Author: Bella Andre

A flat.

Figured, the way his luck was going.

Just as he’d thought at the racetrack, he’d finally used up his share of good fortune.

His charmed life had officially ended the moment Heather walked out of his house.

He grabbed the brightly wrapped baby gift from the passenger seat and shoved the pink and yellow balloons tied to his mother’s mailbox out of his way as he headed for the front door. The last thing he was in the mood for today was a baby shower, regardless of how cute Chase and Chloe’s kid was.

If only he could see Emma without the rest of his family around, poking at him.

If only he could forget the way Heather had looked with Emma in her arms. So beautiful, so natural, so amazed by the perfect little life.

When he closed his eyes at night just to lie there until the sun came up, that was what he saw. Heather and the baby. The wonder on her face. The joy.

The longing.

How could he have done anything but fall in love with her?

And how could he do anything now but let her go?

The front door was half-open and he plopped his gift on the pile in the living room. Planning to see Emma, give her a kiss, and then get the hell out of there, he had just stepped out into his mother’s backyard when Gabe intercepted him.

“Here.” His brother shoved an overjoyed ball of fur at him.

Zach grabbed Cuddles before she fell out of his arms. “What the hell?”

“She’s yours. We’re not taking her back.” Gabe scowled. “You couldn’t pay us to take her back.”

The puppy was losing its mind licking Zach all over his neck and chin. It didn’t matter how he shifted her, she just kept showering him with her slobbery love.

“What kind of trouble could she have caused? I gave her back to you trained.”

Megan appeared at Gabe’s side. “She wouldn’t stop crying, Zach. No matter what we did, she wouldn’t stop.” She watched Cuddles turn herself inside out to show Zach just how pleased she was to see him. “Now I see why. You two are obviously a match made in heaven.”

Zach wanted to argue, wanted to tell them either they kept the dog or he was taking it to the pound. But, damn it, he’d missed the little fur ball all week. He’d look down at his lap, expecting to see her there, and had hated how empty, how sterile his living room was without her chew toys, the dog bed empty in the corner.

And yet, even as excited as the puppy was to see him, she kept looking around and whimpering between licks.

He knew why. She was looking for her friend, Atlas.

And for Heather.

The four of them had been such a tight unit that the puppy couldn’t possibly understand where everyone had gone.

Or why only he had returned.

“Fine,” he growled, “I’ll keep her. Where’s the baby?”

Gabe and Megan shot each other a look before gesturing over their shoulders. Chloe was sitting with the baby on her lap. She looked exhausted and radiant all at the same time.

Zach put Cuddles down and the puppy immediately, frantically started jumping up on his leg. “Down!” The puppy put her front feet down and waited for his next command. “I’m just going to wash your slobber off my face and hands. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. You’ll be coming back home with me later.”

He could have sworn the little Yorkie nodded at him as if she understood precisely what he’d said. Just the way, he found himself thinking, Atlas had always been so perfectly in tune with Heather.

In the kitchen, he shoved the faucet up so hard that water sprayed all over him. He pumped half a bottle of soap into his hands, then stuck his hands and face under the water, before yanking a clean kitchen towel out of a drawer and drying off with it.

Cuddles trailed after him as he headed toward the baby. Chloe smiled up at him. Chase’s wife was the only one who didn’t seem disgusted with him.

He sat beside her and took the baby into his arms. Big blue eyes blinked up at him and chubby little legs kicked. Zach dropped his mouth to the super-soft skin on her forehead. “Pretty girl. Your Uncle Zach is going to spoil you rotten.”

He heard Chloe laugh. “Look at her, she already knows it, doesn’t she? I think she’s even giving you her first smile.”

And it was true—baby Emma’s lips were curved up at she gazed at him and gave a little gurgle of happiness.

“Either that,” he heard Chase say, “or she’s going to give Uncle Zach his first lesson in changing a diaper.”

To reinforce her father’s prophetic words, Emma’s face scrunched up and she grunted a couple of times while squirming in his hands.

Chase laughed and said, “Here’s the diaper bag.”

But Chloe was already standing up and taking the baby out of his arms. Zach watched the two of them walk away as Chase said, “Sounds like you’ve been screwing up big time lately. Crashing cars. Losing women.”

“You guys have been waiting long enough for me to blow something. Figured I’d finally come through for you.”

He and Chase were close enough in age to get into it plenty of times over the years, but this was the first time he’d ever seen true concern in his brother’s eyes.

“You know what makes you such a good mechanic? There’s nothing you can’t fix.”

Wrong.

“Congratulations, again,” Zach gritted out to his brother. “I’ll be by to see you guys in a few days.” When there were a half-dozen fewer pairs of eyes on him. And when he had drunk enough booze to forget how badly everything he’d touched had gone wrong.

He grabbed Cuddles and they were almost to the front door when his mother intercepted him. She was fine-boned and delicate looking, but he knew firsthand that she had a spine made of steel.

“Zach, honey.” Her arms came around him and the puppy and he breathed in her familiar floral scent. “I’m glad you’re finally here. I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to give to you.”

She turned and headed down the hall to her bedroom and he had no choice but to follow her. Family pictures lined the walls. Ryan in his first Little League uniform, taking it easy on the pitcher’s mound a beat before he struck out another seven-year-old. Chase and Marcus heading out on windsurfers on the Bay at sixteen. Lori in her first ballet recital, just like Emma would be in a handful of years, so pretty it almost broke your heart to look at her. Sophie with her head in a book, lost in another fantasy world, another adventure. Gabe climbing the tree in their backyard in cut-off shorts with a hammer in his hand to finish building the fort. Smith as the star of the high school musical, his future already crystal clear. Zach’s own cocky grin as he sat in the window of his first race car, certain the whole world was waiting at his feet.

Their mother had been behind the lens each and every time, had taken the picture of his father out on a hiking trail, a baby on his back, a toddler’s hand in each of his. Jack Sullivan was looking over his shoulder at the camera with that same grin that Zach had seen a million times in his own mirror.

All those good times still to come, so much family to watch grow up...and life had still ended for his father in the blink of an eye.

Zach got to the bedroom door just as his mother opened the top drawer of her dresser. She didn’t pull anything out of it right away. Instead, she closed her eyes and took a breath, her pretty face crumpling for a split second before she finally reached for something.

She turned and held out a small black box wrapped in velvet. “I think you should have this.” She corrected herself. “I know you should have it.”

Zach had never run from anything. Not a fight. Not danger. But the thought of opening up the box his mother was holding out to him had him wanting to run as fast as his legs would take him.

“It’s okay, honey.” She held it out so he had to take it. “He would have wanted you to have it.”

Zach pulled the puppy tighter with one hand as he reached for the box with the other. His hand shook as he flipped open the top and his throat tightened.

“It’s your engagement ring.” The ring she’d worn for so many years after his father died. The ring he still could see on her finger as if it were yesterday, as if she hadn’t finally taken it off ten or so years ago. “You need to keep it.”

“No honey, I’ve had it just as long as I needed. The ring is yours now.”

He shook his head. “I don’t—” He was going to cry. Already was, actually. “I can’t—”

She sat down on the bed and patted the coverlet beside her. “After your father died, I would look at you and it was like he was still there. Eating dinner with all of us. Playing ball in the background. Twirling the girls around in circles until they were dizzy.”

Everyone who’d ever known their father had said that to him at one point or another. “You’re the spitting image of Jack.” He’d felt how broken they were over his father’s death. How wistful at a life ended much too soon.

That was when he’d taken to trying to outrun the demons that chased him, but he hadn’t succeeded. Not when he’d known all along that there was no separation between him and his father, because they were one and the same.

Something broke apart inside of him. “You always looked so sad. So damned sad.”

“I know.” Her voice broke. “I know and I’m sorry. Even rattled with grief, I knew it wasn’t fair. I know that you weren’t him.” She reached for his hands, gripped them tightly. “You are not your father.”

“He was a saint.” Whereas Zach had never been anything close to one.

“Your father wasn’t a saint.”

“He was. A great father to eight kids. A wife he loved. The only thing he ever did wrong was die too early.”

He was stunned when his mother started laughing. “Your father couldn’t have given a leap about love and marriage and kids when we first met.”

Zach couldn’t believe that what he was hearing was true, but he’d never known his mother to lie.

“I loved him from the start, of course. He was impossible not to love, but that didn’t mean I had to put up with him. The first time he tried to give me this ring, I threw it at him.” Her eyes went hazy at the memory as she lifted her hand to her left eyebrow. “I clipped him right here, hard enough that he needed stitches. So, no, he definitely wasn’t a saint. Not even close.” His mother’s gaze locked on Zach’s. “But I loved him. And in the end that meant I was willing to give him the room to grow into loving me the way I needed to be loved. Despite everything he did wrong along the way. I know how close you were with your dad,” she said softly. “He loved all of your brothers and sisters, but you were always so special to him. I know how special he was to you, too, honey. But what happened to him—” She searched for the right words. “It didn’t have anything to do with you. It still doesn’t, Zach. He helped make you who you were, but only you can decide who you want to be...and what you want from your life.”

No one had ever said those words to Zach before.

Because he hadn’t let them.

Heather had shared every last secret with him, but he’d withheld his. And now she thought he didn’t love her, when the truth was that he loved her with everything he had.

“He left you with no warning.” Zach fought for the words to explain something that been so clear to him since he was seven years old, but was suddenly growing fuzzy. “I can’t do that to her.”

“Do you think knowing your dad was going to die would have changed the way I felt about him? Do you think I would have stopped myself from loving him?” She didn’t wait for his answer before saying, “If anything, I would have been absolutely furious with him for thinking he needed to protect me from my own feelings. To have missed out on the years we had together would have been far worse than losing him too early.”