Page 73 of Burning Love
Then he never got a chance to get her approval for anything in life again.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t. Show me around.”
There was no reason to hash this out and he didn’t want to talk about his mother either.
He rarely did.
He couldn’t change what he’d done to her at the end. Or the guilt he carried.
But he also couldn’t forgive what she’d done to him.
“My living room, as you can see. There are two bedrooms down here and a full bath. When Nelson moved down here, Rowan would stay too when he visited, but I turned the second bedroom into my office.”
He moved to the hall off the living room to see three doors.
He popped his head into where she worked, then her bathroom next to it, and the last bedroom at the end.
“This is your room?”
“It is. The bed isn’t as big as yours.”
It was a queen, he had a king. “There is still a lot of space here and natural light.”
The only light in the living room came through the massive glass doors that walked out to the backyard, but there were windows in the bedrooms. Escape routes in case of a fire.
“It works for me,” she said. “I’ve got my own laundry right here.”
She opened a hall closet door to reveal a stackable washer and dryer unit.
“Your kitchen is smaller down here too.”
There was a galley style at the back of the living room with a table off of the side.
The kitchen took up one wall with a smaller scale oven, fridge, sink and dishwasher. There were only four cabinets that probably held snacks and then three open shelves that had plates, bowls and glasses on them.
It was a neatly organized space.
“It works. But you can see why I’d want to bake cookies upstairs. I don’t have a lot of counter space. I have to make most everything on the table.”
There was one counter with two cabinets under the three open shelves on a small wall. Not a lot of storage for things.
But it wasn’t meant for someone to live here as much as a space to escape from the rest of the house and give some privacy.
He would have loved it at twenty-four and wasn’t surprised she still lived at home.
“Just don’t burn anything down here,” he said. “My guys would make a mess coming down the stairs with hoses and it’s too hard to go around fences to get to those glass doors in the back.”
“Very funny,” she said, moving into his arms. “Give me a kiss. I think we both need it to get through the rest of this day.”
“You’re making more out of it than it is.
“Yeah, sure, we’ll go with that.”
22
NOT MY FATHER
Not only did Jace make it through dinner two days ago unscathed, but he went home with a few cases of beer.
