All Consuming (Brotherhood by Fire #3) -Jaci Burton Page 0,98
My heart is invested, and I thought yours was, too.”
She looked at him and he waited.
And waited.
“Like I said, I don’t know, Kal. I’m not sure how I feel. I just need some time, okay?”
He gave her a quick nod and watched while she turned her back on him, walked away and closed the door without once turning around.
It took him a few minutes of standing there in her driveway before he could climb in his truck and drive away.
Okay, so he’d had this all wrong. He figured that this would all turn out like it had for Rafe. That he’d surprise her with his plans to get a house for them. That Hannah would be thrilled and excited to start a new chapter of her life with him.
He’d been dead wrong. He’d been wrong about Hannah.
Maybe this was her way of getting back at him from ten years ago, when he’d made the decision to break them up.
Maybe they hadn’t grown and changed.
Maybe nothing had changed at all.
CHAPTER 31
“MOMMA, CAN I HANG UP THIS ORNAMENT THAT DADDY made for me?” Oliver asked, dangling the wooden motorcycle that Landon had made when Oliver was two.
Hannah gritted her teeth and smiled. “Sure.”
“Kal said we were gonna go to the Christmas store. And that we’d get a fireman ornament.”
“Kal’s . . . busy right now, baby.”
Oliver looked at her. “I miss him, Momma. Is he gonna come over soon?”
Hannah tensed. “We’ll see. How about you find your Spider-Man ornament and hang that on the tree?”
“Okay.”
Oliver helped her decorate the tree, then lost interest and asked if he could go play with Jeff. She called Becca, who said Jeff was available, so Oliver dashed over, leaving Hannah and her mother to finish putting up the Christmas decorations.
Great. Just one more task to do today. One more joy-filled thing on her to-do list.
“I don’t know who filled this box last, but it’s a mess,” she said, rummaging through papers and packing material. “I can’t find a thing.”
“Girl, you’ve been griping around this house for a week now. Usually the holiday season puts you in your happy place. What’s wrong with you?”
Hannah handed her mother one of the decorations to put on the mantel. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”
“Right. Snippy, grouchy, grumbly, angry, pouty, sniffly . . .” Her mother paused. “If I could come up with one more, you could be an updated version of the Seven Dwarfs all in one person.”
She was not . . . all those things her mom had just said. She reached into the box for the Christmas stockings and hung those up, smoothing her hand over Oliver’s. Hanging Oliver’s stocking always made her happy. Now it just made her . . . what was one of those words?
Oh, right. Tears welled in her eyes and she sniffled.
Sniffly. That was it.
Nothing was going right. She wasn’t all right.
She’d done the right thing in breaking up with Kal. Whatever choices she made were always the best ones for her son. And for herself. Going it alone was for the best. Everything had become so complicated. Now it would be easier. She could concentrate on building up her clientele at the salon and taking care of Oliver, with nothing else to get in the way.
“And where’s Kal?” her mom asked.
She stuffed her head in the bottom of the box, but found it empty, so she shoved it aside and opened the next box.
“Did you think by ignoring me I’m not going to ask the question again? Where’s Kal?”
“We broke up,” she mumbled.
“Oh, honey, no. Why?”
Hannah shrugged, then sat on the floor and looked up at her mom. “I don’t know. He wanted to buy a house.”
Her mother frowned. “And that’s bad, why exactly?”
“He wanted to buy a house that we could all live in.”
Her mother gave her the side-eye. “How dreadful. I can see why you dumped him.”
“Mom.”
“Mom, what? He treated you terribly by wanting to share his life with you? With Oliver?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Explain it to me.”
“It’s really complicated.”
Her mother moved the boxes aside and took a seat on the sofa, then patted a spot next to her. “And I’m not stupid, so talk to me.”
With a sigh, Hannah pushed up from the floor and stood, then sat next to her mother.
“Landon was here a few weeks ago.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “He was? What did he want?”
“To see Oliver, of course. On his terms. Like pulling him out of school. He was on his way to North Carolina for