Page 24 of Burning Love (Looking For Love #7)

EATING AT HIM

“ H ow are you doing today?”

Jace turned to see his father standing next to his truck when the question was asked two days later.

“I’m fine, why?”

He was at the site of the new development where his father was throwing houses up faster than he could count.

Dean was driving between projects and checking on them. It was what he spent most of his time doing.

Jace had been told to show up here and they’d put him to work.

“I know what today is,” his father said.

His mother’s birthday.

“So?”

“Jace, it’s not easy.”

“Nope,” he said. “She died too young.”

“Let’s take a walk,” his father said.

“There is work to be done.”

“There is always work to be done, but there is a time to talk to your father and it’s now.”

Since Dean never gave him shit, or didn’t give it to him much in life, he followed him down the road where other houses were going up.

“What did you want to say?”

“You have to let go of the guilt at some point.”

“She is the one that should feel guilty.”

“And she did,” his father said. “Until the day she died. She was wrong and she knew it.”

“You should be pissed off and you’re not.”

“I was,” his father said. “I was livid. She robbed me of seventeen years with you. I’ve done everything I could to make it up the past twenty years.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I don’t want your appreciation,” his father said. “But you didn’t need to see my anger either. Your mother was dying. What use was it to make her feel any shittier than she was? Her mind wasn’t even with it much those last two weeks.”

Jace didn’t need the reminder. Not that he visited with her much. He’d kept his distance in the house and wouldn’t go talk to her.

What did she expect after she’d dropped that bombshell on him?

“It wasn’t right,” he argued.

“It absolutely wasn’t,” Dean agreed. “But it was done. If she didn’t come to me when she had, I’m not sure I’d even know you existed. She did the right thing in the end.”

“Would you really have taken me from her?”

It was a question he’d never asked before and wasn’t sure why.

Maybe because once he moved in with his father and Lauren and the girls, he’d only lived there a few months before he left for college. Then when he was home on breaks, he was working.

There wasn’t a lot of time for them to have heart-to-hearts like this while Dean gave him space to accept the loss of his mother and the new life he’d be living.

Even the new name that he’d taken.

“No,” his father said. “Never. Do I think my mother might have tried to convince me to go for custody? Yes. My mother was that way, but I wouldn’t have done anything more than try to get joint custody.

And thirty-seven years ago, that was rare to happen.

The mother almost always got the child with the father getting visitation. ”

Times had changed and fathers got more of a fair shake now.

Jace wasn’t going to say his mother was wrong in her thoughts because he didn’t know.

It served no purpose to assume anything so many years later.

“I don’t know why she did it. And I’ll never know.”

“That’s right,” his father said. “I’m not saying your mother and I would have made it work, but she left me. We dated for about a month and then she moved. End of story. She said she was returning to her hometown and didn’t give a reason.”

“You didn’t want to go after her?”

“I was in college. It was my last year. She was living in the area working. We were dating, nothing serious. If I’d known she was pregnant, I would have. But she told me she didn’t know she was pregnant until a few weeks after she was home.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Based on the timing of your birth and when she left, I do.” His father sighed.

“She told me that she overheard my mother saying I could do so much better and that she couldn’t wait until I was back in college and away from Stella.

My mother did say that to me. More than once.

I had no idea your mother overheard that. ”

It was the first Jace was hearing this. “Then I don’t blame her for leaving. No one wants to stick around where they aren’t wanted.”

“That was my mother’s opinion, not mine,” Dean said. “Again, it’s in the past and done with. I think the bigger issue now is that you were hurt and felt betrayed. You reacted to that and then lost your mother shortly after and never got to apologize.”

“She was the one in the wrong.”

“She was. No one would argue that. But I know my son. You feel guilty that she died thinking you hated her.”

His shoulders dropped and he looked up at the sky. “I shouldn’t have said that to her.”

“It’s neither here nor there. You said it and you were feeling it at the moment. She understood that. She told me. Once I came back and spent some time with your mother while you were in school.”

“You did?” he asked.

He’d met his father the one day after he’d returned home from walking around town for an hour.

“Yes. I wanted to know everything I could about you. Your life, your personality. Everything I missed. I wanted to know why she did what she had and then where we could go from there. I also gave her the chance to atone for her guilt to me.”

“I’ll never get that.”

His father was right. It was eating at him.

But he couldn’t go back in time. And if he could, he was positive he would have reacted and said the same words he had.

You don’t know what you don’t know and at seventeen, he’d have no idea what this would have done to his mindset.

How he thought of women, treated them, or even his lack of trust.

If the one woman he trusted in his life lied to him, how could he possibly think another woman wouldn’t?

“You won’t. But you can start by not holding onto it. By opening yourself up to other people in your life.”

“I opened myself up to you,” he argued. “Some might say they’d never be able to do that.”

“You did it because you were afraid of being alone,” his father said. “I know that. I also knew that you were like me in personality because your mother told me. Which meant that giving you space and letting you make decisions on your own with options presented would work the best.”

“I don’t know how Mom could think we were so much alike when she only knew you for a month.”

He wasn’t buying this.

His father was a class act and pretty laid back in most instances, but this was a far reach for even him.

“We were close in that month. I can’t explain it to you, but we were. We had a connection.”

“One you easily let walk away, so it couldn’t be that deep.”

His father pursed his lips. “I was twenty-one. Can you tell me that you made the best decisions in your life at twenty-one? At twenty-five? Even at thirty?”

“No.”

“There you go. I’m only telling you what I know, what I felt, and my personal advice. It’s your decision to take it or leave it.”

“This has to do with Kelsey meeting Talia, doesn’t it?”

It’d been two weeks since that happened. Just four days since he’d met Elias Carlisle.

That visit wasn’t nearly as bad as Talia made it out to be.

Sure, Elias got some licks in about the age difference, but he’d expected that.

More of the comments came from Aileen.

He couldn’t fault the woman for caring. His mother might have done the same thing.

Which could be why he was struggling the past few days more than normal around his mother’s birthday.

He didn’t think of her often. Not as much as he had lately.

In the beginning, it was with the pain of anger, hatred, and betrayal that skewed his grief.

As he got older, the anger and hatred subsided, but the betrayal would never leave his mind.

His grief had remained; his guilt was what grew.

He didn’t have a chance to make it right, as his mother had with his father.

He had to live with the hateful words he’d said to her.

“Kelsey liked Talia from that brief meeting. You know Lauren and Janey want to meet her.”

“So I’ve heard multiple times.”

Both Lauren and Janey had texted about it. His father had brought it up also.

“I keep telling them that it’s probably not serious,” Dean said. “I don’t know that you’ve ever been serious about anyone, but Kelsey thinks there is more going on since you could have prevented her from entering the house and meeting Talia and hadn’t.”

“I could have.” It was exactly what he’d told Talia.

“So there is more going on?”

“I don’t know. She’s a year younger than Janey.”

His father snorted. “Kelsey said that but that Talia was years more mature.”

“She is. She’s got a good job.”

“To be expected with her family,” his father said.

“I’m not going to argue that it was given to her, but she had to work for it.

From what I can see, none of them has had a career handed to them.

Did West take care of his siblings? Sure.

The same as you did when you found out about me.

They lost their father when Talia was four.

She never really knew her father because he was in the service when he died.

She doesn’t have a lot of memories of him. ”

“That’s too bad,” Dean said. “You share that. Of not having a father in your younger years and being raised by a single mother.”

“We do. But it’s not the same. Maybe back then it was. Her mother struggled alone, financially and just caring for everyone.”

“As did Stella. Your mother was a strong woman and did what she thought was right, even if I don’t agree with it.”

“She was strong,” he mumbled.

Jace turned to start walking back to the house he was working on.

He didn’t want to talk about this much more.

“Cut yourself some slack, Jace. Forgive your mother and then forgive yourself. Until you do that, you’re going to be alone. She wouldn’t want that any more than I do.”

He nodded his head.

It was the best he could do with the tightness squeezing his throat. The damn grief would just never let up.