Lorna managed to hide her surprise at his bluntness with a cough.
“Sorry. I thought you knew.”
“Bean mentioned it.”
“The bus was coming out of a garage, and I guess Jill wasn’tlooking where she was going. I don’t know. I’ve never been able to figure out how she didn’t see a whole damn bus. She was on a bike—she had to notice something so much bigger than her coming out of that garage.” He shook his head. “Anyway.” He took another swig of beer, then picked at the label. “She was really into fitness. Cycling in particular. She’d ride for miles around town.” He glanced off, toward the window with the figurine on the sill. “I told her it was too dangerous to ride around Austin. We have one of the highest bike fatality rates in the country. But she insisted I shouldn’t worry, that everything was fine. Well, it wasn’t fine.”
Lorna gulped down a swallow of beer, surprised he was telling her this. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You must be furious about that.”
Seth slowly turned his head back to her. “What?”
“You know, when you love someone and you want them to take care of themselves, but you can’t control what they do. I mean me—I feel that way.”
He looked down. But when he looked back up, he opened his mouth to speak, then paused. He squinted. “Lorna... are you crying?”
“What? Am I?” She put her fingers to her face. “Oh my God,” she said, horrified by the notion that tears could just fling themselves out of her eyes without her noticing. Her cheeks heated with shame. She wiped away the tears. “I really need to see someone about that. I’m fine, I really am. I’m just sorry for you. I know about loss. My mom died about four years ago, and my sister... well, we don’t speak anymore. I realize that’s not the same as losing a spouse, but I know what it’s like to want so desperately for someone to be safe. That’s all I meant.” She had to look away in case more tears fell. She felt so sorry for Seth andBean and hated that either of them had to feel anything close to the loss she’d felt. Probably even worse.
“I’m sorry you have experienced this kind of loss,” Seth said. He stood up, went to an end table, and brought back a box of tissues for her, then took a seat next to her on the couch. So close that their legs touched. It was oddly comforting. “How did your mother die? And please don’t tell me she was hit by a bus, too, because that would be such a coincidence I would have to laugh.” He smiled.
Amazingly, Lorna did too, but she shook her head. “She had cancer. It was slow and long.”
“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yep, I think I prefer quick and shocking to long and painful. I’m sorry. That must have been tough.”
He really didn’t know the many ways, up and down and all around, that it had been tough for her. But he knew something similar, and that was a connection she hadn’t expected. Sometimes Lorna would marvel that she’d managed to come out of that period of her life still a sort of functioning human. She’d lost her family in short order—Nana, Mom, Kristen.
He drummed his fingers on the beer bottle. “Are you alone too? I mean, without a partner?”
The question surprised her, and she must have looked it, because he held up a hand. “Sorry. That was bad form. I just haven’t seen anyone come and go, and I wondered.”
“There’s no one,” she said. “It’s not in the cards right now.” Or probably ever, given that she was not particularly attractive as a mate, either literally or figuratively.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I sell workflow software. We help determine how a company’s work flows best, then design a system around it. Boring. Whichis why I like it, I think. Nothing to get too worked up about.” She considered what she’d just shared. “I don’t... You must think I’m so weird.”
He gave her a funny frown. “I think you’re interesting. You said you’re on sabbatical?”
“Yes.” She looked away again, unwilling to explain her sabbatical to him because she feared how it would look. Even weirder than she was, and she really didn’t want Seth to think she was weird. Of all the people in this house, she didn’t want him to think it. Like, Martin could think it all day if he was so inclined, but Seth? She really cared about his opinion of her. He was sitting so close that she could feel his energy wrap around her, and she wanted to bore into that energy. That strength. Just crawl up his shirt and build a nest.
She looked off before she gave herself away, and her gaze landed on the Precious Moments figurine again.
“By the way, thank you for that,” he said, having noticed where her attention was focused. “It reminds Bean of his mother.”
Of course.She hadn’t given it to Bean, but she didn’t mind that he’d taken it. She didn’t have to worry about him seeing a promise in that figurine that didn’t really exist. The poor kid was light-years ahead of her—he already knew the Precious Moments were lying to him.
She drank one long glug from her beer and decided it wasn’t half bad. “Umm... do you still need help with Bean after school? Because I like having him around. He’s such a great kid. He’s... he’s been helping me on my little apology tour.”
“Your what?”
“That’s what I’m calling it. I’m working to let some things go from my past. Things I feel bad about, things I wish I had done differently.”
Seth’s gaze moved over her face, settling on her eyes. His eyeslooked so blue in this light, and the way they were locked on her made her heart skip around in her chest.
“Not for murder or anything,” she quickly added.
“Damn, Lorna, I should hope not.”
“I mean, nothing illegal or bad. Just, you know... things that I wish I’d handled differently.” Part of her wanted to tell him, to admit what had happened, why she had this time, why it was important to address these regrets. But she feared it would make her sound slightly nutty, and she did not want to talk so much that she somehow confessed her plans to buy this house. Or worse, gave him any reason to think Bean shouldn’t hang out with her. “It’s called self-actualization,” she added. Micah had said that just today when he sent her off to make a vision board.
