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This one would leave a mark.
Leave a deeper scar than the one who left him. The one who so easily walked away. The woman who found someone to love her the way she should be loved.
All because he couldn’t.
He couldn’t give Liz what she needed. She couldn’t give him what he needed, either.
Since he never knew what he needed.
Until this one.
Was this how his brothers felt when they found their ol’ ladies?
If this was how twisted his gut became just thinking about her returning to Boston, he couldn’t imagine how Sig felt when Red was taken by the Shirleys. No wonder he’d lost his fucking shit.
The VP could have lost the other half of himself forever.
Ozzy now understood it when his brothers said they’d die to save their women. Actually, give up their fucking life.
Because who the fuck wanted to live without the woman they loved?
He’d never believed in soulmates. Thought it was made-up bullshit. Only a foolish concept, but not truth.
True soulmates were impossible. That was shit women said, not men.
But he got it now. He fucking got it.
The thought of losing the one you loved could rip you the fuck apart and twist you inside out.
It was already happening and she hadn’t even left yet.
He couldn’t let this one slip through his fingers.
Not again.
He couldn’t fuck up.
He couldn’t.
But he would.
Because, unfortunately, it was too late. He’d already fucked up.
And he still wasn’t sure what to do about it.
Maybe it would be easier just to let her go. To keep the truth hidden forever.
It would be easier.
But then…
When the fuck was life ever easy?
Chapter Twenty
His boots had turned to cinder blocks and lifting his feet to take the next step from the motel’s office to his apartment took effort.
Every damn one.
He’d been stuck manning the front desk for fucking hours. And in all that damn time, he went over and over in his head what he wanted to say. How he wanted to say it.
But, fuck him, it didn’t matter what he said or how he said it, the thought of telling her the truth caused dread to choke him.
He shouldn’t confess. He should keep it to himself. She didn’t need to know.
It wouldn’t bring her father back.
She could live the rest of her life in ignorant bliss. So, why the fuck was he doing this?
Because since finding out Ham was her father, it had become the festering wound he had worried about. With every passing day, it was eating away at him from the inside out.
He wanted her to stay, but if she did, he couldn’t live like this for the rest of his fucking life. It would slowly kill them and the connection they had.
And worse, she wouldn’t know what ate at him.
He needed to stop avoiding it, tell her what happened to her father and live with whatever the outcome was.
He already knew it wouldn’t be immediate forgiveness.
It couldn’t be that easy. Not with karma snapping at his heels.
Worse, he hoped to fuck she didn’t run to the pigs. Because then he’d have no choice but to take off and leave Manning Grove. And he’d never be able to return.
He hoped like fuck she’d at least let him explain, so she would eventually come to understand why he had done what he’d done to her father.
To the man who killed his mother.
Now, he was running out of time. Over breakfast, she’d said that once she made some final tweaks on the new reservation system—the part of the motel’s website that had given her a shitload of trouble—her job here would be finished.
But she tackled both the website and those problems like a champ and as soon as she was done with it today, she’d get Trip to approve it so she could collect the rest of her payment.
Then she could head back to Boston.
His bed would once again be empty.
He’d be missing a piece of himself. A piece only Shay could fill. She had slipped right into that spot without even trying. A spot he didn’t even know was empty.
He had dropped his guard with her and it happened when he wasn’t paying attention. He hadn’t given himself a chance to protect himself against it or to prevent it from happening.
In truth, maybe he didn’t want to and he actually allowed it to happen.
Maybe it was the right time and Shay the right woman.
But the joke was on him since she turned out to be the daughter of the man he had hated the most in his life.
At the top of the stairs, with his hand gripping the knob, he dropped his head, closed his eyes and sucked a breath in through his nostrils. He tried to swallow the impending doom that had risen as he ascended the stairs.
But it only remained stuck in his throat. Choking him.
