Forever We Fall: Broken #4 (The Broken Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

straightened slowly, placed my hands on the table, and focused on my mother. Pain, anger, hurt, and burning curiosity coursed through me. "Why?" I asked.
    One word.
    It was the only word that mattered in this moment. I sensed – more than felt – Kyle sit beside me and when I felt his hand on my knee, his touch was like an intravenous drip pumping courage into my body.
    "Why didn't you love me?" Blinking back the tears of twenty years' worth of torment, I sniffled and wiped my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. "Why…why didn't you w-want me?"
    It was the question of a young child.
    My inner child.
    Me.
    "Oh, Lia, sweetheart, I always wanted you," she sobbed as she snaked her hand out and grabbed mine.
    I didn't pull away.
    "I've always loved you," she continued, her small fingers squeezing into my flesh. I shivered in pleasure from the sensation of her skin. I focused on the feel of her soft warm skin covering mine.  Her fingers touched more than my hand and I was engulfed in a state of confusion and need. "I loved you from the moment the doctor placed you on my chest. You were the most beautiful…" her voice broke off and I lowered my gaze to concentrate on my mother's hand holding mine.
    "My life wasn't easy with Jimmy," she said softly. Looking into my eyes, she said, "You're probably wondering why I married him in the first place."
    I simply nodded. I was wondering that question. I'd been wondering that question my whole life. Taking a deep breath, I listened carefully as my mother bared her soul...
    "My parent's – your grandparent's – were killed in a boating accident when I was sixteen and I was sent to live with my mother's parents on their farm," she told me. "Mimi passed on shortly after my arrival and I was raised by Papa, who was a devoutly religious and extremely old fashioned man."
    "Sounds like he was a real swell guy," Kyle mumbled and I nudged him in the knee to shut him up. I needed to hear this.
    "When I was eighteen, the boy who I'd been dating from my hometown came back into my life," she said almost hesitatingly. "Mimi and Papa had taken me straight from the funeral and I hadn't had a chance to tell him goodbye or give him my address. I didn't think I'd ever see him again." She sighed deeply, shaking her head. "When he arrived at the farm I was ecstatic. He'd been my whole world from the age of fourteen and losing him as well as my parents had crushed me. He'd grown into a handsome man… he took up work on my grandfather's farm as a way for us to see one another…He told me he spent months after I moved trying to find me and had...." she paused and exhaled a shaky breath before continuing. "My Papa hated him. 'Good for nothing but the plough,' he would tell me. He used to call him a rapscallion ."
    "A raps what?" Kyle asked in confusion.
    "A rapscallion," I said with a smile. "It means rogue or mischief-maker. Mr. Frey used to call Cam and I rapscallions when we were little." Shrugging awkwardly, I added, "Probably for very different reasons."
    "Probably." She smiled softly and I watched as her eyes clouded over broodingly. "We dated in secret for a few months and when my Papa found out…" her voice broke off and she sniffled. "It ended abruptly, and Papa, furious with me for disgracing him, decided it would be best if I went to live with an old friend of his in Montgomery – whose unattached son was a car mechanic with his own land and, at thirty-five, was looking to start a family." She sighed heavily. "We were married within the month."
    "Jimmy," I heard Kyle mumble as he shifted in his chair, his grip on my knee tightening. "You were forced to marry him? At eighteen? You never told me that part, Tracy."
    "You never asked me, Kyle," Tracy replied simply before turning her gaze back on me. "We were married a month when he first hit me." Her eyes glistened with un-shed tears. "Of course he apologized and promised never to lay a hand on me again. That promise lasted all of a day," she