’t abandoning him.”

“Your mother sounds like a strong woman.”

Braxton swallowed the lump in his throat. “She was perfect.”

Memories of her taking him to the park, teaching him how to swim, taking him to the movies all washed over him. She’d done everything in her power to give him a wonderful childhood, but he’d seen how hard she worked trying to compensate for being both loving mother and doting father.

“You can stop right there,” Cora told him, stroking his jaw with her delicate fingers. “I can imagine how the story ends.”

He reached up, took her hand in his, and settled them in his lap. “One night my father couldn’t find his lighter. I had used it to light the candles on my mother’s birthday cake. I was only nine, but Mom helped me because she knew I wanted to be big. I didn’t put the lighter back, so when he went to find it later, he got enraged.”

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