Page 85 of Burning Love
He thought for sure his father would say he was on his own. It was too hard to do.
Or when he turned eighteen, that the obligation was met.
That was why he didn’t want to give an opinion on how his bedroom should be set up in his father’s house.
Why set himself up for more heartache only to be left alone?
But when he was asked if he wanted to change his name, he knew his father would keep his word.
“You feel it now,” she said. “If I left, you would have held this all in like you’ve done for the past almost two decades on your mother’s birthday, right?”
He didn’t know how she could know him so well in the short time they’d been together.
“Most likely.”
“And tonight you got to talk some.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Do you feel better?” she asked.
He leaned down to kiss her. “A little.”
“Then it’s better than you saying no.”
“How was your day?” He was talked out about himself.
“Well,” she said. “Not to hit you with this, but it’s funny now.”
“Make me laugh. I could use it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and moved out of his arms, then returned to the island to finish eating.
He joined her.
“I had a call with West and Braylon today.”
“Okay. Do you talk to West a lot?”
He didn’t think much about the guy being a billionaire, just that he was Talia’s older brother and stand-in father.
“Not much. I mean, he’s there if I need him. He wasn’t always in the past few years. He’s just really busy. Before he met Abby, he didn’t talk to anyone for long stretches other than Laken or Braylon who were in the office with him. Here is another funny story. My mother summoned him home two years ago. A few months before my college graduation. We set up this fight so that West thought he had to intervene when it was actually to get him here so that my mother could lay into him for working himself into the ground and not putting family first. She all but forced him on a vacation.”
“How did your mother force your adult brother on a vacation?”
“She has her ways for piling on the guilt,” she said, waving her hand. “It doesn’t matter. He did it because he did some self-reflection of how he was acting and treating people. Or ignoring us. He met Abby on that vacation. She’d won the trip.”
“She’s not from New York?”
“She lived in the Albany, New York, area but was in Aruba the same time as him. Talk about fate. Anyway, they had a long distance thing, which wasn’t that long of a distance by plane. I’m getting off track. That isn’t what was funny today. I had the call with West. The video comes up and there he is with Braylon looking mad. For West, that’s a normal look. Braylon is usually all smiles.”
“Elias told them about me,” he guessed.
“Nope, my mother did. That wasn’t that big of a deal. West made some stupid comment about he could overlook the age, maybe. That it could be I need a father figure in my life.”
“I’m not your father and I hope to hell you don’t think I treat you that way.”
“No to both. I told him it was kind of gross to think that.”
