“I was just a baby when I got abandoned.”
I go completely still, willing myself not to even breathe. Peyton has never talked about her background. Anytime I’ve tried to bring it up, she’s shut down the conversation quickly.
“The records say I was surrendered to the state under a safe haven law when I was two days old. But surrendered is just a nice word for abandoned. Nobody’s ever wanted me. That’s why I’m so hopeful about this. If I have a baby, I’ll finally have a family. I mean, you shouldn’t have a kid just so you have someone to love you back. That’s probably a bad thing to do. But I think I have a lot of love to give and maybe if I could just share that love with someone, I wouldn’t feel so lonely all the time.”
“You have me,” I promise, my heart aching and raw at her words. I don’t like the idea that she’s always been so lonely. How have I never noticed? Why haven’t I done more for her?
She sighs and goes quiet.
Since she’s opened up to me tonight, I decide to chance it and ask, “What happened after you went into the system?”
“I bounced around from home to home. Most of them were nice. Until I was nine and one of the foster dads was…he was kind of creepy. When he tried to hurt me, I bit him. Hard enough to get him stitches.”
I howl with rage. She was vulnerable and the man entrusted with her care tried to harm her. Even now, I want to find out his name and track him down. I want to make him pay for what he did to my Peyton when she was just a little girl.
She gives me a sad smile. “I was scared and didn’t tell anybody what happened. So, I got labeled as a violent kid and after that, the homes were a lot worse. I spent a lot of time running away from them.”
Is that why she still runs? Is that why she can just pack up her things and Honey and disappear for a few days? I don’t understand this. She’s amazing and beautiful and perfect. How did the families around her never see that?
She continues, “Eventually I ran to Courage County, and everyone here was nice to me. So, I enrolled in the high school classes and then I met you.”
“And life has been a non-stop thrill ride since,” I answer.
She chuckles, the sound soft and sleepy.
I still remember the first time I discovered she was living in a little abandoned camper on the edge of town with no running water and no electricity. We’d just graduated, and she’d been living that way for two years without complaining.
I about lost my shit when I saw the place. Within a day, she was in a furnished apartment. She was eighteen and even though my parents offered to let her move in with us, she liked being on her own. At least, that’s what she insisted to them.
She’s lived in the same tiny apartment since then. Even when I built my own home on the Kringle farm, she refused to move in with me. In some ways, I’ve understood. The apartment is her first real home. But more than ever, I want to find a way to convince her to move here.
We’re quiet for a long moment, neither of us talking. I’m trying to decide if I should put my feelings out here tonight but settle on tomorrow. I’ll go into Asheville with West and Micah and find a big rock first thing. My girl deserves a huge diamond.
Yep, a diamond then I’ll take her out to eat somewhere fancy. All we have in Courage is Ernie’s Diner, so I’ll drive us to Sweetgrass River. They have plenty of restaurants and eateries there. I’ll do this thing right to show her how much I care.
Her phone beeps from the living room where she must have left it when we were stripping naked. She stirs beside me, but I squeeze her shoulder. “Let me get it.”
It only takes me a second to grab her device but when I return, my nightstand drawer isn’t closed right. She’s also staring at her hand and frowning. “I didn’t mean to snoop. I just wanted a charger for my phone.”
“What do you have there?” I ask with a chuckle, my heart in my throat. She couldn’t have found anything all that bad. I have almost no secrets from her.
She puts the bottle of medication in the drawer without saying anything.
“Don’t you want to ask about it?”
She settles on the bed and burrows under the covers, her back resting against the headboard. “We’ve been friends ten years and you haven’t gotten around to it. I think if you wanted to tell me, you would have by now.”
“Look, I talked to Cash about this. He said the antidepressant wouldn’t cause any birth defects. It’ll slow my sperm but not necessarily stop it.”
I run a hand through my hair and fight a wave of frustration. I’ve never mentioned it to her. She’s the last person I’d ever want to look weak in front of. Yeah, depression and eating disorders don’t make a person weak. I just couldn’t risk that she might think those things. That she might one day look at me with disgust in her eyes. Fuck, she’s the one person whose opinion matters most in the world.
“Maybe the medication has something to do with the eating disorder?”
“You know about that?” I swallow hard and take a seat beside her on the bed. If I’m thinking about marriage, then there are things about my past that I should tell her. “Why didn’t you bring it up?”
She shrugs. “You’re Ledger to me. You’re not an eating disorder. You’re justyou.”
The familiar shame twists in my gut. “My mom died when I was a baby, and my dad remarried. He passed away about a year later, so my stepmom raised me. She always helped me with my homework and listened to my stories and bandaged my scrapes.”