“How was I supposed to react?” Chase asked, feeling defensiveness. “She wasn’t asking me what we should do. She was telling me what she planned to do, what her parents wanted her to do. I felt like I didn’t even get a say.”
“Do you have any idea how much she loved you?” Ainsley shook her head. “No, you probably don’t. I’m only telling you this because she never would and I think you need to know. She knew you had big dreams that didn’t include staying in this town, working the land, or getting some factory job like your uncles had.”
“What’s your point?”
“She set you free.” Ainsley let that sink in before she added, “She knew a wife and kids weren’t in the plan for your immediate future and she didn’t want to saddle you with a life you didn’t want.”
“I would have married her.” Chase had even considered how he would propose, whether he would be able to scrape together enough money for a decent ring.
“I have no doubt you would have,” Ainsley said. “Because it was the right thing to do. I know you, Chase Wright. You always do the right thing, because that’s how your parents raised you. To do right by people. But Shay didn’t want you to feel like she was an obligation. And she didn’t want you to start resenting her or your son, because you couldn’t realize the life you’d always dreamed of.”
“That wouldn’t have happened,” Chase said with conviction. He couldn’t imagine ever resenting either one of them. Especially since he’d spent so many years wishing they could be a part of his life.
“Maybe, maybe not. But that wasn’t a chance Shay was willing to take. And I can’t say that I blame her. In her position, I would have done the same thing.”
“Are you telling me if you got pregnant with Bryce’s baby you would have left town, put the baby up for adoption and never spoke to him again?”
Someone cleared their throat from the door and Ainsley and Chase looked up to find Bryce leaning in the doorframe, arms crossed, straining the plaid flannel shirt rolled up to reveal his forearms.
“I’m kind of curious about that myself,” Bryce admitted, staring straight at Ainsley. “I’ve asked myself a dozen times what we would have done if we’d found ourselves in Shay and Chase’s position. You think we would have gotten married, tried to make it work?”
Ainsley seemed stunned by his question as she reached for her purse on the coffee table. “If being married taught me one thing, it’s that you can’t make it work, no matter how hard you try. If you have to force it, it just wasn’t meant to be.” She leaned in to kiss Chase’s cheek. “Thanks for letting me stick my nose into your business. Think about what I said?”
“You know I will.” Chase watched Ainsley rush past Bryce, muttering his name as she passed.
Bryce was still watching her when Chase heard the ding of the elevator in the hall, announcing her departure. “What was that about?” Chase asked his friend. “Were you just messing with her or you’ve really thought about stuff like that?”
“Sure, I’ve thought about it,” Bryce said, sinking into the leather club chair as he kicked his feet up on the scarred pine coffee table. “What might have happened to me and Ainsley if fate decided for us, instead of letting two dumb kids think they knew it all?”
“What does that mean? You’re having regrets about leaving her behind?” Bryce had seemed a lot more introspective since their return to Landon and Chase knew it made him a lousy friend for not knowing the reason behind his pensive moods.
“I have a lot of regrets,” Bryce said, tipping his head back as he closed his eyes. “Ainsley is just one of many.”
“Tell me about it.” Chase genuinely wanted to help his friend any way he could. Even if he couldn’t find peace, he wanted Bryce to.
Bryce opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling. “You ever feel like your life is so far off track you don’t know what to do to make things right?”
“I think we all feel that way sometimes.” Chase crossed the room, taking two longnecks out of the mini-fridge and twisting the caps off before handing one to Bryce. If he’d ever seen his friend in need of a cold one, it was now.
“Thanks,” Bryce muttered, taking a long pull of the beer.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to stay there. Break it down. Figure out what’s wrong and fix it.”
“Easier said than done, my friend.” Bryce sighed. “I knew coming back here would be hard, but I had no idea that girl would still have the power to turn me inside out after all these years.”
Chase sat on the arm of the chair across from Bryce, propping the heel of his boot on the leather cushion. “Ah, so this is about Ainsley?”
“Among other things.” He looked at the same photo Ainsley had been staring at moments before when he said, “She married another man. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around that. She was someone else’s wife.”
“I know.” Chase knew it would have been hard for him to imagine Shay being someone else’s too.
“Did you know she had a miscarriage a while back?”
“No,” Chase said, wondering how his friend had come across that bit of news. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing Ainsley would tell him during a casual conversation.
“Rusty told me. Apparently she was pretty broken up about it.”
“I can imagine.”
“And you know what I thought?” Bryce looked disgusted as he said, “I had a brief flash of gratitude that she didn’t have that connection with someone else. What kind of sick, selfish excuse for a human being does that make me?”
Chase considered his response, knowing that nothing he said would make Bryce feel better about his reaction. “I’d like to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing, had it been Shay who was pregnant with another man’s baby, but I can’t. So at least we’re both dirt bags. Don’t feel so bad.”
“I hate myself for thinking that.” Bryce closed his eyes again, bringing the beer to his lips. “How could I wish pain on someone I’d once claimed to love?”
“So, you’re saying you don’t love her anymore?” Chase had an opinion on that, but he wanted to hear his friend’s take on it first.
“How can I?” Bryce asked, frowning. “I don’t even know her anymore. We were kids when we were together. I’m a grown man now, and I’m ashamed to admit I still don’t have my life together. So even if I did have feelings for her, how could I expect her to give me another chance?”
“The other stuff you mentioned,” Chase said, trying to get a clearer picture of why Bryce was really beating himself up. “That have anything to do with your family? Your old man?”
“I can’t go back there,” he said, clenching his jaw. “I’ve been back here for months and I haven’t set foot back in that house. Not even to see my mama. What kind of son does that make me? Really, what kind of man does that make me? A coward, who—”
“No.” Bryce was one of the strongest men Chase had ever known and he refused to allow him to get down on himself because he didn’t want to go back into that house of horrors he’d grown up in. “You don’t want to go back there? Don’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a relationship with your mama, if you want one. Take her out for lunch. Ask her to meet you somewhere. Heck, buy her a new house. Get her out there. You can’t be the only one who has bad memories of that place.”
“You really think I should offer to buy her a new place?” Bryce asked, looking thoughtful.
“Why not? It’s not like you can’t afford it. I think it’d be good for her. And for you. Clean slate.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Bryce nodded. “Anyway, enough about me. I want to hear how things went with Shay this afternoon. We got so busy with work stuff when you got back I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about it.”
That’s what Chase loved about his best friend. No matter what he was going through, he always made time to ask about other people’s challenges, with an offer to help any way he could. “She wants to go with me.”
“You mean to meet him?”
“Yeah.” Chase peeled the label off his bottle, sighing. “But Ainsley’s worried about how Shay will handle it if he doesn’t react well to us just showing up after all these years, trying to make things right.”
“I can understand that,” Bryce said, leaning forward as he set his empty bottle on the coffee table. “So maybe you should think about going alone, you know, see how he reacts to you before you decide whether or not to bring Shay into the mix.”
“He’s our son,” Chase said, feeling frustrated by his own indecisiveness. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Shay, but he wasn’t sure he could take this step without her. “She has every right to see him if she wants to, right? And who knows better than she does whether she’s ready.”
“If you’re sure,” Bryce said, looking Chase in the eye. “Then don’t worry about what Ainsley said. Just go for it.”
“But what if Ainsley’s right? What if he lashes out at us for abandoning him and that makes things even worse for Shay? I know it took a long time for her to get over the adoption. Is it selfish of me to want to stir all this up again?”
“That depends,” Bryce said, stroking the dark stubble on his jaw. “Are you doing this because you want this or because you think Shay does?” Before Chase could respond, he continued. “Or, are you doing it for your son, because you want him to know you let him go because you loved him?”
“I don’t know.” Chase had asked himself that question a dozen times and still didn’t have the answer. “Maybe a bit of all three?”
“Some people weren’t meant to be parents,” Bryce said, looking at the plank hardwood floor. “Like my old man, for example. And some were. Like you, man. You would have been a good dad, even at that age. I really believe that. And if I didn’t think your son would be better off for knowing you, I’d tell you to stay out of his life. To be smart enough to leave well enough alone. But that’s not the case.”
Chase was almost too choked up to say, “Thanks,” because Bryce was giving him the confirmation he’d never even realized he needed. He wasn’t a bad guy and his son wouldn’t be worse off for knowing him.
Bryce stood, crossing the room to the door. “I really believe you need to see him. Whether you take Shay with you that first time or not is up to you. But if you want my advice, don’t waste any more time. Meet your boy.”
It was the night for Shay’s obligatory weekly dinner with her parents, but she wasn’t looking forward to it. In fact, she’d rather be anywhere else. She was grateful her father’s recovery seemed to be progressing to the point he was able to speak again, but that also meant he could pass judgement on the way she was running his business.
“I heard you went out for lunch with Chase Wright today,” her mother said, pursing her thin lips as she passed the roast beef.
“The grapevine must be malfunctioning,” Shay said, trying to hold her temper as she loaded her plate with food she’d rather not eat. “He came in to buy a truck. We took it out for a test drive.”
She looked across the table, where her father was sitting in his wheelchair, studying her with that same ever-present scowl he’d worn since she was a little girl. “You’ll be pleased to know he bought a new 450. Didn’t even want to trade his old one in. I don’t have to tell you that really helped our month.”
Before her father could respond, her mother rolled her eyes while piling food onto her husband’s plate. “I think it’s disgusting the way he’s been throwing his money around since he came back to town. First he bought and renovated that big ‘ole factory. Then he bought that piece of land and have you seen the size of the house he built on it? It must be five thousand square feet. What does a single man need with all that space?”
Shay looked around the house she’d grown up in, wondering why her parents needed six bedrooms and bathrooms when they only used one. “It’s his money, Mom,” she said, cutting her meat into small squares so she wouldn’t choke on it, given how dry her throat was. “He earned it the hard way. I’d say that gives him the right to spend it any way he wants to.”
“You always were defending that boy,” she said, brushing her side-swept ash blonde bangs out of her eyes. “In your eyes he could do no wrong. However we were always the bad guys, weren’t we? We didn’t know anything. You thought you knew it all. And look at you now. No husband, no children…”
Shay set her knife and fork down carefully, glaring at her mother before treating her father to the same. “My only concern since dad had his stroke has been keeping the business afloat.” She couldn’t believe her mother had the audacity to attack her when she’d done everything she could to help them. “I put everything else, including my own career on the back burner. Maybe I would have had time for a social life if I didn’t spend every waking hour at that dealership!”
“Watch your tone,” her mother said, sounding shocked.
“And don’t talk to your mother that way,” her father muttered, his scowl deepening.
“I am sick and tired of being treated like a child,” she said, tossing her pressed linen napkin on the table beside her untouched plate. “You’ve always assumed you knew what was best for me. You even managed to convince me for a while. But now I can see that you may very well have cost me the best things that ever happened to me.”
“What are you talking about?” her mother asked, grasping her pearls as the color drained from her face.
“I’m talking about Chase. And our son.” She let that sink in as her parents looked at each other, clearly deciding how to react. “I loved him and he loved me. I let you convince me that we were too young to be parents and I’d be ruining all of our lives if I didn’t agree to go through with the adoption.”
“You would have,” her father said, looking weary as he shook his head. “You were just a kid yourself.”
Shay felt a modicum of guilt for having this conversation with her parents while her father was still recovering, but it was long overdue. For years she’d been the dutiful daughter, carefully avoiding the topic of her son, so as not to upset anyone. But she was done hiding from the past. And the truth. It was time to face it head on and let her parents know exactly how she felt.
“I know you may have thought you were doing what was best for me. But you didn’t care what I thought was best. You assumed you knew Chase better than I did, and I’d say time has proven you dead wrong.” She raised an eyebrow. “He’s a successful businessman, a multi-millionaire, in fact. For you to have assumed that he was lazy and wouldn’t have worked his butt off to provide for us—”
“Ugh,” they said in unison.
Shay clenched her teeth, pushing her chair back. “I will continue to do right by this family,” she said, looking them both in the eye. “Because my conscience won’t allow me to walk away with Dad in this state. But I won’t allow you to continue weighing in on every decision I make.”
“Shay!” her mother said when she pushed her chair back and stood. “Where is all this coming from? You know we love you, that we only want what’s best for you.”
“But that’s just it,” Shay said, standing behind her chair as she gripped the back of it. “You don’t know what’s best for me. Honestly, I’m not even sure I know. But I’m making it my business to find out. And if you really love, you’ll support that.”
Ainsley was waiting on her front porch when Shay got home and she was glad it saved her a phone call. “Come in,” Shay said, fitting her key in the lock. “We’re breaking open the ice cream. I need my best friend.”
“Um, I’m not sure you’ll feel that way when I tell you what I did.”
Ainsley wasn’t big on regrets. She usually just plowed ahead without thinking twice, so Shay knew if she was feeling remorseful it had to be big. “At least let me open the ice cream before you tell me.”
Following Shay into her tidy Tudor-style home, Ainsley said, “You know I love you, girl. That’s the only reason I did it.”
“Oh, no.” Shay reached
into the freezer for her emergency container of Rocky Road. “My parents just said the same thing to me. Now I’m really scared.” Shay’s hand trembled slightly as she dished two scoops into each bowl and handed one to her friend. After a spoonful, she closed her eyes and said, “Okay, let me have it. What did you do?”
“I went to see Chase.”
Shay’s eyes flew open. “What? Why?”
“I got to thinking after I left your office,” Ainsley said, claiming a stool at the island in the middle of the room, which served as both a table and prep space. “I’m not going to lie, I’m worried about you going with Chase to meet your son… and I told him so.”
Shay sighed, bringing her bowl with her as she claimed the other stool at the island. “Honey, I know your heart is in the right place, but I can take care of myself. If I didn’t think I could handle it, I wouldn’t have agreed to go with Chase.”
“But I thought I may have pressured you into it,” Ainsley said, her eyes filling with tears. “If you had a setback after meeting him, because of me, I’d never forgive myself.”
Shay gave her a one-armed hug, laying her head on her friend’s shoulder. “You got me through those months after the adoption,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I would have made it without you.”
“Don’t say that!” Ainsley said, swiping at her tears. “Don’t even think that!”
“It’s true and we both know it.” Shay sat upright, taking taste of ice cream while handing Ainsley a napkin to dry her eyes. “But I’m not that same broken girl anymore. I’m a grown woman now and a lot of years have passed. I’ve gotten a lot stronger. Writing the book helped me work through a lot of those emotions and I really think I’m ready to meet him, assuming that’s what he wants.”
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