“Will you tell me about my mother that summer?”
“Sure.” He gave me a smile that said he had a feeling I would ask.
“You can leave out any gory details. I know how conception works, despite what you might think because of the whole bundling thing.”
Dean barked out a laugh. “I didn’t think you needed a talk about the birds and the bees, though I did make some great visuals for the boys when we had the talk many years ago. I think Sabine keeps them in the attic.”
“I’d love to see them. I can always use a good laugh.”
He chuckled and swung my hand. “So, your mom,” he paused. “She was a breath of fresh air for me. She was different from any other girl I had dated.”
“You dated?”
“Yes. I promise you, I wasn’t the kind of young man only looking for one thing. We didn’t sleep together until the end of the summer, after we had been on several dates. She was my first time. Which is probably more than you care to know.”
“Actually, I think it’s sweet, and it makes me feel better. My mom ended up with so many men who only cared about one thing. It was probably why she fell in love with you. I don’t think she knew a lot of tenderness in her life in that regard.”
“That is a shame. It makes me feel even worse that I never contacted her again. I did have tender feelings for her. I still do. She helped me see life in a whole new way.”
I let out a high-pitched hiccup.
“Are you okay?”
“You just remind me of Jonah. He said the same thing to me a long time ago, when we were much younger.”
“Why didn’t you stay together?”
I looked out at the vast winterscape, which figuratively and literally took my breath away. “That is a long and complicated answer.”
“Good thing we have plenty of time.” He squeezed my hand.
I looked down at our clasped hands. I liked it. I liked it very much. “Well, for one, I promised my mother I would never marry, especially a doctor.”
Dean chuckled. “We can be beasts.”
“Jonah isn’t, and I don’t think you are either, but I always thought Roger Stanton was.”
“I can understand that. But why didn’t your mother want you to get married? She was married several times, if the reports are true.”
“Oh, it’s all true, and that’s why. I didn’t want to love Jonah only to lose him, like I saw happen over and over with my mom. But I can’t solely put the blame on her. I had my own bad luck with men. Every man up to that point in my life had abandoned me. In some ways, even my own grandfather had—I guess both my grandfathers—though I know Grandpa Sam had no ill intent and it kills him that he didn’t do more. But how can I trust Jonah if all the men in my life who should have loved me, left me?”
Dean tugged on my hand and we stopped. He breathed in deeply and let it out. A plume of warm breath formed between us. “You asked me a question before I left Colorado. You asked if I would have believed your mother had she told me about you. That thought has plagued me this past week. I would love to say with a hundred percent certainty that, yes, I would have. That I would have saved you from the cruel life you had. But this, dear Ariana, I can say and mean with all my heart. I always wanted a daughter. I always wanted you, and here you are. I promise I will never leave you.” Tears formed in his eyes while he used his gloved hand to wipe the ones streaming down my cheeks.
It was like a dream come true for me to hear him say those words. Somehow, I felt them deep in my soul. I think I believed him. I threw my arms around him.
He embraced me like I had never been embraced before. “Ariana,” he whispered, “to keep yourself from loving someone like Jonah, who clearly loves you, would be a greater tragedy than a man who never knew his daughter existed. To choose to throw away real love is the greatest travesty there is. You should be more afraid of that than anything.”
Huh. I let that thought settle in my soul while I soaked in the warmth of my father. My father. It was there in his arms I knew what I had to do.Chapter Thirty-OneWhile we all played a rousing game of Monopoly in our pajamas and stuffed our faces with the most delicious pizza I’d ever had as part of our New Year’s Eve celebration, I looked around at everyone, both those old and new to me. This was my kind of family. They loved silly traditions as much as I did. Then it occurred to me that this was my family. I had a father, brothers, a stepmother who was quickly becoming a favorite of mine, and I had Jonah and Whitney.