Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series

Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series by Natasha Thomas Page B

Book: Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series by Natasha Thomas Read Free Book Online
Authors: Natasha Thomas
a façade I built up to protect myself from people getting too close. The only person I even remotely let see a glimpse of my scars was, Alysia, but she’d claim differently. If you asked her, she’d tell you I was locked up tighter than a nun’s panties, but she’d be wrong. I might not have divulged all my secrets, confided in her my deepest, darkest fears, but I sure as hell opened up to her as much as I could back then.
     
    Like anyone who has reasons to hide behind half-truths, distractions, and white lies it became a habit. A way of life so to speak. I didn’t even realize I was still doing it until Finn sat me down and told me that if I didn’t start trusting people weren’t going to judge me for my past I’d lose them.
     
    Specifically, he was referring to, Alysia. He didn’t have to say it in as many words, but our conversation took place mere hours after her outburst in the conference room so I’d have to have been dumb as a post not to be able to read between the lines. And I’m many things, but dumb isn’t one of them.
     
    Finn pretty much told me he wouldn’t be averse to me dating his sister if I could get over my past, but that was something I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to do. Memories, nightmares like that weren’t easy to erase or move on from. That shit was seared onto my soul. It infiltrated my blood like poison.
     
    The horrors I’d faced, the things I’d done it was all there ready and waiting to rear its ugly head at any moment. There were only a few distant good memories, and at times, they were almost impossible to conjure up. Like now, sitting here dumbfounded I can only vividly remember one such memory from my childhood that doesn’t involve Alysia and her family.
     
    I was one of those kids you hear of all too often that were doomed to the foster care system for the vast majority of their childhood. There was only a barely worth mentioning period of time I wasn’t. And that time period was one I couldn’t possibly remember. It was from the time I was one week old until seven months of age.
     
    Apparently the family I was placed with, the Jensen’s, were a lovely couple cursed with not being able to have children of their own. A middle class, hardworking couple who busted their asses to make a happy life together regardless of the fact they’d never feel one hundred percent whole.
     
    The only reason I knew they were nice is because I’d heard some of the staff at one of the many group homes I’d lived in for a few months talking about how sad it was they couldn’t have children. The women who ran the group home went on and on about how unfair life could sometimes be, and that if there was, in fact, a God he would have left me with them.
     
    Of the vivid dreams, I rarely remember the Jensen’s play a starring role. I still often wonder what would have happened to me if they’d have been able to keep me. Would I be an entirely different person to the man I am now? Would I have followed my passion and gotten a baseball scholarship, going on to college somewhere? Is it possible that I could be married and have kids of my own by now if I’d had role models like them?
     
    All those questions and more plagued me when I woke up from those dreams. Some days I can’t decide if they’re not dreams but nightmares because no one should have to suffer in the knowledge that their life would have been infinitely better if the scales weren’t weighted against them.
     
    There was a period of my life that I needed the answers to these questions more than I needed air. I was desperate to find somewhere I belonged, so when I aged out of the system at eighteen, I sought them out.
     
    I didn’t have much to go by, only that they were located somewhere in New England, their names were Stuart and Alice Jensen, and they owned a garage. Information was spotty at best when it came to government run agencies, and the foster system was no different. A first I went back to the

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