Page 26 of Burning Love
“Not much. Maybe we can get some dinner again if you want. My treat. Or I could cook for you at your place if you don’t mind.”
“You don’t want your mom to know you’re with me?” he asked.
She winced. “It’s not you. It’s the bike. There are things she’ll have to warm up to. Remember, her husband died in the service. She’s pretty open-minded about a lot of things, but she worries about safety. Rowan said he was going to get a motorcycle, that it was easier to get around Long Beach on it.”
“It would be.”
“My mother almost brained him. Whether he bought it and didn’t tell her, I have no idea and I wouldn’t ask. I don’t want to be responsible for accidentally slipping and getting him in trouble.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like growing up with that many siblings.”
“Do you have any?”
“No. I’m an only child. It was me and my mother before she died. That’s a lie. My father had two daughters, so I’ve got two stepsisters I didn’t know about until I met him.”
She nodded. “And then you went to live with your father. Your mother never married?”
“She did,” he said. “She was married at the time she died, but Jeremy and I never connected, and he didn’t want me.”
Her jaw dropped. “That’s horrible.”
He snorted. “Yeah. When she realized she didn’t have much time left, she started to search for my father. All this behind my back. DNA and everything was verified and then a month before she died, I was told about it, and walked out the door and there he was waiting for me to meet.”
“You had no warning or notice?”
“No. Nothing. All I knew was that the guy’s first name was Dean and he didn’t want me either.”
“Yet he wanted you when he thought you’d be alone?”
“He had no clue I existed. Yeah, he wanted me when he found out. He had some explaining to do to his wife and other kids. Let’s say it was a shock for us both.”
She moved over and gave him a hug. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
He returned her hug. “It’s fine. I survived.”
“Yeah,” she said, leaning back and shaking her head. “I don’t think you did.”
9
YOU STILL GOT ME
“Your kitchen is gorgeous. The rest of the house is going to look awesome too. I just know it.”
After Jace shared more of his life story than he said he was going to do, he hopped back on his bike and took off to the mall.
He needed time to think about why he was volunteering so much.
Maybe it was because Talia’s story was a sad one too for part of her life.
No one would look at her today and feel sorry for her.
He did.
He knew what it was like to not have a father.
She might have known hers and that made it worse. She didn’t even have the four years she was alive with him since he’d been deployed more than half of it.
Jace had the past twenty with his father and hoped to have fifty more.
