Page 17 of The Sweetest Cruelty: Hudson (A Sawyer Brothers Story #1)

HUDSON

“I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving,” I scoffed, lowering myself into my chair.

It was supper time, and we were in the dining room at home. The lady we saw as our mother, Ma, had cooked what smelled like the finest meal I’d eaten in days. I’d spent a huge portion of the summer working, and usually, my shifts resulted in missing mealtimes.

“How was your first day back at school, boys? Have you worn out your lunch card already, Reed?” Ma chuckled as we all sat down that evening.

He grinned and shook his head. Reed used it so much last year that it wouldn’t scan anymore. He had to pay for a replacement. “Not yet, Ma, but I’m working on it.”

Drawing my gaze away, I glanced around the table at my brothers, my chest swelling with pride.

I enjoyed eating as a family. It wasn’t something I’d done with my biological parents. For Ma Sawyer and us boys, it was a ritual. Life was so fast-paced that we didn’t get to eat at the table every day but on a Monday, after the weekend; we ate heartily and shot the shit.

“So, any first-day gossip?” Ma questioned as she started circulating the assorted food bowls she’d brought in from the kitchen. Reed and Micah helped her as Nix and I passed around the cutlery.

“Any new girls you like?”

An image of Molly Miller sitting with her father at their dinner table flashed into my head.

I wondered if she’d run to Daddy after I’d fucked with her in the lunchroom.

Storm said the opposite, saying Molly had calmly cleared up the mess I was responsible for and re-joined the queue with dignity and grace.

I wasn’t sure whether Storm added the dignity and grace bit to piss me off or if that was the case.

I suspected it was. Storm rarely gave other girls compliments .

I hadn’t weighed up the possible consequences of my actions; I’d just gone with my gut. If little Molly Miller had reported me to her father, he would have more ammunition to throw me off the team. I needed to mess with his child, but I had to make sure she didn’t grass me up.

What leverage did I have to ensure she kept her mouth closed?

Threats were always a good place to start with tattle tellers, but I had never liked making empty ones, and it’s not like I would physically harm the girl.

The thought of anyone putting their hands on a woman in anger made me sick to my stomach.

Oh, Molly. You could have been anyone’s daughter. Why his?

No matter how hard I tried, her face swam into my mind; those blue, ocean-wide eyes had looked up at me like I had all the answers.

Knock it off. It’s done with. Your stupid idea of having found something special was a crock of shit.

“Hudson met someone, isn’t that right, Hud?” Micah piped up, and my fingers tightened around my fork, but I managed to twist things.

“Don’t listen to a word he says, Ma. You know there’s only ever been one woman for me.”

Ma could read my bullshit from a mile away but she just smiled and didn’t dig further.

The guys started talking about the game on Friday, which fortunately dragged my thoughts away from the girl I now couldn’t stop thinking about.

It would be the first game of the season. We’d been practising for it at a sports summer camp we attended, and were more than ready.

I thanked Ma as she handed me a plate.

Bethany Sawyer, aka Ma, had recently purchased the rental property she had lived in for the last twenty years. It was the place we had called home since she had fostered us in our early teens.

Home to us was a traditional two-storey, modest, wood and brick house.

It was clean and comfortable, with six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living area, a kitchen, and a separate dining room.

There was a small garden out front, and at the back, there was a yard.

My brothers and I would sit out there for hours talking about football, chicks and shooting hoops.

The house was in a suburban part of Newport where most kids from The Heights lived.

The school was within a twenty-minute walking distance, if you craved the exercise.

The area was leafy, and kids would play in the street outside.

Considering where I had been raised, it was idyllic .

I occasionally walked the long way to school. It took me past my childhood home. That shithole still stood empty and was boarded up, but the last time I went there, someone had prised them loose.

Did I give a shit about that? Nope.

Although I still dreamt about my old home, I had turned my back on it.

For almost four years since I was escorted out of that house in handcuffs, I had lived with the boys I called my brothers and Ma.

I had spent three weeks prior with a Mr. and Mrs. Bexley, but that was short-lived, and so it didn’t count.

We had all come through the social services system at different times in our lives and carried an assortment of baggage that went with that.

Ma had fostered boys from broken homes with questionable pasts for years, and one by one, she saved us.

Micah and Reed were the first to join Ma’s family when they were eight.

They were both orphans and were fostered by the same family for years until the ill health of their foster mother threw them back into the system.

During that time, they had bonded as brothers, and as part of agency protocol, they were always re-homed together.

Unfortunately, their following placements were not as successful as the first, and they were yo-yoed in and out of care and separated for a few months.

Reed got the worst end of the deal and went through some shit, but he never talked about it, even with Micah.

After her last foster son filed for emancipation at eighteen, Ma re-registered with a new agency and fostered both Micah and Reed on a permanent placement.

When the boys were thirteen, Ma was asked if she would consider taking on another foster. She was promised a boy of a similar age to the ones who had been in her care for the last five years, and along came the giant that was Phoenix.

Nix had been taken away from his mother when he was five. She was a single parent, unemployed and a user. I’d seen his file in Ma’s room once. She’d left it out by accident. A social worker found him trapped in his room behind a rusted baby gate, wandering around none the wiser in his own filth.

I’d read that chaperoned visits had taken place with his birth mother until she fucked off with some big hot shot.

She’d turned her back on her own flesh and blood to start a new family.

The bitch now lived in Jamestown with her rich husband and their kid.

Ma had caught me reading Nix’s file and had gone ballistic .

I was the only one of my brothers who knew Nix had a half-brother, but had been sworn to secrecy.

I hated knowing something so important and not being able to say anything.

Ma had explained that she had files on all of us, but they were strictly confidential.

When we turned eighteen, Ma said she would give us back that part of our pasts.

I still wasn’t sure if I wanted mine. I remembered what happened to me like yesterday.

After my father was sent to prison, I was the last person to join the family.

This came around a year after Phoenix, when I was fourteen.

Our birthdays were all within a few months of each other.

For compatibility reasons, Ma had specified with the agency that she preferred boys of similar ages, and they had honoured that request.

Ma was the kindest and sweetest woman you would ever meet, but she had grit. You fucked with Bethany Sawyer; she tore you a new one. You’d have to have a backbone to allow four large boys into your life.

We were now seventeen and seniors in high school. I would be the first to turn eighteen in October, followed by Phoenix Carter, Reed Prescott, and Micah Mehari.

We were now seen as the Sawyer Brothers. Hell. Although not legal, we used the name, too. Embraced it.

To prove our commitment to each other as brothers, we each got a Tundra Wolf tattoo etched in the same place on our shoulders on our sixteenth birthdays.

The Tundra stood for loyalty, family, and protection.

Wolves were also pack animals, and we were a pack, with our true leader being Bethany ‘Ma’ Sawyer.

We were a tight unit, and then along came Harper. Talk about a cat amongst the pigeons.

I knew her appearance had something to do with Phoenix, but I didn’t know the details, and he wasn’t a sharer by any means.

Harper Radcliffe broke Ma’s one main rule of only caring for boys.

She’d explained many times to Nix that the foster agency would not consider placing a teenage girl in a house with four teenage boys, but somehow, she’d done it.

And Nix had been forever grateful, for the first few weeks anyway.

He and Harper had lived with the same family when they were younger, and I imagined they must have been close once . From the reception she gave him on her first day at the house, you would never have believed that.

Ma had taken Harper on as a foster during the summer, and she and Nix were already at each other’s throats. Nix had promised Ma it would get better and that he’d do his best to try and get her to settle. Funny really, considering he seemed hell bent on doing his best to piss her off.

But Ma said she would hang in there. It was the first time Ma had fostered a female, and even though she hid it, I knew she was enjoying female company, even though Harper could be prickly.

And that was one of the many cool things about Ma: she listened, like really listened. We were all given a voice and had someone who cared about our opinions and didn’t shoot us down with their tongue or fists. We mattered.

Through her guidance and love, I had found myself again, well, most of me.