Page 97 of A Much Younger Man
“I’ll take you home.” My father would have gnawed his leg off to get out of the coming conversation. Giving Beck a ride was a best-case scenario for him. If he stopped off for a drink and takeout on the way back, he could miss the whole ordeal.
“I can walk.” Beck stood without looking at me.
“Beck, wait.”
“No, Beck,” my dad said. “I need to pick up our supper anyway. Is this the place with the sweet and sour duck breast?”
“Get whatever you like, dear,” Mom said. “I’m sure it will be wonderful.”
“Lindy?” Beck looked at me with concern and questions in his eyes.
I could have told him to stay—asked him, rather, because he needed to be the one to make the decision, but I was exhausted and depressed. Like an utter ass, I didn’t say anything one way or another.
I knew how that made me look.
It gave my mother the satisfaction of chivvying me into her plans, and it made Beck think I wouldn’t stand up for him or whatever it was we’d started building together.
If I didn’t think my mother was right, that I had no business trying to fit a man his age into my life, I might have fought for him. Even a simple,we’ll talk laterwould have softened the blow.
Instead, I uttered the three most dreadful words in the English language when it came to dating. “I’ll call you.”
A pat on his leg called Callie to his side. She snuggled up to him while he clipped her leash onto her collar. He didn’t look at me again.
Dad pulled his car keys out of his pocket with a frown. “Text if you think of anything you want me to bring back.”
I got the feeling he might have even been referring to Beck, and I wanted him back before he’d even left. Of course I did.
It broke my heart watching him avoid any eye contact as he walked to the door. It hurt, letting him go like this. But because we’d been close all my life, I understood exactly what my mother was trying to tell me in her unsubtle way.
You can’t do this to him. He’s just a boy. You’ll hurt him because you always hurt everyone eventually, and because he has no one else, it will not only be painful, he will be utterly devastated.
Hurting him now will save him pain later.
Mom once told me that once you become somebody’s mother, you become everybody’s mother. I’d never seen her in action on anyone else’s behalf but mine—yet now, I was glad she was on Beck’s side.
He needed someone like her in his life to look out for him. I had no doubt that if he allowed it, she would take him under her wing and shepherd him into a much better future.
My father ushered Beck out and closed the door behind him.
“It’s better this way, darling.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you think?”
“Yes.” God, I was so tired. Rescue and move on. That was what I always did. A cat burned badly in a house fire. A dog nearly drowned in a flood. Whether it was a hundred Siberian huskies or a much younger man, I was made to save them, not keep them.
Everybody seemed to understand that but me.
