“I’m saying it because Bradfordville hasn’t been my home for a long time. I don’t ever think it was.”
Rusty wanted to call bullshit but Cash spoke before he did. “Are you happy, Alex?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she returned a little too quickly. “What’s not to be happy about? I have my own place, a job I enjoy, and friends who care about me.”
“That’s all fantastic but that doesn’t exactly answer the question. Are. You. Happy?”
“Of course, I am.” This time when she spoke, however, Alex didn’t look either of them in the eye.
“Well I haven’t been,” Cash replied quiet. “Rusty either. Not a day or night has gone by when we haven’t wanted to bring you back where you belong—by our sides.”
Alex finally raised her head. Her eyes gleamed with the suspicious sheen of tears. “You come back into my life after all this time and make this declaration like I’m supposed to just jump back into your arms like everything is okay? Bradfordville is a small town, what makes you think anything will be different this time around or that I even want to go back after what happened.”
If he could, Rusty would take her pain and make it his own. He empathized with how much she must have suffered over the years, but he and Cash had wanted to make sure they were in a position to prevent any of that happening again. “It will be different this time around. We weren’t there when you needed us but we will never let anyone hurt you, again.”
“Oh? There are people out there who still can’t handle the fact that couples of the same sex can be married in this country. What exactly do you think will happen when the three of us start flaunting our relationship around town?”
“I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. You’re making a lot of excuses for why we shouldn’t be together but you haven’t given us the one reason that will make Cash and I get up, walk out that door and never come back.”
She slid her tongue across her lower lip. “And what’s that?”
“Tell us that you’re no longer in love with us and we’ll leave,” Cash answered before Rusty could.
Alex raised her chin. “I...I don’t…” She lowered her lashes.
“Can’t say it, can you, because you still love us don’t you?” Rusty prompted.
Abruptly, Alex pushed away from the table and stood up. Wrapping her arms around her body, she turned her back to them. “Don’t do this to me. Please. I can’t handle this again.”
Rusty and Cash were both on their feet and stood on either side of her.
Alex moved away. “I can’t think properly when the two of you are standing beside me. I’ve finally got my life in order and carved a niche for myself here. I no longer cry myself to sleep reliving how an entire town seemed to turn on me because I dared to love the chosen sons. Both of them. And through it all, I hadn’t heard from either of you. If you would have come to me sooner, maybe we could have worked things out. But now I just don’t see how we can. My own grandmother disowned me, so you don’t get to use her as an excuse because I doubt she wants to see me as you’ve stated. I can’t go back there.” Tears slid freely down her cheeks.
Unable to stand by while the woman he loved was in distress, Rusty pulled her into his arms, his torso flush with her back. She stiffened as he rested his forehead against the crook of her neck. “Please don’t cry, Alex. I can’t stand to see you cry, baby.”
Though he’d only wanted to comfort her, his words seemed to have the opposite effect because Alex burst into loud body-shaking sobs.
Rusty wrapped his arms around her waist and held on tight.
Cash knelt before her and placed his head against her stomach. “Sweetheart, you’re breaking my heart. We didn’t come here to hurt you.”
“Where…were…you…? I needed you.” She managed to get out in between her sobs.
“If we had known what happened, we wouldn’t have allowed any of that to happen but by the time we found out it was too late. You were gone, but we didn’t totally abandon you. We hired someone to look out for you to help you get on your feet.”
She hiccupped. “What are you talking about?”
Rusty lifted his head until his lips were an inch away from her ear. “When neither one of us heard from you, we contacted Miss Ida Mae. She said you’d left and weren’t coming back but she didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have a forwarding address or anything. We knew you had a couple months before you were supposed to take off for school but it didn’t make sense that you wouldn’t let us know. We came home to find out what was going on and there was talk around town about the three of us. No one had the nerve to say anything to our faces about it, but we confronted Mom and she admitted that a concerned friend had come forward with some information about the three of us. She said there were pictures. We deduced that it had to be Tabitha. She swore she had deleted them but apparently not. It was obviously her revenge for my rejection of her. She wanted to be intimate, but the thought of touching her literally made me ill.”
Alex swiped a falling tear from her cheek. “So what then?”
Cash got on his feet and cupped her face between his palms. “We dipped into our savings and hired a detective to find you. He reported to us that you were living in a youth hostel close to the college you were to attend. As luck would have it, one of our father’s old fraternity brothers lived in the area and we called in a favor to get him to help you find a place until you could move to the dorms on campus. He knew someone who rented out rooms in their house to college students on the cheap. That mysterious flyer you found advertising it came from the guy we hired. We’ve known exactly where you’ve been all along, making sure you were okay. So you see, we never really left you. It’s how we knew how to find you, how we’ve always known how to find you.”
“But, I contacted you both. Your cell phone numbers no longer worked for some odd reason and I sent you emails and neither one of you responded.”
“We didn’t realize that until you told us yesterday. Neither one of us could figure out why that was, but then Rusty remembered around that time, we had switched service providers where we got cell phone and internet service in one package. Our emails changed and we weren’t able to keep our old phone numbers. In all the fuss of me going back to school and Rusty deciding to take a few summer courses, we completely forgot to give you the new ones.”
She shook her head. “This is a lot to take in. I think I need to sit down.” Reluctantly, Rusty released Alex but not before giving her one last squeeze. He could tell his brother had an equal amount of difficulty letting her go. She walked to the sofa and plopped down unceremoniously. “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t contact me, just to let me know that I wasn’t completely alone in the world.”
Rusty took the empty space next to her, sitting close enough for their thighs to brush, while Cash occupied her other side. It was a good sign when Alex didn’t seem to mind how close they were to her. They were getting through to her, but there was so much more she still needed to know. But for now, there was hope, and Rusty was determined to use it to achieve his ultimate goal. Having Alex back with them always.
Chapter Five
They were making it very hard for her to think straight by being so close to her, but the part of her that missed their touch, still craved their nearness and overrode any need for self-preservation. So if what they said was true, they hadn’t really abandoned her, why now after eight years? “You guys haven’t answered my question yet,” Alex prompted when no one spoke.
“I can answer that for you,” Cash said with a sigh. “There were some extenuating circumstances that popped up regarding the factory. During that time Rusty and I agreed it was best that you stay where you were. Had one of us come to you then, we probably would have dragged you back with us kicking and screaming, but you were about to start school and we knew how much that meant to you. We made sure, however, that you were safe and had somewhere to stay. That job you got working as a part-time receptionist at that c
onstruction company was also through our father’s associate.”
“That was you guys? I thought it was lucky how I found out about that position. I always thought it was too good to be true. I mean, it paid enough where I didn’t have to get a second job like a lot of my fellow students. Between that and my scholarships, I didn’t need financial aid. And here I thought I’d done it all on my own.” Alex wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She’d worked very hard for her independence and to find out that Cash and Rusty had had a hand in her life when she thought they didn’t care shed some light on some of her unanswered questions but not all.
“Yes,” Rusty answered. “We would have come to you at the first sign of trouble but you seemed to be doing fine. And that scared the hell out of us.”
She glanced at him, incredulous. “How did that scare you? I was the one who was disowned by the only family I knew and basically blackballed from the entire town. Do you know what happened when I went to collect my last check at the diner?”
“I was told to get out and never step foot in that establishment again because it was for decent folks only.” She used air quotes for her last words. The humiliating memory made her cheeks burn.
“And if we could have prevented that from happening, we would have.” Rusty placed his hand on her knee.
“So why didn’t you at least try to call me?”
Cash sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “We made a deal with our mother.”
“What?”
“I was a year away from getting my shares from the company and Rusty three. There was an independent executor whom my father’s will had named. But our mother had a lot of influence over him and his say in how those shares were handled. After Dad died, she took control of the factory and basically ran it into the ground within the first year. She’d quadrupled her salary, didn’t give the workers raises, and didn’t get some of the more outdated equipment up to safety standards which resulted in a few injuries. The thing is, my mother had no business trying to run the company, but she wanted to prove a point. Not a lot of people know that she came from nothing when my father married her but the ones who did believed she wasn’t Bradford material. It’s why she always put on airs. And, it’s why she was so hard on you. You reminded her of the background she’d spent years trying to erase. She wanted to run the company to show everyone else she was better than them.”
It definitely made sense. There had always been whispers that Marion Bradford was from one of the poorest trailer parks in the county, although no one dared to repeat that rumor around the woman herself. There was still a lot Alex didn’t understand, however. “Okay, but what does your mother’s past have to do with anything?”
“Cash got a call from the factory’s business manager to tell him what Mom was doing. Cash confronted her. He wanted to take over and set things right when he took control of her shares which he offered to buy from the inheritance Dad left him. Mom agreed to sign her shares over only if we agreed to leave you alone. Basically, she wanted us to choose you or see the factory suffer, which meant a lot of people losing their jobs.”
Alex gasped. Mrs. Bradford had been arrogant but Alex never imagined that she’d deliberately destroy hundreds of livelihoods to get her way. “All because she didn’t want us to be together?”
“That was part of it. It was her incompetence that nearly ruined the factory. My mother saw she was in over her head but used you as leverage to save face and get what she wanted,” Cash answered. “She was too proud to admit to the colossal mess she’d created but Rusty and I knew she would still hold us to our end of the bargain before she signed over her shares. I believe she thought the longer she could keep us apart, the least likely we’d reunite. Finally after two years, we got controlling interest of the company.”
“By the time I’d finished school, the factory was on the brink of bankruptcy. A lot of workers had been laid off. I used the rest of my inheritance along with hefty business loans to get the equipment up to date and come up with a new business strategies to bring more business to the company and hire back the people who had been out of work for a while. Rusty transferred schools so he could be closer to help out. Thanks to his tech savvy, we created a website and a global internet presence. We’re turning a profit again and have basically undone the damage our mother did. But it took time. We’ve worked sixteen hour days, seven days a week. But even then, it was always our intention to come for you once we had everything under control. That’s why it took us so long to get to you. If there weren’t so many people’s livelihoods on the line we would have said fuck it. But we couldn’t turn our backs on them.”
Alex had been so focused on her own pain, she didn’t stop to think that maybe the two of them had gone through their own ordeal. It must have been difficult to take on such a huge endeavor at an age when most men were still partying and trying to figure out what they wanted out of life. “I didn’t know.”
Rusty shrugged. “How could you have? If we didn’t have an obligation to our father’s memory and to all the people who would have found themselves out of work, we would have been here much sooner.”
“And that excuse about my grandmother? Was it just that, an excuse?”
Cash shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. She actually wants to see you. In fact, we have a letter from her for you to read whenever you’re ready. She wanted us to give it to you on the off chance you decided you didn’t want to see her.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“Yes, I placed it on the end table by the door when we came inside. I could get it now if you’d like to read it,” Rusty offered.
Alex folded her hands in her lap. “I...I’ll read it. But not right now. I’m still trying to process everything you just told me. I mean, it’s been eight years and I don’t know how we can go back. Eight years isn’t enough time for people to forget what happened, I’ll still be that slut screwing the Bradford men. Yeah, I was actually called that to my face by the one of the high school teachers. My own grandmother called me much worse and I’m expected to go back to that?”
“Alex, we can never guarantee that someone won’t give us a dirty look when we’re out together or judge us, but we do vow to protect and honor you in every way. All that matters is how we feel about each other and the fact that you can’t say you don’t still love us, too, makes me think we can build something together. Can we?” Cash gently took her chin between his thumb and forefinger.
“I have a life here. A job and friends.”
He firmed his grasp and tilted her head until their eyes met. Alex could easily get lost in his hypnotic green stare. “Tell us that you don’t love us.”
“You’re not being fair.”
Rusty clutched her arm. “You’re not being fair to yourself if you deny how you feel.” Alex turned to face him, freeing herself from Cash’s hold.
“The two of you may have had a lot of time to think this through but for the past eight years, I’ve been trying to find ways to put the past behind me. You say you’ll protect me, but who’s to say when someone will come along and start trouble. What about your mother or Tabitha?”
“First of all, after we bought our mother out of the company, we convinced her it was in her best interest to leave town. By screwing up the factory, she basically became a pariah in town. She wisely took the money and bought a retirement home down south. When I last spoke to her, she was dating some well-to-do octogenarian. Even if she objects, she has no power over us. As for Tabitha, she can’t cause any more trouble. She left town shortly after you did. We’re not sure about all the details but apparently, she was messing around with a married man and the wife kicked her ass in front of a whole bunch of people. She was so embarrassed, she went away and no one has heard from her since.”
Alex took no pleasure in hearing about the misfortune of two people who had caused her so much misery. But even if she no longer had them to contend with them, there were still others. “And my grandmother?”
> Cash touched her knee to get her attention. “We haven’t needed a housekeeper for a few years now, but we wanted to make sure Miss Ida Mae was taken care of. We bought her a condo in a retirement community. She loves it there. There are lots of activities and she gets to be around people her age. We visit her. She seems happy enough, except, she talks about you a lot. Whether you want to see her or not is up to you, but we’ll support you in whatever you decide. As far as your job goes, you have a career that you can do practically anywhere. There’s a new state of the art hospital being built a couple towns over and they’ll need a skilled practitioner like you. As for your friends, they can always visit and you can come back to see them as well. We’re not trying to take over your life, just be a part of it again.”
Alex slid off the couch not trusting herself with Cash and Rusty so close. She started to pace across the room, trying to come up with reasons why they shouldn’t be together when her heart kept screaming yes. All the old arguments didn’t seem to matter when the three of them were together. But she was frightened that if something went wrong, she’d be the one to pay the price as she had the last time. She stopped and turned to the men who watched her with an intensity that sent pulsing waves of heat throughout her entire body. “I’m scared,” Alex admitted.
Cash and Rusty were on their feet in an instant, but halted a foot away from her. “Alex, do you love us?” Cash asked softly.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Of course she did. Why else would she have suffered through all those sleepless nights these past years? Why else had she never felt safe since she was last in their arms? And why, when she tried to move on to other romantic liaisons, did no other man compare? Alex had been prepared to spend the rest of her life alone because she knew no other man would do because none of them held the key to her soul the way Cash and Rusty did. “Yes,” she finally whispered.
Taming the Alpha Page 65