Page 83 of Burning Love
She frowned. “Can I ask why you didn’t know before now?”
“I never asked. He didn’t offer. I don’t know. He’s the type of guy who wanted to give me time to settle in. You have no idea what it’s like to lose a parent and then be told you have to live with a stranger.”
“No, I don’t know that part. You said your mother was married. There was no way you could or wanted to stay with your stepfather?”
He snorted. “I thought that was what would happen and I didn’t want it either. It’s not that we didn’t get along or didn’t like each other. We just didn’t connect. He was weak more than anything. I’ll never forget my mother telling me that Jeremy couldn’t handle losing her and wouldn’t be able to take care of me in his grief. I’d be too much of a reminder.”
“That makes me ill,” she said.
“Try being a teen when you hear it. Then I’m hit with the fact I’m going to live with my father who I never knew. I didn’t even know his last name.”
“You had your mother’s last name?”
“Yes. I was Jace Miller for seventeen years. On my eighteenth birthday my father asked me if I would take his name. I was stunned. I’m not sure if I did it to thumb my nose at my mother for her lies to me or because my father was the only one who wanted me and if I had his last name, then I wouldn’t be abandoned.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, Jace. I know I keep saying that, but I’m not sure what else to say. I want to ask so much but don’t want to push you. I bet you’ve said this to no one before.”
“I haven’t.” He looked into her eyes. His were glossy too. “My father knew it was my mother’s birthday. He wanted to talk. I asked why he wasn’t as pissed at her as I was. He didn’t know I existed. She just walked out of his life and never looked back.”
Since he looked as if he was ready to talk, Talia leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure he was upset and angry, but he might have been more focused on you.”
“He was. He’s the most standup guy I know. My mother hits me with this information and then says Dean is on his way tomeet me. I always knew his name was Dean and that was it. I go out the front door to get in my car and leave. I didn’t want to be there to meet this man, but he had pulled into the driveway and blocked me. He gets out of his truck, it’s like looking in the mirror, only the guy is older. He bursts into tears and opens his arm for a hug.”
Her bottom lip went out. “Did you hug him?”
“Nope. I’ll never forget his words. ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a son.’ He was thrilled. I turned and ran down the street.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I walked around town for an hour or more. I don’t remember. I came home hoping he’d be gone, but he wasn’t. Maybe I thought he’d be mad enough to leave.”
“He never left you,” she said.
“No. He opened his life to me. He was married, running a business, and had two young daughters at home. Yet he rented an apartment two hours away from his life and stayed with me until I graduated. We went to his house on Friday nights so he could take care of things and came back Sunday night. They gave me my own room in his house. My stepsisters and Lauren decorated it when I said I didn’t care.”
“They made you feel as part of the family when so many would have been mad to find out about you.”
“I wanted to belong. They wanted me to. As my father and I talked, we were both a victim of my mother’s decision. My father has let it go. He was able to move on because, as he says, there isn’t anything he can do about it.”
“You can’t let go, can you?”
Which might explain why he never had a relationship in his adult life. He couldn’t get past the one he had with the first woman in his life.
“No. I want to, but now it’s this vise around my heart and mind that won’t unlock.”
“You can pry it open if you want to, Jace.”
“I’m not sure how.” There was a tear in his eye, but he stood up and turned his back after he got a napkin. He didn’t want her to see it might fall.
He grabbed a beer out of the fridge and opened it. He was leaning against the counter and drinking it from the can.
“Are you willing to let someone help you?”
“Like counseling? No.”
“I meant me. Or your father. It seems like he’s been trying.”
“He has given me space like he always does. It’s the first we really talked. He told me that my mother overheard my father’s mother saying that my mother wasn’t good enough. She feared because they had money that they’d try to take me.”
