Page 1 of Burning Love (Looking For Love #7)

“ J ace, we need to talk.”

Jace Miller looked at his mother lying in the hospice bed in their ranch home. At seventeen, he detested these being his last memories.

“I’m right here.” He grabbed her frail hand and held it lightly in his much larger one.

The cancer had moved with brutal speed. What started in her pancreas had invaded her brain within a year.

She’d spent her life putting everyone else first, never herself.

He and his stepfather should’ve insisted she see a doctor when the abdominal pain started.

But they hadn’t. And now it was too late.

“I know I don’t have a lot of time left,” his mother said. “You’ll be eighteen in a few months.”

He gulped, his heart racing. The last thing he wanted to do was think of life without her. “Yeah.”

“Jeremy is struggling now. He’s not sure he can handle it.”

His stepfather had always struck him as weak. A man who faded into the background rather than stood beside her.

He’d been shocked when his mother married five years ago, but she was tired. Tired of carrying the weight of everything alone.

Jace helped as much as he could, but Jeremy brought in another income and that was what his mother needed the most.

“You don’t think I’m not?” he choked out. It was a struggle to get the air out of his lungs.

His mother squeezed his hand. “I need to make amends for what I did.”

“Mom, we don’t need to talk about anything right now. You need your rest.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to rest soon,” his mother said, forcing a smile. He battled the tears that no teenager wanted witnessed.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I’m speaking the truth as we know it. But I haven’t been honest with you. It’s about your father.”

He frowned and sniffled. A tear escaping, he turned his head to wipe it quickly. “What about him?”

The asshole had been absent from his life. His mother never told him the guy’s full name. Jace had long since given up asking. To him it was some dick named Dean that knocked his mother up when she was twenty.

“He never knew about you.”

“You said he didn’t want me,” he argued. Why was she doing this to him now? She had to be confused.

“I lied. I didn’t want him to fight for you. Or take you from me. I was mad. A lot of things. But I was wrong.”

This couldn’t be happening. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Mom. You’ve got a lot of medication in you.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she argued. Her voice was stronger than it’d been in days. “I’ve got to make this right. Jeremy found Dean last month. Understandably, he was upset and took a DNA test.”

Jace shook his head, stood up, and paced.

“You did this without my knowledge? How?” He grabbed a tissue to erase the tears. He was full of rage now.

“I have to do what is best for you for when I’m gone. It’s not Jeremy. You can’t be left alone.”

“Jeremy doesn’t want me to stay with him?” He should have figured that. “This is your house too.”

“Come on, Jace. You two barely talk. You coexist in the house and that is it.”

He’d never felt any real connection to the man. Maybe he never gave himself the chance and didn’t want anyone stepping in and taking his mother away from him. For so long, it had just been the two of them.

“What’s going to happen to me? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Just tell me.”

“Your father’s name is Dean Rigby and he’s in town. I met with him yesterday. He’ll be here in thirty minutes. You’re still a minor and we’ve got legal paperwork for him to get custody of you. I’m not going to make it until you turn eighteen.”

“I’ve got to live with a stranger?” he shouted out. “Where?”

“Dean lives two hours away. He’s getting an apartment in town for the next few months so you can finish school and graduate. You and he can figure it out after. I hope you give him a chance. He’s a great guy.”

“If he was so great why did he leave you?” he yelled.

“I left him,” his mother explained. He was shaking his head like a dog in the rain. “I never told him I was pregnant.”

“Why?” He was running his hands through his hair. All he wanted to do was slam out of the room, but his mother wouldn’t be able to get up and give chase and he needed an answer. “Make me understand.”

“He would have taken you from me,” she said.

She was tiring now and he should let her rest, but she forced herself to hit the button and have the bed lift her higher.

“His family had more than I did. I didn’t want to share you.

I was mad at him. We’d only dated for a month.

His parents didn’t like me. They only met me once, but I heard his mother telling him that he could do better. ”

None of this made sense. “So after a month of dating you just left without a word to him?”

“I broke it off with him, then I left. When I returned home I found out I was pregnant and decided not to tell him. He didn’t come after me, so it’s not like he cared all that much.”

“I don’t know what to say about this.” What he wanted to do was put his fist through the wall.

“There isn’t much for you to say,” his mother said. “Dean will be here soon. Don’t fight this. Give him a chance. You not only look just like him, you act it too. You guys are going to get along great. Please, promise me you’ll try.”

“I can’t promise you something like that,” he spit out.

Jace turned and walked out the door.

His world was already being torn apart knowing he was losing the only person who’d been there for him and now he found out she’d been lying to him his whole life. This was a nightmare worse than the one he was living.

The minute he whipped the front door open to leave in his car, a truck pulled into the driveway and blocked it. The guy climbed out and it was as if a time machine from the future dropped him in front of himself aged twenty years.

They both stood rooted to the spot, Dean speaking first. “Oh my God, I’ve got a son.”

The guy burst into tears, Jace doing the same. Only rather than embrace the stranger who stood there with his arms held out, he turned and ran down the street.