But she had done something. She had wanted something.

“He was...doing what he did. Angry and drunken... He started in on me, because he found condoms in my backpack. And he asked why I was such a slut. He backhanded me. He said that he didn’t want any daughter of his going around acting like the town bike. Said that what I was doing was wrong. That I was dirty. And I looked him right in the face and I asked him... I asked why he couldn’t love me. Why he couldn’t love us. I asked him what was wrong with him.”

Tears blurred her vision, her throat so tight she couldn’t speak. She had to let them sit for a moment. Had to let it all settle.

Ryder didn’t say a word. He simply tightened his hold on her. She had thought they couldn’t possibly have any secrets between them. But they did. There was this. This big, looming thing that had created her, transformed her into the person who had moved into Hope Springs Ranch. And what she had been every day since.

“He hit me,” she said. “He said there was nothing wrong with him. It was just all the stupid, stupid women in his life. And we made him do it. I made him do it. Because I made him so angry. And I had to be my mother’s fault. He said he never hit her until me. It was me.” She blinked furiously. “He just said that. Over and over again. And then you came for me. You came for me, Ryder. And you stopped him. And you were the one who sat with me at the hospital. You were the one who got him arrested. You helped me. My own parents hurt me. But you... You rescued me.”

“You never told me any of this,” he said, his voice rough.

“I know. And you never asked because you’re too good to ask. Too good to ask what I had done. I just asked him why he couldn’t love me.”

And she had emerged determined never to feel shame about what she did. About her body. About who she was. She had emerged determined never to be that girl who asked in such a small, frightened voice why her father didn’t love her.

To ask for love and to look up and see only a violent void was a nightmare. The nightmare, perhaps.

The most awful, wrenching thing that she could ever imagine. And she had endured it. She had come out of it. And she had been determined to learn from it. To never feel like that again.

Ever.

And here she was, vulnerable now, but not afraid. Not afraid because of Ryder. Because of everything he was and everything he always would be.

She had landed somewhere safe at least. She could be confident in that. Her child would never have to look at his father and ask that question.

That was a gift. One that she would never, ever undervalue.