Page 16 of Single Mom for the Mountain Men (Mountain Men Why Choose #3)

“ I s Tanner often this irritable?” Lena asks me quietly, her arms wrapped around her knees as she sits on my bed.

“He’s a little bitch when you disagree with him or piss him off,” I agree solemnly.

“Stop, don’t say it like that,” Lena warns me. Her mouth curls up into a cute, displeased pout. “He’s your brother.”

“We aren’t kids, Lena. I can say it how it is.”

“Why was he so upset that we asked him about what happened? There were so many men after him.”

“Tanner has always gotten himself into shit like that. He loves doing that to himself. It’s a rush he’s addicted to.

It was gambling before, and horse racing before that.

He let it all go for the most part, but the consequences of his actions come back to bite him in the ass more often than he would like. ”

“Why doesn’t he just…tell you two? Warn you both beforehand, or ask for help?”

I swallow as I spin the words around in my mouth, wondering how to phrase them. Lena looks at me expectantly, her eyes wide and curious.

“It’s Tanner. He’s more guarded about his issues than Brody is. He doesn’t want to come off as someone who can’t take care of himself or handle the trouble that he’s gotten himself into. He views it as a weakness.”

“Do you view it as a weakness?”

“Haven’t once, and won’t start now,” I reply quietly. “He has his demons, and the most we can do is give him a shoulder whenever he decides to let us in.”

“What are your demons, Aiden? Tanner has his addictions, and Brody has his SEAL past and those horrors to carry. What about you?”

I pause for a moment, the sudden switching of the topic taking me by surprise.

“My demons?” I repeat.

“What haunts you?” she queries while tilting her head to the side. Were it anyone else asking me this question, anyone but her—Brody, Tanner, or anyone in this fucking world—I would not have bothered with a reply.

But I trust Lena. I trust her completely, and somehow, without me knowing, she has burrowed herself under my skin. I’m a man of few words, and things that are buried so deeply inside me tend to stay there forever.

Yet, just with one small, harmless question, she has me answering her. She charms me with those guileless eyes.

“There’s…not anything like that I can tell you.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me.

My two older brothers have lived very different lives because they were close with their father.

I wasn’t that close with mine because he was a piece of shit.

It’s ironic, the ways that this stuff has affected us. ”

“Wait, wait,” she says and holds up a palm, “what do you mean ‘their father’? You three are brothers, right?”

“Ah, they haven’t told you,” I mutter to myself.

“Lena, Tanner is my half-brother, and so is Brody. My mother divorced their father when they were both children, and then, she got married to my father. The two never made me feel like I wasn’t a part of their family, though.

They checked in on me whenever they would find the time and helped me out when I felt the most defeated.

I’ve never doubted my place in my brothers’ lives, but my parents… they let me down.”

“Ah,” she breathes to herself. “What about your father, then? I know Brody’s and Tanner’s father was a very risk-loving and impulsive man.”

“Those were the bad habits that Brody and Tanner got from him, but he taught them how to be proper men, too. They know their values and morals, and they will never back down on them. I admire their father more than mine.”

“Why did your mother leave him, then?”

“I guess my dad was more charming than my brothers’ father when he was courting her, because he sure as hell wasn’t romantic when he was with her. Far from it. He was a piece of shit, through and through.”

Images of my childhood flash through my mind.

The abuse he put my mother through, the way he would do everything in his power to make sure she was never happy.

That man drained the life from my mother’s eyes.

A woman who used to love singing and dancing and mixing with groups of people became the most withdrawn, quiet, and defeated person right before my eyes.

“How is she now?” Lena’s voice drops to a lower whisper when she asks. She gets up and moves closer to me, perching herself on the armrest of the chair I’m sitting on. Taking my hands in hers, she caresses my palm with her thumb, her face open and empathetic.

“She left my father. She did it later than she should have because she wanted to salvage the marriage if she could. Having two failed marriages often made her very sad. That’s why she stayed.

She stayed for herself, out of the hope that my father would come to his senses and love her back.

But things only got worse. That’s when reality really set in for her.

I was in my late twenties when she decided to run away from him because he would never agree to a divorce. ”

“Oh,” Lena breathes, her eyes lost deep in thought. I had no doubt that she was seeing the parallels between her situation and the dilemma my mother had found herself in.

“I’m glad she realized her worth,” she adds quietly after a moment of introspective silence, her hands still around mine. “I’ve been in her place, so I know how it all feels.”

A surge of helplessness and anger pulses through me when I remember my mother’s face with a dark bruise forming around one eye, the way she tried to paste a shaky smile on her face as I came back from school one day.

She had tried to act like there was nothing wrong, waving off all of my concerns and questions, then went on to set the table for lunch.

“Why did you stay with James if he was abusive, Lena?” I ask in a harrowed voice. My chest feels full of messy knots, thick and painful emotions swelling up inside of me. “I don’t understand. Why would you do that to yourself?”

Averting her gaze, she lets out a silent breath.

“Have you seen those cartoons where there’s a toad in a boiling pot?

They sit in there, relaxing in the steaming water while the other cartoon character chops and adds vegetables to the soup.

They don’t know they’re being cooked until the water comes to an uncomfortable boil.

It isn’t until they’re burning alive that they try to jump out.

Abuse is like that, Aiden. You don’t know the quicksand you’re in until it’s too late. ”

An old ache runs through my body, like a violin’s string that has been strummed. This pain has lost its intensity over the years since my mother passed away, but the scars remain.

“I feel sad for Sophie the most,” Lena continues in a mumble. “Seeing our relationship has given her scars of her own that she’ll have trouble overcoming. It’s gonna stay with her forever, and I’m to blame.”

“You are not to blame, Lena.” I shake my head, clenching my hands around hers. “You are human, too. You loved him so much that you stayed and tried to work things out. Sophie will recognize that when she gets older. She won’t ever blame you, just like I don’t blame my mother.”

“I can’t recall when the last time was that I actually felt any sort of love toward him, now that I think about it,” she confesses lightly.

“I…I can’t think of a single reason why I stayed as long as I did.

I guess it all became familiar. To sit through that, to suffer—it became an everyday occurrence instead of a rare thing.

When you’re insulted every day, those insults don’t feel derogatory anymore. ”

My gut churns unpleasantly as I listen to her words. “I’m sorry you had to experience that all alone, Lena.”

She smiles and shifts her weight into my lap to embrace me softly.

“I’m sorry you had to live your childhood alone like that.

You had to be strong for your mother, and you were.

That’s why she decided to leave him, because you gave her the strength she needed to leave once and for all. I’m proud of you.”

Her words lift a weight off of my shoulders that I didn’t know I had been carrying all this time. I relax in her arms and wrap my own around her, pressing our bodies together. The connection and attachment I’ve felt for her this entire time gets stronger and stronger with each day that passes.

Now, I can’t imagine life without her or Sophie around.