Page 111 of Stepping Into Tomorrow

“Bullshit.”

“That’s what happened! And then she texted me to meet her and talk. And I said no. If I had met her, she’d still be alive! It’s my fault. I wasn’t there to protect her.” Nash’s voice broke as he sunk to his knees, the cold, frozen earth biting harshly through his thin denim pants.

His father walked over, his feet crunching the snow until he was right by Nash. A warm arm wrapped around Nash’s shoulders, pulling him against his father’s chest.

“You’ve always been enough, son. Those women you were with, Ana included, took advantage of your kind heart.”

Nash shook his head.

“Yes. You can pretend all you like that you’re some emotionless bear, but your ma and I know the truth. You’re the same sensitive kid who nursed a half-dead kitten back to life after the barn cat wouldn’t tend to the runt of her litter. You’re the same boy who worked all summer to buy your high school girlfriend a plane ticket to Greece so she could visit her dream destination only to find out she was seeing a college guy—and you still gave her the tickets. You’re the man who fell in love with a woman who wasn’t capable of loving you back because she hadn’t learned yet how to love herself.”

Tears dripped down Nash’s cheeks, landing on his father’s Carhartt jacket.

“Ana, God love her, was a mess. It’s a horrible tragedy, what happened to her. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault except the person who took her life.”

“She asked me to meet her—”

“The note that was left made it clear this was personal. The sick fucker who did this would have waited for another opportunity. You couldn’t be with her twenty-four/seven,” his dad argued.

Nash’s chest ached, his shoulders tense. “All this time I swore I couldn’t let her go because I didn’t know where she was. I know it’s next to impossible, but I held out hope that maybe she’d just left me and was living it up somewhere else.”

His dad patted his back and pulled away enough to look him in the eyes. “You were afraid to let go because you didn’t want to get hurt again. You’ve had shit luck when it comes to women.”

“I loved Ana . . . I mean, I thought I did. But what I felt for her doesn’t feel like what I feel for . . .”

“For Isabella?”

Nash nodded. “I don’t know, Dad. Everything is so mixed up in my head right now. I can’t help feeling like what happened to Ana is my fault. I’d wanted answers for five fucking years and now I have them . . . I feel even more hopeless than before.”

“You’ve just gotta take it one day at a time, son. Start by quitting the drinking and shutting out the people who love you.”

Nash swallowed, his eye sockets dry and burning from all the tears he’d cried in the last few weeks. “I can’t let her go.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m all she had.”

His father sighed. “Son, I don’t know why someone would do this—we might never know. What I do know is you’ve been stuck, living like you’re the one in the ground. But you’ve got a daughter on the way, and a good woman who cares a lot more than you realize, and her boy who looks up to you. And if you don’t stop beating yourself up for things you can’t control or change, you’re gonna lose the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Nash took a breath while his father’s words sunk in, the truth of them settling into his bones. “I let her down.”

“Ana let you down too.”

“No, not her. Bella.”

“It’s not too late for you to do something about it.”

“What if it is? I’ve been a mess since we found Ana. I tried to push her away so she wouldn’t get pulled into my shit and get hurt, but, fuck.” Bella’s pain-filled expression from last night flashed in his mind. He ran a palm over his beard and sighed. “I hurt her because I was too much of a coward to face her.”

“If anyone understands the loss of someone they love, it’s her . . . and Roman or even Nova. You’re not alone in this. And it’s time you pulled your head out of your ass and saw that. I didn’t raise my son to be a coward. Nor for you to be a martyr. What’s done is done. You’re still alive. And you can move forward. You have a real chance at happiness and a family with Bella. You say you have feelings for her? Well, it’s high time you did something about it.”

His father’s phone rang as Nash reeled. He’d been so concerned with how this affected him that he hadn’t once thought of how his family must have felt about him withdrawing.

“Hello? . . . Yes, he’s here with me. What—” Panic flashed in his dad’s eyes as he looked at his son.

Nash’s guts twisted. What now?

“Is she okay? . . . And the baby?”

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