Page 73 of Sweet Surrender

“Everything is okay now,” he said gently. “More than okay, really. The boys have a big extended family. And when I think of Brandy, I’m mostly just grateful—grateful that she saw that difficult pregnancy through and gave me my boys. And I’m glad she didn’t stay if she would have been unhappy.”

“Is she a flight attendant now?” Becca asked. “Or a cruise director?”

“She’s a travel agent,” Zane said with a faint smile. “And she lives in the city, just like she always wanted. I keep in touch with her parents, even though she doesn’t want contact with me or the boys. Obviously, if she were ever in any kind of trouble, I’d help out. But it sounds like she’s happy, and that’s all I could ever want for her.”

“That’s really great,” Becca said. “I’m glad she could follow her heart after all.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her,” Zane said, shaking his head. “And of course I worry about the boys a lot. I try hard to be enough for them, and I’ve got the whole family. But that’s not the same thing as having a mom. Sorry for dumping all that on you. I clearly don’t know how to act on a date either.”

“You’re doing just fine,” she told him. “With the date and the boys. And I’m glad you told me those things. It helps me understand you better.”

She didn’t want to say it out loud, but Zane’s fierce protectiveness over his boys made a lot more sense now. She understood why he was so quick to put his foot down when it came to them. He was all they had, and in his eyes they had been betrayed before.

“Well, I do my best,” he said. “But I really dropped the ball this time. When the boys were born so early, I knew that impaired hearing and vision were a risk. I should have thought about Nick’s eyesight long before you came along.”

“That’s not your job, Zane,” she told him simply. “You took him to all the right doctors, he was tested at school, and you had no reason to think anything was wrong.”

He nodded, but his lips were pressed together, like maybe he wasn’t quite convinced.

“The reason I caught it is thatIwas the one in the position to pick up on it,” she told him. “I’m his teacher, so I notice where he sits, what his schoolwork looks like, and how he feels about it. That’smyjob.”

“Well, we’re all glad you’re so good at it,” he told her, gratitude in his eyes again.

“I really do love it,” she said simply. “In fact, I love it enough that I expected I wouldn’t have much of a life outside of it until I’d had a class of my own for at least a few years. And I was okay with that. I didn’t have much of a life when I was working hard in school, or when I was running around as a substitute teacher, and it wasn’t so bad. But… the other day in class, I was feeling so down, and I could see the effect it had on me and on the students. And I realized that if I really want to do the best by them, I don’t just need to be focused, I need to be happy.”

Zane nodded, looking thoughtful.

“I never thought I’d want to date again,” he said. “I put my boys first, always, just like you do with your students. And after all, they ran their own mother off when they were too tiny to cause any trouble. How could I expect a woman who isn’t their mother to want to wrangle them now?”

“That’s not true,” Becca said, blinking at him.

“What’s not true?” he asked.

“They didn’t run their mother off,” she said, horrified at the implication.

“She ran from taking care of them,” he amended.

“No, of course she didn’t,” Becca said, shaking her head. “She wasn’t runningawayfrom them. She was runningtowardsomething—toward her dreams and the city and the life she wanted. It had nothing to do with them. And it had nothing to do with you.”

Zane opened his mouth and closed it again, then shook his head.

“I never thought about it that way,” he said after a moment. “But I think you’re right.”

“You told me the story yourself,” she said. “And what I heard was a story about a woman who had a firm idea of the life she wanted to live. And she did. You should be proud of yourself. You let her go with grace.”

“She gave me the greatest gift of my life,” he said simply. “I could never ask anything more of her.”

“Then it all worked out just like it was supposed to. It really was meant to be, just like you thought,” Becca told him. “It might be a story with some sad moments, but mostly it’s a beautiful story.”

Zane grabbed her hand from across the table again and gave it a squeeze.

The look in his eyes was indescribable, but Becca knew deep in her heart that he was feeling that the rest of his story was meant to be too.

And that maybe there was room for one more person in it after all.

25

BECCA

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