Free Billionaire With a Twist 2 by Lila Monroe Page B

chest?”
    It just popped out: “Well, I’ve
secretly got the self-esteem of a red-headed stepchild from growing
up in Paige’s shadow.”
    I felt incredibly vulnerable as soon as
I said it. I’d never stated it so baldly before.
    But Hunter’s hand was warm in
mine, and he didn’t pull away. He was there for me.
    His brow furrowed. “I know your
mother can be a trial. Has it been that bad?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know.
After awhile, anything can seem normal. It wasn’t ‘til I
was in college that I realized that not every mother played favorites
that way.” Now it was my turn to look off into the distance.
“After that little taste of freedom, I couldn’t go back
to the way things were before, all the little comparisons and slights
and put-downs, never any praise no matter how hard I tried to be her.
I had to be me. So I moved out of the house, and then I moved out of
town.”
    Hunter squeezed my hand. “That
was very brave.”
    I shrugged again, my eyes misting.
“Didn’t feel very brave. Just like I needed to breathe.”
    “I’m sorry it’s been
so hard for you.”
    “I’m probably
exaggerating,” I said automatically. “I mean, it’s
not so bad. Other people have it worse. Paige has always been great,
she never got spoiled like some people who get that kind of
treatment. And my parents do love me, I know they do. It’s
just…Paige is the daughter my mom always wanted, and I was the
extra. And then I didn’t even do her the courtesy of being a
back-up in case they lost the first one, I had to be my own person.
All full of unsightly ambition and bad pop culture references and
profanity and shit.”
    He laughed softly and nudged his horse
closer. He let go of my hand, but only to wrap his arm around my
shoulder.
    He didn’t say a word, and neither
did I, and we didn’t have to. I had never felt such unspoken
closeness, such intimacy before. In that moment, it didn’t
matter that because of my work and my principles, we couldn’t
really be together. In that moment, we were more together than I had
ever been with another human being.
    It was probably the most perfect moment
of my life, which meant Hunter should have, by all established
patterns, ruined it. But he didn’t.
    My horse did instead.
    Or rather the rabbit that darted out
from between the bushes and spooked my horse did.
    “Shit!” I shrieked as my
mount unexpectedly bolted. “Ah fuck fuck shit!”
    We’d been having a capital M
Moment, dammit!
    But as is probably already clear, my
horse had absolutely no respect for emotional turnaround points, and
kept running like a demon. I gave up trying to make it understand
that the rabbit was not going to kill it, in favor of holding on for
my life and making sure the mare didn’t run into a tree.
    “Ally!”
    It was Hunter, catching up to us as we
came along the river, where my terrified, whinnying horse reared away
from the water and began to run parallel to it. I wouldn’t be
surprised if she hadn’t completely forgotten the rabbit by now;
she was so scared that it didn’t matter what had caused it,
every new sight was a thing to be frightened of.
    Hunter extended his hand, gripping his
reins tightly with the other. “Jump to me!”
    I took a few seconds out of my busy
schedule of holding on for dear life to gape at him in disbelief. I
shouted back, “Are you shitting me?”
    “Trust me, Ally!”
    And somehow, looking into those golden
brown eyes, even across that yawning gap, even above those thundering
hooves—
    I did.
    “Okay!” I scrambled onto my
feet in an awkward crouch and braced myself, getting ready to jump.
    And I think that, in a perfect world, I
really might have actually made the leap right into Hunter’s
arms.
    But then my horse bucked.
    I sailed through the air, everything
seeming to slow down as though we were passing through water, a
random thought seeming to take forever to reach completion: The
stablehand had said this was the jewel of the crown, was