Page 99 of Worth Loving
“I... I care about you,” she said.
“Just care?” he asked and wondered why he was picking up a box of matches with the gasoline all around his feet.
“More than care,” she said. “I know we don’t talk about it much, but you mean a great deal to me.”
“You mean a great deal to me too.” It felt wonderful to at least get that much off his chest.
“Would you run off the road if I said I was falling in love with you?”
He laughed. He’d heard the uncertainty in her voice. “No. I wouldn’t run at all.”
“Then I think I love you, Dean,” she said. “It’s all new to me. I’m not positive, but what I feel for you is more than I’ve ever thought I’d feel for another person.”
“I feel the same way.” And that pressure that had been there for months started to fade away. But only so much.
30
PLOTTING YOUR BREAK
“I’m surprised you came.”
Dean shouldn’t have been shocked those were the first words out of his grandfather’s mouth. Here the old man was lying in bed in the ICU looking frailer than he’d ever thought imaginable for the man who wielded so much power and control over the family.
“I was summoned,” he said, not able to help himself. His grandfather just brought the worst out of him. For a man who always said he was closest to Dean out of all his grandkids, he never treated him well. He never had a lot of nice words to say either.
Most of the words were directions on what Dean should do with his life. Where he should be at a certain age. Who he should hang out with and what type of woman he should marry.
Surprisingly, his grandfather might actually approve of Molly. Though she didn’t come from money, she had the brains and the guts to do her own thing and break away from those who controlled her or made her feel like shit.
But the way D.T. treated his family and refused to acknowledge his first great grandchild, there was no way he was letting Molly be touched by this part of his life.
Not after he knew she loved him.
To him, that meant she landed right in the same circle as Jonah to be protected from this bullshit.
“You never listened before when I talked,” his grandfather said. “I’m not stupid. You’d nod your head like you agreed, but in the back of your mind you were plotting your break.”
His grandfather made it sound like he was running from the law. He supposed in some ways that might have been the case.
“Do we really need to do this now?” he asked, trying to be the bigger man. He could feel what he wanted for his grandfather and the way he was treated, but it didn’t take away from the fact that the man was ill.
That he looked like a patient he should have been operating on years ago when he was in his prime.
Instead, his life was going to be in another’s hands.
“No,” his grandfather said. “Go lock my door.”
“What?” he asked.
“You heard me. Lock the door so no one can come in and we can talk.”
He got up and did what he was told. If he found it odd, he didn’t let on. It’s not like it made much of a difference to him at this point.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“If you’d followed in my footsteps you’d be the one operating on me, not someone else that I’m not sure I can trust.”
“You’d rather put that guilt on my shoulders if something went wrong?” he asked.
