Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Maisey Yates (sad books to read .txt) 📖

obligation? Loving a child is full of obligation. A marriage is filled with obligation. Obligation is not a bad word. It’s bad people that turn away from it, don’t you think?”

“I can’t say that I ever thought of it that way.”

“We weren’t perfect. We weren’t blissfully, perfectly happy. And I carry so much guilt for all my feelings. For the kind of husband I wasn’t. It’s not that I couldn’t have loved her, it’s that I chose—we chose—to let certain things affect what we believed. To let certain feelings grow rotten and determine how much and how little we could feel and forgive.”

“When she told me that you only got married because she was pregnant with me—”

“Maybe,” his dad said. “Maybe that’s true. But she doesn’t know that. Not even I know that. We could say that, shout it at each other at the worst of times, and we certainly did. But that doesn’t make it true. That doesn’t make it a sure thing that we can know. We loved each other then.”

“Well, you were only with mom because Lucinda Maxfield married James.”

“This is the problem,” Cash said. “I don’t know the way things would’ve gone, or could’ve gone if we’d done things differently. If we’d been less stubborn. Less self-righteous. But we weren’t. And that’s my burden. It’s not yours or anyone else’s, and she shouldn’t have put it on you. But there’s a lot of things I shouldn’t have put on her… You shouldn’t have been the person she had to talk to. But the problem is—this is all ‘should have,’ ‘could have.’ And you drive yourself crazy with it, Jackson. Believe me. I’ve done it. For years and years, I’ve done it. And most of all since she passed.”

“Why since then?”

“I told you. Guilt. And regret. Because at the end of the day, I loved your mother very much. And what I didn’t do was show it. Because I kept expecting it to feel the same as something I felt when I was young, something I felt that was impossible and painful, and wonderful in its way…” He shook his head. “And then, I wonder what could have been between us now and that makes the regret even worse. Because I can hear her in my head, saying I was just waiting for her to die so I could be with the person I really wanted. But that’s not the truth of it. It just isn’t.”

Jackson let out a long, slow breath and rocked back on his heels. He didn’t know what the hell to do with any of this. Cricket looked at him and talked about fate. She had talked about him and her as if they were something preordained. And his dad was making this all sound a lot like choice. And a whole collection of hard ones at that.

But something else Cricket said burned bright inside of him.

They weren’t their parents.

And they weren’t. It was true.

Because Jackson didn’t feel conflicted or confused about whether or not he should be with Cricket because he had feelings for someone else. He’d never had feelings for anyone like he did for Cricket. And he wasn’t young and naive. But what he was, was damn tired of feeling like a sacrifice. And if he was truly honest with himself, he was angry at his mother. Because she’d made him feel that way. Whether she’d meant to or not. And hearing his dad say he wished she hadn’t dumped that on Jackson gave voice to all these things he’d tried not to think about.

“You know, son,” Cash said. “She was sick, not a saint. A wonderful woman to be sure, but flawed like any of us. I know she didn’t mean to hurt you. But the fact of the matter is…she did. Doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.”

“I know,” Jackson said.

“For what it’s worth, she would’ve walked into fire for you. Marrying me was only a hardship for part of the time.”

“Do you regret the way things happened?”

“I regret the way I handled them. I regret that I didn’t find a way to be a better husband. I’ve never regretted you. I’ve never regretted the life your mother and I built together. But I didn’t let go of the past the way I should have, because your vows say you forsake all others. And I never cheated, but I kept that desire and those memories in a special place inside myself. You make choices every day, Jackson. And I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to live a life with no regrets, but you should make sure you live a life that’s honest. Those games we all played, they were games. And games don’t amount to much. Nothing more than needless heartache, anyway.”

“I don’t want to feel like she has to marry me.”

“She seems like a modern enough girl.”

“I told her I wouldn’t marry her.”

“Well hell, boy,” Cash said. “I didn’t raise you to wimp out on your responsibilities.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t see me as another responsibility.”

“Well, ask her if she does. Don’t just try to protect yourself. Ask her how she feels.”

“How will she know?”

“How will she know?” Cash repeated. “You want too much. You’re going to have to trust her. You’re going to have to believe her. Trust would’ve gone a long way in fixing my marriage. Trust, faith and honesty. If I could do more of any three things, it would be those. And we would’ve had a different life.”

Jackson loved Cricket. He did. He was sure of that, standing there in this house filled with all these memories. All those weighted, hurtful memories that had seen him silently carrying around a whole lot of baggage he hadn’t realized was there.

And she had been right. He was protecting himself. Because the burden of feeling like an obligation to his mother, a debt that he’d never been able to repay, haunted him. And the last thing he wanted was to be