Page 25 of Burning Love (Looking For Love #7)

STAY FOR THE COMPANY

“ I ’ve got pizza.”

Jace turned when the front door of his house opened and Talia came strutting in with the box in her hand, a bag on top of it.

“Oh. I forgot you were coming tonight.”

Her smile dropped. “Did you want me to leave?”

“No. It’s fine. I was looking for something to make for dinner. I got home about twenty minutes ago and just got out of the shower.”

Talia hadn’t seen him since Sunday. He’d been working with his father and getting home late each night, then was at the firehouse.

They’d planned this a few days ago that she’d bring dinner at seven. He’d even confirmed this morning.

“No. Sorry. It’s been a long day.” He smiled. It was extremely obvious that it was forced. “Now I don’t have to cook.”

This was the first she’d seen him this way. He was normally upbeat and joking. Not always, but not distracted.

“Everything okay? Anything you want to talk about?”

“No.”

He was getting plates down and put them on the island.

“No, it’s not okay or no, you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Both.”

Talia let out a sigh. She should leave. This was only reminding her that what they had wasn’t what she was hoping in her mind.

“I’ll leave and let you have some space.”

“Don’t go,” he rushed out. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’d like you to stay for the company.”

She frowned. She still wanted to leave but wouldn’t.

There was a vulnerability to him that she hadn’t seen before. She wouldn’t leave someone when they were down even if that meant it could hurt her.

She wouldn’t be selfish like that.

She opened the bag on top and pulled out the wings she’d picked up and put a few on the plate, then grabbed a slice of pizza.

They ate in silence for a minute.

She had sauce all over her hands and got up to get a napkin out of the pantry since the bin was empty.

She knew where everything was in his house now. Almost as if it were her own.

Crazy how it’d only been about a month and she felt so comfortable here.

“Do you want to just sit in silence as your form of company, or talk?”

“I’m being a dick, I know.”

“We are all entitled to a bad day. My family has a range of personalities. It’s nothing I haven’t handled or lived with before.”

She was the one forcing the smile now.

He reached his hand over. “I appreciate it. I’m so used to being alone.”

And he didn’t want to be, which meant this wasn’t something as simple as work not going well.

“Is everything okay with your family?”

“Yeah. It’s not that. Or not my father’s side.”

“So then your mother’s side. You can tell me to stop prying. I will. But something tells me since you’re used to being alone but then said you wanted me to stay for the company, that maybe you want to talk. Or be pushed to talk?”

He sighed. “I’m trying to work it out in my mind.”

“Work out what to tell me or if you want to say anything at all?”

“What to say.”

Her lips pursed in frustration.

“If it’s not your father, then I’m going to guess your mother. Am I right?”

He didn’t answer her, only took another bite of his pizza.

When he was done chewing, he said, “Today is her birthday.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That has to be hard.”

“Yeah.”

“And you still miss her.”

“I do.”

“I have little to no memories of my father. When his birthday rolls around, we make it special for my mother. At least one of the kids is with her and everyone calls to talk to her if they aren’t here.”

“What happened when you were in college? Did you come home for it or was it over the summer?”

“His birthday is in March. I wasn’t that far away in college but couldn’t come home if it was during the week.

One year it was on the weekend and I came home and a few of my other siblings did too.

Elias is the closest. I think for two years he took the day off to be with my mother when no one else could.

One year, West flew my mother to New York and she was able to spend the day with him, Laken, and Braylon. ”

“The past two years you’ve been home though,” he said.

“Yep. And we make a day of it. Whatever she wants to do.”

“That’s nice. I never knew my father’s birthday so it didn’t affect me as a kid.

For my mother’s I did what she wanted too.

We didn’t have a lot, but I’d cook dinner.

” He let out a half laugh, half snort. “I did hot dogs in the microwave with chips on the side for the first year I could cook it. I think I was six. She said it was the best dinner ever.”

“Awww. That’s so sweet. I bet she loved it.”

“She made me feel as if she did,” he said quietly.

“She sounds as if she was strong like my mother.”

“Too strong for her own good,” he said drily.

“I’m sure she did what she thought was right. My mother has made a lot of choices in life we haven’t agreed with, but it’s not for us to tell her it was wrong. It wasn’t our decision.”

“Oh, she was wrong. She admitted it,” he said.

“Which is good because not many can do that.”

“She worked too hard,” he said. “It was just the two of us for most of my life and that was by her choice.”

He seemed as if he was going to open up so she’d try to keep her questions as brief as possible.

“Do you know why?”

“I found out more from my father today. More than I knew before.”

She frowned. “Can I ask why you didn’t know before now?”

“I never asked. He didn’t offer. I don’t know. He’s the type of guy who wanted to give me time to settle in. You have no idea what it’s like to lose a parent and then be told you have to live with a stranger.”

“No, I don’t know that part. You said your mother was married. There was no way you could or wanted to stay with your stepfather?”

He snorted. “I thought that was what would happen and I didn’t want it either.

It’s not that we didn’t get along or didn’t like each other.

We just didn’t connect. He was weak more than anything.

I’ll never forget my mother telling me that Jeremy couldn’t handle losing her and wouldn’t be able to take care of me in his grief. I’d be too much of a reminder.”

“That makes me ill,” she said.

“Try being a teen when you hear it. Then I’m hit with the fact I’m going to live with my father who I never knew. I didn’t even know his last name.”

“You had your mother’s last name?”

“Yes. I was Jace Miller for seventeen years. On my eighteenth birthday my father asked me if I would take his name. I was stunned. I’m not sure if I did it to thumb my nose at my mother for her lies to me or because my father was the only one who wanted me and if I had his last name, then I wouldn’t be abandoned. ”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, Jace. I know I keep saying that, but I’m not sure what else to say. I want to ask so much but don’t want to push you. I bet you’ve said this to no one before.”

“I haven’t.” He looked into her eyes. His were glossy too. “My father knew it was my mother’s birthday. He wanted to talk. I asked why he wasn’t as pissed at her as I was. He didn’t know I existed. She just walked out of his life and never looked back.”

Since he looked as if he was ready to talk, Talia leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure he was upset and angry, but he might have been more focused on you.”

“He was. He’s the most standup guy I know.

My mother hits me with this information and then says Dean is on his way to meet me.

I always knew his name was Dean and that was it.

I go out the front door to get in my car and leave.

I didn’t want to be there to meet this man, but he had pulled into the driveway and blocked me.

He gets out of his truck, it’s like looking in the mirror, only the guy is older.

He bursts into tears and opens his arm for a hug. ”

Her bottom lip went out. “Did you hug him?”

“Nope. I’ll never forget his words. ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a son.’ He was thrilled. I turned and ran down the street.”

“Where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I walked around town for an hour or more. I don’t remember. I came home hoping he’d be gone, but he wasn’t. Maybe I thought he’d be mad enough to leave.”

“He never left you,” she said.

“No. He opened his life to me. He was married, running a business, and had two young daughters at home. Yet he rented an apartment two hours away from his life and stayed with me until I graduated. We went to his house on Friday nights so he could take care of things and came back Sunday night. They gave me my own room in his house. My stepsisters and Lauren decorated it when I said I didn’t care. ”

“They made you feel as part of the family when so many would have been mad to find out about you.”

“I wanted to belong. They wanted me to. As my father and I talked, we were both a victim of my mother’s decision. My father has let it go. He was able to move on because, as he says, there isn’t anything he can do about it.”

“You can’t let go, can you?”

Which might explain why he never had a relationship in his adult life. He couldn’t get past the one he had with the first woman in his life.

“No. I want to, but now it’s this vise around my heart and mind that won’t unlock.”

“You can pry it open if you want to, Jace.”

“I’m not sure how.” There was a tear in his eye, but he stood up and turned his back after he got a napkin. He didn’t want her to see it might fall.

He grabbed a beer out of the fridge and opened it. He was leaning against the counter and drinking it from the can.

“Are you willing to let someone help you?”

“Like counseling? No.”

“I meant me. Or your father. It seems like he’s been trying.”

“He has given me space like he always does. It’s the first we really talked. He told me that my mother overheard my father’s mother saying that my mother wasn’t good enough. She feared because they had money that they’d try to take me.”

“So she knew she was pregnant when she left?”

“No. She says she didn’t. My father believes it. He said the timing was there. He’d only dated my mother for a month. He liked her a lot. They had a deep connection, but my father went back to college. It was his last year.”

“If he knew she was pregnant, would he have gone after her? Would he have tried to take you?”

“The man I know would have never hurt my mother that way. He would have found a way to be in my life and support me even if they didn’t work out.”

Which was obvious considering all that Dean Rigby did for Jace.

“You have that now. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but your father could have had any kind of reaction not like that. He could have walked away when you turned eighteen. You could have gone into foster care and been with a stranger too.”

“I thought of all those things. My mother wouldn’t have done that.

My father said he’d talked to my mother for a good month before we met.

She would have made him promise not to leave me.

Then they talked every day when I was in school, even if it was on the phone.

He wanted to know everything he missed in my life, but more important who I was at that point in my life. ”

“Maybe he thought he could find out more about you from her, about your younger years, and was more concerned about helping you through your grief.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another sip of beer. “I said a lot of hateful words to my mother before she died.”

And this was where the problem most likely was. “Did you ever get to say you didn’t mean them before she died?”

“Oh, I meant them. Looking back, I think I still mean them. But I shouldn’t have said them. She died thinking I hated her. I hated what she did, not her. I can’t ever fix that.”

The tears were flowing out of her eyes. She stood up and walked to him and put her arms around his waist.

“Jace, what you were feeling and what you said was normal. Would she have wanted you to keep that all bottled up inside?”

“I don’t know. My father got closure. My mother absolved her guilt with my Dad.

He said he can’t hold a grudge against her.

He’s spent the past twenty years trying to make up for me not having him in my life.

Not just financially. He paid for me to go to college and I dropped out after two years.

I’d always worked for his business on breaks and in the summer. I ended up doing that full time.”

“I bet he loved it.”

“He did. It will go to me, Kelsey, and Janey someday. I thought they’d be mad, but they weren’t.

They don’t really want much to do with the business, but that could change at some point.

I wanted something of my own and that is how I became a fireman.

I remember my mother broken down on the side of the road with me once and a fire truck was coming back from a call.

They pulled over and fixed her car. It just overheated.

” He snorted. “Simple enough, but they helped and I thought to myself, I want to be someone like that. I want to give hope to someone who might not feel as if they have it in that moment.”

There was so much to him that no one ever got to see.

And Talia had a tiny bit of hope that maybe there was a future with him since he let her in.