Page 61 of Knotted their Beauty

“I feel like we’re making our own version of a trauma candy salad,” Lennox mutters. His hands move up to my calves and he works on the tight muscles there. His lips twitch as I moan softly. “I think it’s a completely normal response to be happy when people who were awful to you die. My mother poisoned my father because he was a mean, abusive fuck. She wanted to protect us, and not one of us batted an eye when he dropped dead. I’m sometimes afraid to eat her food when she’s mad at me, though.”

I can’t help the giggles that escape and Lennox shrugs. “What can I say, sweetheart? We’re all a little fucked up. The chinks in our armour are kind of sexy, yeah?”

“That’s a pretty fucked up way to get a compliment,” Ves teases me. “Cali is dying to play with your hair Lennox. If you’re not careful, she’ll be braiding flowers into it and asking to do your nails.”

Lennox wiggles his toes in our direction and I see they’re a pretty lavender.

“I painted them in Malibu after taking a long fucking bath. I was going to self-care myself out of depression. Baron interrupted me.”

“A little kidnapping makes for a great ‘how did you know you were meant for each other’ story,” I chuckle. “Why be boring?”

“Why indeed,” Lennox growls, heat in his words.

Ves rocks my ass against his hard cock and I fucking perfume. Yep, this intervention is going swimmingly.

BARON

Ignoring the cloud of sugary lemon that fills the room, I bite back a groan and swallow hard. “Does this mean it’s my turn?”

Lennox turns toward me with a shit eating grin. “It does, and it better be good. If it doesn’t track with kidnapping, I’m going to question your feelings for me for the rest of our relationship.”

“I’ll try not to disappoint,” I deadpan as I lean forward and prop my elbows on my knees before looking out the balcony doors. “I’m originally from Fresno. I grew up there with my brother and we were raised by our single mother—our dad died when I was four—and she had a steady rotation of alphas on tap after that. Not for money or anything like that, Diane Kincaid just has terrible taste in men. We were poor as fuck, living on fried bologna and cabbage soup.” Straight out of the Depression era, but it’s true. “Mom always had at least two jobs, she worked her ass off to make sure Dax and I were fed and clothed, that we had a roof over our heads, and it made it easy for guys to weasel their way into our lives with promises of taking care of us. She wanted so badly to give us the world, but that was how it always got rocked.”

Arlo reaches over and rests his hand on my wrist. “I saw a lot of that in the shelters. Mothers with children who were struggling to get by. I’m sure that was hard.”

I shrug as I turn and give him a soft smile. “It was, but she did her best to make a shitty situation seem better than it was. We were broke as fuck and on government assistance, bills piled up and we had notices every week, but we were happy. My mom hid everything from us and made sure we had no idea how bad things were.”

“I have to ask,” Lennox says with a smirk. “How did such a kind and caring woman give birth to a borderline psychopath?”

I’m sure most people would be a little offended by that, but I’m not.

No, as a matter of fact, I’ve asked myself the same question on more than one occasion. Especially considering how my brother turned out.

“Two,” I say with a grin as I hold up two fingers. “How did such a kind and caring woman give birth to two borderline sociopaths? My doctor clarified for me.” When I’m met with confused silence, I can’t help but laugh. “After my dad died, Mom dated a lot but she only remarried once. Chad Lighton. On the surface, he seemed decent. Had a steady job, bills were paid, needs were met. He took my mom on dates, and took Dax and I to do things other guys did with their kids. He taught us to skate and eventually got us into hockey. It was the closest thing to normal we ever had.”

“Then the bottom dropped out,” Arlo nods as he slips his hand into mine and gives it a squeeze. “Why do I have a feeling this is about to take a turn for the worse?”

“Oh, it is, but not quite the turn you think.”

“That’s ominous as fuck,” Ves grunts.

I nod. “Turns out, good old Chad was beating the fuck out of our mom behind closed doors. They hid it well for a while, but when I was fifteen, I came home from school one day and found our mother passed out and bloody at the bottom of the stairs. I called 911 and got her to the hospital, and when she came to, she said she fell. Problem was, I know what it looks like when someone gets their ass kicked.”

Lennox nods, “It’s hard to cover that up.”

“Exactly. I started asking questions, my brother and I both did, and the doctors all but confirmed her injuries weren’t just from the fall.” I scrub a hand over my buzzcut and go back to staring out the window. “Stairs don’t tend to pull chunks of your hair out or leave handprints around your neck.

“My mother almost died that day, and if I hadn’t found her when I did, she most likely would have. She’d worked too hard, come too far to let some son of a bitch treat her that way.

I wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Dax and I played stupid while Mom was in the hospital, we didn’t let on to either of them that we knew what actually happened. By this point, we were both playing hockey for our high school and Chad was an assistant coach. Our practice schedule was intense and he’d started taking us to different lakes when they’d freeze so we could practice in the elements. We went to Donnor Lake the weekend after all that shit went down.”

“I think I know where this is going.” Lennox laughs a little as he shakes his head. “I’m not going to be disappointed, am I?”

I shake my head. “We found a weak spot, skated it until it was ready to break, then made sure Chad found it, too. Fucker dropped right through the ice like a bag of bricks, hung onto the edge until his hands were too cold, then went down while we watched. I didn’t think the current was very strong but he got sucked under the ice and pulled pretty far from the hole. We skated along the path, looked into Chad’s eyes until the life left them, then called it in once we were sure he was dead. Little did we know, he had a life insurance policy, one he probably was hoping to cash in after my mom took a spill down the stairs, but she got almost a half million dollars after his accidental death.”

“Oh, the irony,” Ves says with a smirk. “I shouldn’t be hearing this, considering I am Mr. FBI man, but if it was ruled an accident, who am I to… Wait a second.”