This time, when she reached for him, she made contact. It wasn’t much, just a press of her fingers before she dropped her hand away, but it was enough. This woman may not have had the strength to sit by his bedside and watch him in pain, but that was on her. She was the one who’d missed his childhood, his adolescence, his young adulthood. She was the one who’d run away rather than face the harsh realities of life.

She was the broken one. Not him.

“It must have been really difficult, seeing me like that,” he offered.

His mom’s lower lip quivered. “It was. You have no idea. I was—Oh, I don’t know. Weak? Scared? A little of both, I think. I’m not as strong as your father. I never have been. I took one look at you, so tiny and unconscious in that bed, and had to get away.”

It was a sentiment he didn’t understand, since Bubbles was tiny and could very well be unconscious, and he had no intention of stopping until he had her in his arms again. But he softened anyway.

Especially when his mom muttered a curse and said, “You were better off with him anyway, believe me.”

He had to chuckle. “I might not have agreed with you a few weeks ago, but I think I do now.”

She looked a question at him.

“I always thought it was the worst thing about me, how much like Dad I am, but I’m starting to think it might be a good thing.”

As if to prove it, his dad’s voice sounded in the distance. He called out for Bubbles in his usual cantankerous tone, offering several reasons why tiny puppies who took off in the middle of the night deserved their inevitable fates.

“He won’t stop until we find her,” Harrison said. “He won’t leave when things get rough. In fact, he wouldn’t even leave me until a few days ago when he finally realized I’d be okay on my own.”

“And will you?” his mom asked, watching him.

Harrison nodded. He had no way of knowing what the future held for him, and there was a good chance Sophie would never forgive him for hurting her, but he’d wait. Twenty-two years if he had to, growing even more irritable and set in his ways as the years progressed.

Parks men were built that way—for the kind of love that lasted a lifetime. For the fairy-tale ending they deserved. For the kind of life that refused to accept anything but a happily ever after.

* * *

“You should take a break.”