I smiled faintly.“Well, he certainly didn’t get the talent from me—or his mother.”
“Now that was a beautiful woman.”He took a sip of his coffee and smacked his lips.“Gonna tell me that story now?”
I settled back, my hands loose around my mug and shared some of the details of my past with the law man who’d come out to check on my mother and me from time to time.Even then, I’d realized Deputy Borton had a crush on my mother, but seeing him lean in to my telling, his interest about my past and my current situation made me wish he’d been my father.
How different my life would have been…
But I couldn’t wish for that because then I wouldn’t have been on military R&R that weekend Carolina Syad Porter flew in.There’d be no Nash in my life, let alone Aya and Levi.And I never would have met Jasmine.
She sat at the periphery of my thoughts, always.I’d wanted to go back to visit her again while she was still in the hospital, but this journey, putting the monsters of my past to rest, was too important to rush.Feeling the grief and pain was part of the process I’d long denied myself.But without facing my past, I couldn’t fully embrace my future.
Now, finally, I had the closure I needed to offer Jasmine all of me.That was what she deserved: a man who was in whole-heartedly.
I’d already determined I could hold my temper, and I’d tested it a time or two this week, allowing those ugly feeling to course through me, choke me with rage.Instead of lashing out physically, I stayed clear-headed.Rational.Most importantly, in control.
So I knew I wouldn’t hurt Jasmine or Nash, Aya, or Levi.
By stopping here, by learning my parents’ fate, I was finally burying my past.At fifty years of age, I was looking forward to a future.
The one I’d always yearned for…with Jasmine.
That was if she’d have me.
Chapter9
Jasmine
“Move your hiney, missy,” I snapped at Kate.She’d been hovering.Well, not just Kate; Jenna was around and underfoot all the time, too.
“You need to sit down—” Kate said.
“What Ineed to dois scrub my toilet.”And not think about how I’d embarrassed myself in front of Steve last week.
Why had I said those things to him?No wonder he left.I’d leave, too, if I had such a whiney, pathetic person practically begging me to stay.Didn’t matter I’d been loopy on drugs.I wrinkled my nose in disgust, hating my moment of weakness in the dark of night.
Steve had stayed.I remembered him holding my hand, I vaguely remembered him talking to me as I floated in that gray space between consciousness and sleep.He’d said something about being worthy of me.Hadn’t he?
I couldn’t remember.
Maybe the whole thing was a dream.Might as well have been since he’d disappeared after he’d promised not to leave me again.I frowned.He’d said something else, hadn’t he?
“Mama, you have a broken arm?—”
My attention returned to my daughter, but the discomfort of my embarrassment and the everlasting hope churned in my belly.Dammit.I must let this dream of romance die.
I stared at the offending cast, willing it to be the image that broke my pathetic dreams once and for all.
No such luck.
“So?”I sighed.“I’m not dead.”
“Thank goodness for that, and no thanks to Frank-the-piece-of-shit.”
I strolled around her.
“Can’t you just rest a minute?”Kate asked, exasperation lacing her tone.
“Katharine Rose?—”
