“We wanted you to meet someone. But Heather’s…” His mother twisted her face in illustration of how she felt about her.
And that was unacceptable.
“Look, Babushka is in some strange midlife crisis forty years too late. She’s pulled Heather into her crazy. You can’t blame Heather.” He pointed to Anna. “And you don’t get a say about who I’m dating or why or when.” And now his blood pressure was rising. “You all wanted me to start dating.” He stabbed the air between them. “And I didn’t want to, but then I met Heather and she’s fun and we’re enjoying each other.”
“You two already broke up once, can’t you just go back to that?” Anna asked. “Just think of all the reasons it didn’t work the first time. Saves a whole lot of trouble.”
Jase glared at the lot of them. “You are my family, and I care about you. But if you don’t knock this shit off, we’re going to have some serious issues. The kind that a family therapist won’t even be able to fix.”
Anna raised her hands. “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about it.”
“Yeah. Well. I do.” Apparently, he did.
“Do you remember when you came home?” his mother asked. “From over there.”
Of course he remembered. He’d been overseas on a mission for Uncle Sam. There were multiple explosives. He’d gone to work on one, his crew on the others. One of theirs had gone off. He was only steps outside the kill zone. He’d survived. They hadn’t.
Then he came home, and he found his wife had created a life without him. She’d moved on. He couldn’t.
“We all stepped in to help you. Set you up here at the shop. Made sure you were eating. Made sure you had a place to sleep—because you didn’t care. We made sure you found your way back to us,” his father said, repeating what Jase already knew. Hell, he’d lived it once. He didn’t need a reminder. “Your friends died. Your wife left. Life was hard…but we didn’t let you disappear, even when you checked out.”
Jase gulped at the realization of all his family had done for him. And all the time he’d thought they were meddling. Thought they were being intrusive.
They’d known exactly what they were doing—not letting him disappear into his own head forever.
“You trusted us then,” his father continued. “Trust us now.”
He had trusted them then. But they were wrong now. They were wrong about Heather.
“I am grateful for everything you all have done for me.” Jase hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and stared at the ground for a moment. Reminding himself where he was, what he was seeing, what he was doing—so he didn’t go back to that place. “But I’m ready to take over my own life. And that’s going to include Heather.”
It was 100 percent going to include Heather. Because he was 100 percent into her.
Shit, when had that happened?
He thought back and…if he were honest with himself, it’d happened long before she’d walked into his shop with a stack of posters.
A length of silence hung in the air.
“If she means this much to you, and to Babushka, we’d like to get to know her,” his mother finally said.
Maybe his mother could be reasonable.
“For real get to know her, or so you can try to control us get to know her?” he asked.
“Jason, believe it or not, our entire lives are not spent trying to control yours,” his mother said.
He begged to differ. Believe it or not, he could count all the times they hadn’t tried to control what he did on less than one finger.
He glanced out the shop window just as Babushka marched up the sidewalk to Heather’s shop. She was leading a parade of the elderly.What the hell?He counted ten of them with her—walkers, canes, even a woman in an electric scooter. All Babushka was missing was a baton and her marching-band uniform.
He shook his head.
He did not need to know what his grandmother had planned.
“You should apologize to her, Mom.” He’d be firm on that one. Heather may not have understood what his mom and dad had said when they’d left the kitchen, but he hadn’t missed it.
“For what?” A mask of confusion fell over her face.
