let go of just yet.
She laid a hand on his chest and rested her chin on it, staring at him. “I was looking for you downstairs. You didn’t tell me. How could you do all that for me and not tell me?”
He swallowed hard, trying to follow her question, wanting to know what the hell she was talking about but wanting to kiss her more. He lowered his mouth and gave in to the temptation, the days of wanting her, the torture of not being with her. He kissed her until she sighed his name against his mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said gently.
“What are you talking about?”
“That you wanted to be a vet.”
Shit. Thanks, Logan. He leaned his head back on the pillow and searched for words that wouldn’t evoke her pity. He didn’t want her to think less of him. He didn’t want to talk about any of this.
She pressed her lips to his chest. “I think you’re amazing,” she whispered.
He wasn’t going to pull away from her and duck out on this conversation. He couldn’t. And maybe he was lucky that this was what she wanted to talk about and not the fact that she’d found him huddled in the closet crying. “I’m not amazing. I owed you. I’m not sitting here depressed about not being a vet, Janie. Don’t feel sorry for me.”
She pulled back slightly and frowned up at him. “I don’t feel sorry for you. But I wish I’d known. I wish you’d confided in me.”
“What difference would it have made?”
“For one thing, I wouldn’t have so carelessly gone on and on about what a great time I was having doing the things you wanted to do but couldn’t.”
“No, see? That’s what I mean by you feeling sorry for me. I like you telling me things you’re excited about. I didn’t want you to hold back because of me.”
“Okay. I get that. So, what happened? Why didn’t you go?”
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I was needed here. My dad had health issues. He never saw value in education, or maybe he was threatened by it. By me having a higher level of learning than he had. His solution was to put me down, but I was pretty stubborn. Maybe naive, too, for thinking that if I showed him the good grades, the scholarship, he’d be proud of me and would finally understand.”
“He didn’t, and then he ended up having a heart attack. So I needed to stay. He always thought that I thought I was too good for this place, and that wasn’t it at all. I just loved animals. I had a dream for myself, and it wasn’t running this bar.”
“It’s not too late,” she said. “Why don’t you go back to school now?’
He smiled ruefully. “You’re sweet for saying that. But it is too late. I’m thirty-three years old. I can’t do eight years of school now.”
“Sure you can. It’s never too late.” She reached up and caressed the side of his face.
“Maybe so, but it’s not practical. I’m a dad now, too. I don’t want to go back to school to become a vet at forty. Trust me, I’m not losing sleep over this. I’m losing sleep over other things, but not this. If I can keep adding to the rescue horses, then I’ll be happy.”
Her eyes sparkled, and a corner of her gorgeous mouth curved up. “This topic isn’t dead. But I am curious—what are you losing sleep over?”
He reached out and pulled her close again. “You, Janie. I’m losing sleep over you, us, and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about it.”
Her head fell against his chest, and her hands tightened around his waist. “Me, too.”
“I wish like hell things weren’t like this. That this wasn’t so hard on Will.”
“You can’t go back and change the past. No matter how hard you beat yourself up, you can’t erase what happened. All you have is now and the future. I think in order to really be there for Will, you have to forgive yourself. Let yourself be happy. That will spill over into every interaction you have with him. You will teach him indirectly that we can make mistakes, but we can also change. We can overcome them.”
His chest tightened at her words and her ability to see the good in him. “You give me too much credit, Janie. I will take that parenting advice, though.”
She glanced toward the closet. “Why