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His heart hit up against his breastbone. And he couldn’t recall that ever happening.

He had loved Cassidy. She had turned him on. Made him happy. They had talked about the future. They had been united in things.

They had been shallow things.

He recalled an old story about a foolish man who built his house on sand. On temporary things.

But she never made his heart try to leap out of his chest. That was a whole new experience. He wasn’t sure that he liked it.

He certainly had never asked for it.

His body could stop doing weird shit he hadn’t given it permission to do anytime.

He walked up toward the front door and cleared his throat, then knocked.

His mom opened the door, and everything in him softened just a bit. He pulled her into his arms. “Hey, Mom.”

She would always smell the same. Like his childhood. Like a certain perfume he got her every Christmas—because she asked for it every year—and Dove soap.

A hint of coffee and sunshine.

She was home.

When he’d woken up in the hospital, he had smelled that smell. His mother.

He had never been more grateful for anything in all his life. For a moment, he’d thought he was dead.

But it was just that she was with him.

His dad had smelled like Old Spice, coffee and tobacco. He would never smell that particular combination of things again, not the way that it sat on his skin. And that was a grief he still didn’t know how to manage.

So many things had changed in his world. The loss of his father was the one he didn’t think he could entirely ever accept. Too bad it was also the thing he could do the least about.

There were ways he could rearrange his own life. He couldn’t bring someone back.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. “You’ve been busy the last week.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But happy to be here.”

She reached up and touched the brim of his hat. “He would be so proud of you. He was so proud of you.”

What would his dad have thought about the pills? If he’d known his boy had failed? As a husband, a caregiver.

Dad had raised him to be all those things and more. He never let hardship get to them. He’d had cancer. It’d been painful and debilitating, and he hadn’t lost himself.

“I hope so,” he said.

“Rory and Lydia are just in the kitchen finishing up dinner and chatting. Why don’t you come sit with me in the living room?”

“Sure.”

He walked into the living room with his mother and sat in the chair his father used to occupy.

“I should get rid of some of these things. They don’t fit in this house.”

A glow started at the center of his chest. Because for everything he’d done a bad job of in the last few years, he had this. This to offer his mother.

“Mom, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I got the ranch, and you know I have a place for you there. I don’t need the main house. I can stay in one of the smaller ones.”