"Oh my God," she says, putting her hand to her mouth, the tears staining her cheeks. I should stop. I should stop right now and not tell her the rest. But the flood gates have opened, and everything wants to come out.
"And that was the good part of my life," I say. "I was in and out of foster homes, never staying at one too long. I was treated like a waste of space. I was told time and time again that all I was, was a paycheck. Stay quiet and don’t mess this up for us." I swallow. "When you are told your whole life that no one wants you and that you aren’t worth anything, you start to believe it. Even if I didn’t want to believe it, the kids at school were good at telling me that I was nothing since I came from a foster house."
"You are worth so much," she says, and I just shake my head.
"I went five days with only eating a loaf of bread," I say. "My foster mother was in Mexico. She left a ten-year-old for five days with a loaf of bread. No one would have known had the apartment downstairs not flooded. You grow up fast, that’s for sure. When I was thirteen, my foster father climbed into bed with me." I watch her face. "Lucky for me, I always went to bed dressed in all my clothes. Also lucky for me, I learned to yell real loud. Then I met Ryan, and the two of us made a plan to take off. We lived on the streets for six months. We had each other’s back, and then he got sick. I worked my ass off to make sure he was okay, but it wasn’t good enough; nothing was good enough. I couldn’t even rent a room for him to die in a bed. Instead, he died in a crack house with people doing meth around him." She swallows as my own tears fall from my eyes. "You learn two things in foster care. One, no one is going to protect you like you, and two, only the strong will survive."
"You survived," she says. "You are the strongest person I know."
“I survived by running,” I tell her. “Survived by never staying in one place for too long. Living paycheck to paycheck by the skin of my teeth.” The weight of my past still presses on my shoulders. “That’s the man you just kissed,” I tell her, leaving out the fact I’m hiding the biggest secret not only from her but also her whole family, and it’s eating me up inside.
She wipes the tear that runs down her face, and I want to go to her so much, but I know it’s just prolonging the inevitable. "I’ll get my things."
Chapter 20
Amelia
"I’ll get my things," he says and turns to walk away, his shoulders slumped and his head down. This man who is worth so much yet doesn’t see it.
"Stop," I snap, taking one step forward. He turns around, and my eyes meet his. The look of defeat is all over his face. "You don’t get to do this," I say, my hands shaking, and I really wish I could sit down. "You don’t get to give me all that and not listen to what I have to say."
"Amelia," he says my name in a broken plea. "Just." I hold up my hand to stop him from talking. I hold up my hand, and he sees it shaking. He takes a step forward, but I shake my head. I can’t do this if he’s next to me.
"I know a man who woke up at the ass crack of dawn to go out to help an old man fix his fence. An old man he isn’t even related to, I might add." I shake my head. "I know this man who lost everything and was sadder because of the impact that loss had on my family. I know a man who puts other people before himself. I know this man who would give anyone the shirt off his back." I stand straight and pull my shoulders back. “There are things about me that you don’t know either," I say, and he just looks at me. "Things no one knows. And I mean no one. Not my parents, not my grandfather, not even Chelsea."
"You don’t have to do this," he says, but after everything he gave me tonight, I owe him this right now.
"I don’t have to but"—I look down at my hands—"I want you to know." I swallow the fear that he might look at me differently. "I fell in love when I was fourteen years old. He worked for my grandfather, doing stuff around the barn and then he was the up-and-coming rodeo champion. He trained with my cousins, and there was no denying he was going to be a champion. He was two years older than me." I ignore the pain forming in my heart. "One night, I found him alone in the barn, and we started talking. Then slowly, we would spend more time together. In secret, of course. No way would he even acknowledge me when any of my family members were around. When I was fifteen, he gave me my first kiss." I wipe the tear away, the memories that I’ve kept in a locked box coming out.