Bruiser (Seattle Sharks 7)

“I sure did!” Shea answered.

“Heck yeah! You rocked it!”

She high-fived me and hugged Shea. “I’m so proud of you!” Shea squeezed her tight.

“I’m proud of you for watching!” Elliott teased.

“She didn’t even block her eyes!” I added.

“Ha ha. You two have jokes.” She nudged my hip as we walked out together.

I kept my girls by my side as we made it through the parking lot when it hit me.

I was happy. So fucking happy.

And more than a little terrified of losing it. Losing them.

/> * * *

“Good choice,” I said as I inhaled my second chili dog from the unassuming diner in Georgetown. “Can’t believe Elliot chose tacos with Charlie over this.”

“They’re all about their sleep overs,” she said. “You don’t mind? I know you’re used to fancy restaurants and stuff,” Shea said as she sipped on her milkshake.

“You act like I grew up rich,” I said with a grin. “I haven’t always had money. And newsflash, rich guys like chili dogs, too.”

She glanced over the small booth at me. “What’s it like being rich?”

I chewed, thinking about my answer. “Weird, honestly. I’m really careful with my money and well-invested because I refuse to ever wonder where my next meal is coming from again.”

“Amen,” Shea said, nodding her head once. “The first thing I did was build a few months of cushion in a savings account, and then grew it to a year. I spent too many nights terrified of what I’d do to keep Elliott fed.”

“Just Elliott?” I asked quietly.

Shea shrugged. “Hunger wasn’t something that bothered me. I can handle it, but I never let her suffer. Ever.”

“Your family wouldn’t take you in?”

Her eyes flashed to mine.

“I’m not judging. Just trying to understand you. I want to know you, Shea, and I’m trying not to ask questions you don’t want to answer, but it’s hard.”

She looked out the window and then slowly back to me. “Elliott’s father was a year older and wiser, and everything bad boys are to good girls...catnip.” She sighed. “I got pregnant the month I turned sixteen. My parents...they didn’t support me—us. And he told me we could come to Seattle, and he’d work, and we’d raise our baby. And like a fool, I went with him.”

She pushed her glasses up her nose in a nervous gesture.

“It’s not stupid to fall in love with someone.”

“All the signs were there,” she said quietly. “He cut me off from my family. My friends. The apartment was rented in his name. The car was his. The bank account—his. And I was young and so naive and thought he was taking care of me. I felt...cherished while he isolated me. I let him.”

“You were sixteen, Shea. Everyone wants to see the good in the world at sixteen.”

“Did you?” she challenged.

“There wasn’t a lot of good in my life at sixteen.”

She nodded, and I waited patiently for her to continue.

“The abuse started slowly, and I could always trace it back to something I’d said or done, even though I know now that it wasn’t me. It was him. But I thought Elliott would magically cure everything. We’d be a happy family.” She popped a fry in her mouth and chewed slowly before speaking again. “Once she was born, he got a hundred times worse. Not toward her, I made sure that never happened, but he stopped punching the wall beside my head when he’d get angry, and just...redirected his aim.”

“At you,” I guessed, leaving my tone as flat as possible.

She nodded. “But I didn’t have anywhere to go. Or a job. Or anyone who could help me. I was completely dependent on him. He was Elliott’s father. I’d already lost mine, how could I just walk out on hers when she hadn’t even gotten to know him? The good parts of him? So I lied. I said I fell through the coffee table when they stitched me up at the ER. I said I slipped on ice when I broke my arm. You name it—I had a lie for it.”

My stomach was twisting in ways that had me leaning away from my uneaten hot dogs. Her story was so similar to my mother’s. The lies. The injuries.

“Sex…” She closed her eyes with a grimace for a second, composing herself. “It wasn’t how it is with us.”

“Thank God for that,” I said, reaching for her hand. “I’d never hurt you.”

“I know,” she assured me, tucking her hair behind her ear with her free hand. “But I didn’t know any better then. I thought it was supposed to hurt. That it was just a fact of life that I’d give him what he needed when he needed it, and I learned to stop saying no.” Her gaze dropped from mine.

“Because he didn’t listen,” I supplied, already having guessed the answer back at the cabin that first time I kissed her.

“It was easier to just go along with it. Let’s say that,” she met my gaze again and tried to smile.

“How long did you stay?” I couldn’t imagine someone as strong as Shea sticking around for that kind of treatment.

“Elliott wasn’t even a full year old. She’d been crying all day—teething, and he just...lost it. It was the first time he’d gone after her.” Her eyes unfocused, like she was still there, in that memory. “I redirected his anger.”

“At you.”

She nodded. “I couldn’t let him hurt her.”

“I understand.” And I did. I’d seen my mom step in too many times until I was big enough to step in on her behalf.

“When...I woke up the next morning...he’d been planning a trip to Cali with some of his loser friends. To look for better work. Whatever he called work, at least. So I played my role, submissive, ready to wait for him to come back. But when he left, I packed my backpack—the same little purple one my mom bought me at the start of my freshman year. I only took what it would fit. Then I took his winter coat—it was the only thing of his that I took—because it would zip around Elliott when I strapped her to my chest. Then we walked out and never went back.”

“Did you report it? The abuse?”

“You’d be surprised how little you want to call the police when you’re listed as a sixteen-year-old runaway. I was terrified CPS would step in and take Elliott.”

“And now you give the help you couldn’t get.” I stroked her knuckles with my thumbs.

She smiled, and this time it was genuine. “About three days after I left him, I stumbled into a lawyer’s office. We were filthy, and I was starved and freezing. But instead of a secretary finding us, it was one of the name partners.”

“Connor’s lawyer.”

“Yeah. He gave me a job, helped me find an apartment, walked me through getting my GED, and then paid for my degrees while I worked at the firm. Elliott practically grew up in one of the conference rooms until she was old enough to go to preschool. I was terrified of putting her in daycare. Terrified that he’d…” She sucked in a breath.

“That he’d find her.”

She nodded. “I changed our last name. I guess in that way I deprived him of his rights. And if he ever finds us, he can sue for custody of Elliott, or even charge me with kidnapping. Not that I think he would at this point, right? I’m sure he’s found another woman to dominate.”

“Why don’t you let me hire a lawyer? Find out what we can about your actual legal situation? I hate that you’re living in fear. Especially when there’s something I can do about it.”

“You’ve already done too much, Hudson.” She shook her head. “She’ll be eighteen in eight years. Then he can’t force any custody arrangement. We’re over halfway there.”

Fear trickled down my spine. “Shea, I can’t stop every tabloid picture. I’m not on social media, so at least there’s that, but I’m the highest-paid defenseman in the entire league. You’re risking exposure with me.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “That makes me selfish, right?”

“It makes you human,” I corrected her. “Do you...do you want me to walk away? If it’s to keep Elliott safe, I will. I don’t want you to think it would be easy—it would fucking kill me, but I’ll do it.” I meant it, as much as it frightened me. I would have rather died than put Elliott and Shea in a position to be hurt. And even if I moved them in with me, I couldn’t protect them legally. The asshole still had legal rights over Elliott.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Why stay in Seattle?”

“Because at first, I couldn’t get out—I didn’t have enough money. And by the time that I did, when I threw his name in a search engine, he was living somewhere in California, and I

’d built a life here with Elliott. A home.”

I nodded. “You’re incredibly brave.”

She shook her head.

“You went after your dad.” She motioned to my eyebrow.

“Nah. Not that mark. That was when I stepped in front of my mom. My father would never do anything that would compromise my athletic ability.” I thumbed the scar out of habit. “You don’t have to be pretty to play hockey.”

“Didn’t doctors notice?”

“My mom stitched it, all the while telling me what a good man my dad was, that it was alcohol that turned him into that monster. It wasn’t his fault. I think she genuinely thought that for a few more years.”

“And when you were fifteen?” she prompted.

I owed her just as much as she’d given me.

“I laid him out when I found him hitting her. She was unconscious, that’s how badly she’d already been beaten. By that point I was as tall as he was, but he was bigger.” Now it was her stroking my hand as I laid myself as bare as she had. “Our fight ended up outside, and the neighbors called the cops. I was booked for assault, and he was booked for domestic violence.” I laughed, the sound ugly and dark. “She bailed him out first.”

Shea sucked in her breath. “She what?”

“She thought he’d be less pissed at me that way. He’d threatened to kill her if she ever told—then he threatened to kill us. She believed him. She refused to testify, and his case disappeared like magic.”

“And you went home?”

I shook my head. “I went to live with my coach for a while, but I couldn’t stay there, not with my little brother in that house. So I went back. And he didn’t hit me again. By then I was too good at hockey, and it was too hard to hide any injury he could cause me.”

“And he walked out when you were seventeen?” she asked, trying to understand.

“I came home from a game, and he...was drunk. I’d seen him drinking at the game, and took my time getting home. By the time I got there…” I looked into her eyes and told her what no one else had ever heard. “She was covered in blood. Her leg was broken. And my little brother stood over her, defending her from our father with a kitchen knife. He was only twelve, almost thirteen.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah. My father lunged for the knife, and I knew if he got it, he’d kill Maddox—that’s my brother’s name. And Maddox was already quick at that age, but not quick enough. My dad had the knife when I got back from his bedroom. Maddox has a scar from his shoulder to his sternum because I wasn’t fast enough.”