Pine Harbour was too small to have a proper gym, so lifting heavy stuff had to happen at work or with one of his army buddies. A few people had proper home gym setups, with weight racks and benches. Not Owen, though. He lived in a three-bedroom bungalow with no basement. Between his eighteen-year-old daughter, who needed her own room, and the fact that three of his four younger brothers were nomadic and often needed a place to crash when in town—necessitating a guest bedroom—building a home gym for himself had been on his “when Bec moved out” to-do list.
As he’d put up the Christmas tree, just a few weeks earlier, he’d had the naive thought that it was the last year for over-the-top piles of presents. And he’d miss it, in a way, because it was the end of an era, but he’d also fantasized about next Christmas doing something radical like buying her a trip to Mexico with her college friends so he could spend the holidays converting the spare room. He even had a treadmill picked out. The only redecoration of the spare room that would be happening now would be converting it to a nursery instead.
Owen’s Dad Years weren’t over after all.
While he was at the station, he checked his email, then stomped up the back stairwell to the private gym space reserved for firefighters and paramedics. He had it all to himself, which he liked, so he cranked Guns n’ Roses—a musical choice the younger first responders rarely tolerated.
When he got back to the house, his muscles well-used and his brain a bit clearer, his ex-wife was waiting for him in the driveway.
He gave her a sweaty one-arm hug and she launched right into an emotional outburst. He cut her off. “Rach, we gotta stop. She knows what she wants. We don’t have to understand it, but we do have to accept it.”
“Do we?” She huffed out a frustrated breath. “I know. Iknow.” But she didn’t, because the silent beat that stretched out next practically vibrated with tension. Then she turned on him. “Now is not the time to be pointing fingers.”
Calm blue ocean, Kincaid.“It’s really not.”
“But—”
“You just said—”
“She’s eighteen years old and pregnant, Owen. Eighteen. Where did we go wrong?”
At least she saidwe, and notyou. “I dunno.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve been thinking of pretty much nothing else since she told us.”
“She says Hayden still hasn’t responded to her text messages.”
“What do you want me to do, go over there and drag him out of his house by his hair?”
Rachel gave him a beseeching look. “Yes?”
Owen laughed, but it felt hollow. “Yeah, me too. But I can’t.”
“Stop being a reasonable grown-up.”
The thing was, Owen didn’t feel reasonable on the inside. He was scared and out of his depth, and this whole situation was bringing up all kinds of uncomfortable feelings from their distant past.
He wanted Hayden to do the right thing, but he knew how stupid eighteen-year-old boys could be—and how they didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand what the right thing truly was.
And did he want Hayden to follow in his own steps, when in the end, Owen hadn’t been a good enough husband to Rachel? Hadn’t loved her enough? Sure, he’d married her, but he hadn’t turned into the partner she needed. Owenwasthe punk-ass kid. He left town as soon as they broke up and partied a little too hard while at firefighter school.
Not hard enough to bury the guilt, though. Not when the partying just made a fresh layer of guilt to pour on top of the layered Dad Guilt.
That feeling had never gone away, not even after Rachel married Hudson, who had given her three more kids and a big house on the edge of town.
He pointed out the house. “Let’s go inside.”
Rachel’s jaw jutted to the side, then righted itself. There was no more anger there. All of that had been fought over—many times—almost two decades earlier.
They’d both moved on.
“Maybe it won’t be as hard for her as it was for us,” he said as he let her inside. There was no sign of Becca, but her car was in the drive. He lifted his voice. “Bec! I’m home, and your mom is here.” He turned to Rachel. “Coffee?”
“Always.”
He got that going, then texted his daughter that she needed to make an appearance in the kitchen. Rachel laughed at him as he muttered about technology.
He scrubbed a hand over his face as something else occurred to him. “Listen, I gotta warn you about the latest thing she’s been talking about. She’s been doing her research, and she knows how many hours she needs to get maternity leave benefits. If she can’t find a second job here, or get more hours at the country club, she’s talking about heading to the city.”
“A job? In the city?” All the relief fled from his ex’s face. “No, Owen. That’s shortsighted.”
