Have a Heart (A Love Happens Novel Book 4) by Jodi Watters

Author:Jodi Watters [Watters, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Love Happens novel
Publisher: Jodi Watters
Published: 2018-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

It was a firsthand accounting of how to devastate and destroy a child.

For pretty much his entire life.

You’d think the dysfunction he’d grown up with would be difficult for her to imagine. That the reckless machinations of a parent ending in violence and bloodshed would be incomprehensible to her.

Tessa wished you were right.

Except, you weren’t.

“Well, no wonder.” Her quiet statement broke the silence.

Seeming out of words, he surprised her with a reply. “No wonder what?”

“No wonder you’re… well, you.” It explained everything. “It makes perfect sense now.”

“You mean, why I’m an emotionally unavailable asshole?” He smiled, so she smiled, wishing she held the power to heal his wounds.

“I prefer to think of you as a sexy and brooding loner with rusty social skills.”

He grunted, neither confirming nor denying.

She saw it now.

The oppressive weight of a traumatic childhood stacked on him.

It was a burden she shouldered as well, the load no lighter today than all the days before. As an adult, she’d learned to carry it a different way. A way that didn’t break her.

His superficial, unaffected routine wasn’t inflated ego or lack of emotion. It was a defense mechanism.

“Did you try to reconnect with her?” The question was hesitant. “After you left Nowhere?”

“Fuck no. She was done with me, so I was done with her.” Veiled outrage laced his tone, shocked she could think it a possibility.

“That’s a shame. Sounded like you were a close family once.”

“We were. Once.”

His body draping the chair like a deflated balloon, he looked wrecked. Like there was nothing left inside.

“Didn’t matter, though,” he added, as an afterthought. “I enlisted at seventeen. My life belonged to the Navy. Still does.”

“Until October.”

“Oh. Right.” He squeezed his hand into a fist, then straightened it. Squeezed, then straightened.

A subconscious reaction to unease.

“You don’t see her at all now?”

“I stop by whenever I’m in town. Make sure the roof isn’t caving in and her bills are paid. Suffice it to say, we don’t catch up over coffee at the kitchen table.”

If he was really done with her, there’d be no welfare checks.

There was duty and honor in him, and it had nothing to do with being a SEAL. Those visits were about being a son.

It made her wonder about his dad’s death, the event a trigger for his mother’s madness.

Tilting her head, she whispered above the rain. “How did your dad die?”

“The how isn’t important,” he murmured, shaking his head. “It’s the why that eats you alive, and I’ve long since stopped bothering to ask. You shouldn’t, either.”

Storytime was over.

Breathing in damp air, she sunk deeper into her chair, body languid from the booze. She hurt for him. Being forced to live a lonely existence as a boy. Choosing to live that same lonely existence as a man.

But she also felt a selfish joy. He’d opened himself up. Told her things she knew he’d told no one else. The sharing of such intimate details when three days ago he didn’t want her sitting within ten feet of him must mean something.

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