Page 35 of Burning Love (Looking For Love #7)

ALL THOSE THINGS

F our days later, Jace got out of work, went home and slept for a few hours, then left to drive the two hours to his old hometown.

He pulled into the cemetery and made his way to his mother’s tombstone. He hadn’t been here once since the day they buried her.

Someone put flowers there and cared for the plot.

When he saw the sash that said “wife” on the planter, he knew it was Jeremy. Guess his mother found the love she wanted after all. It was too bad that she didn’t get to experience much of it.

He looked around and wondered what the hell he was doing here.

He’d spent days thinking of what Talia said and trying to figure it out.

She said she wanted him but then wouldn’t consider moving in with him.

Did she want him to say he loved her?

It was probably that. But she wasn’t saying it to him either.

He could barely get her to talk about anything and had to all but trap her into the conversation on Thursday.

That didn’t scream that she loved him. It was hard for a guy to say that the first time if they didn’t think it would be returned.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. He was talking to thin air.

“You messed up so many lives with your decision. You made it harder on yourself. Dad would have never taken me from you.”

He knew that now. His mother had a habit of being impulsive and she had to have been back then too.

There was no going back in time or changing anything.

He had to move on, as his father said.

Exactly what his mother had done when she had to. He realized that his life wasn’t all that messed up.

He might not have ever known his father if things hadn’t turned out the way they had.

He wouldn’t have experienced what love was like in an accepting family.

And he wouldn’t have found Talia.

His heart was thumping faster than it had the first fire he had to fight. It felt the same to him as it did when he thought of his father and Lauren and his sisters.

Of never seeing them again.

Disappointing them.

Just like he had Talia the last time they talked.

“Jace?”

He turned his head to see Jeremy standing a few feet away. The man who said he wouldn’t be able to care for him. At least Jeremy was man enough to admit that.

“Yeah.”

“It’s good to see you. You look the same. A lot bigger, but the same. I’ve kept tabs on you over the years.”

He snorted. “Why? You didn’t want me.”

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him to see his stepfather here. In the past few months every time he turned around something shocking was popping up in his life.

Meeting Talia, then her family, the baby, introducing her to his family. Falling in love.

Nothing he’d experienced before.

Might as well put it all out there now to move on.

Like his father and Talia told him to do.

She was right.

If he couldn’t get past what happened to him, he wouldn’t be able to fully accept his future.

“It wouldn’t have been right for me to take you when you had a father out there,” Jeremy said.

“So you did it for me? That’s what you want me to believe? What if my father didn’t want me?”

“I would have never let you be alone,” Jeremy said. “I promised your mother that. But I told her she needed to reach out to Dean first. She owed it to you.”

Just another thing in his life his mother didn’t tell him.

“You told her. She didn’t do this on her own. Another lie? She lied about everything,” he said. He had no idea what to believe anymore.

Jeremy sighed. “Your mother had a lot of fears in her life. She was stubborn and impulsive on top of it. I loved that about her, but it was her downfall too.”

“How’s that?”

He crossed his arms. A defensive move. Guess he still didn’t like anyone talking shit about his mother. Even the guy that loved her.

“Jace,” Jeremy said patiently. “Your mother was sick for a good year. She put her head in the sand and hoped it went away.”

Something he’d thought of for a long time too.

“Like Dean?” he asked.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s the truth. You had every right to say what you had to her and she died knowing she was wrong.”

His throat was closing on him. He hadn’t expected Jeremy to side with him. “I shouldn’t have done that to her.”

“No,” Jeremy said. “You shouldn’t have, but no one could blame you either. You were a kid being dealt a lot of hard hands at once. No one knows what to do in those situations and most times they make the wrong decisions.”

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing past the lump in his throat.

He seemed to be repeating history like his mother.

Making the wrong decisions.

“I hope you’re happy. Your mother would want that. I’ll give you some time. I come here every weekend to talk to her. Could be fate that you were here today.”

He nodded his head as he watched Jeremy walk away.

Fate for him to help Jace move on. He’d like to think that to help with some unanswered questions too.

“I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by the things you did,” he said, talking to his mother’s stone again.

“I can’t take back the words I said in anger.

I’m sorry if you think I don’t love you.

I always loved you. I always will. I just hate what you did and I’m not sure I can get past it.

But I won’t let it hold me back either. That I can promise you.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t live like this. ”

He turned his head to look up at the sky, then back down to her name on the stone.

Stella Miller. Thirty-seven years old. Loving mother and wife.

She was all those things. No one could say otherwise.

“Jeremy said you’d want me to be happy. I was getting there. Then I messed up. But I’m not going to continue to mess up. I’ll figure out how to fix it.”