Right Under My Nose

by Parker, Ali

  “Don’t put it like that.” He lifted his hand. “Or else I’ll go down there and pick him up right now.”

  “Hey. And leave me here all by myself?”

  “Who knows what kind of mischief you’d get up to?” He managed to smile, and he took a sip of his wine.

  “This smells awesome,” I told him as I went to tuck into the food. “Thank you for this.”

  “Thanks for coming,” he replied, and he touched his glass to mine.

  And with that, he seemed to relax a little bit. I knew it was hard for parents to send their kids off like that, and especially so for someone like Holden who was the only caretaker Hunter had ever known. It was natural for him to be feeling a little out-of-sorts, wondering if he’d made the right choice in sending him away. But he unwound as the evening went on, and we made it through a bottle of wine together, chatting about my work friends and the gossip from our separate friend groups. The conversation flowed so easily that I barely even noticed the time passing, the sun dipping in the sky until it was dark outside, and I could convince myself we were the only two people left in the world.

  “I have something to show you.” Holden got to his feet when we were done.

  “If it’s another glass of wine, I think I’m good.” I held my hand up, but he shook his head

  “Trust me, it’s better than that,” he replied, and he took my hand and tugged me to my feet. When he led me upstairs, for a moment I thought he was about to launch some kind of seduction on me, but he took me in the direction of his office at the last minute instead of the bedroom. Which was a relief because I was full of pasta and wasn’t sure I could have handled anything other than cuddling at that moment.

  “Look, if you want help with your programming, I’m probably going to come up a little short,” I warned him. “I can just about do enough to teach the kids some basics, but other than that—”

  “No, I don’t need your help with the programming.” He guided me into the seat in front of his computer. I leaned back against the leather and looked up at him.

  “I think I’ve finally finished putting together that program for the grade curves.” He grinned at me. “You remember? You were telling me what a pain in the ass it was for you to have to put out all that time and effort for them?”

  “Holy shit, I can’t believe you finished it,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t think it would be done so soon.”

  “I’ve put some of my other work on hold for the time being.” He shrugged. “I wanted to get this done.”

  “You didn’t have to.” I smiled at him. “But if this works, you’ve made the lives of every teacher in the county a million times less irritating.”

  “Well, then, I totally had to do it.” He booted up the computer and clicked on the program icon. He pulled it up, and I squinted at the screen. It looked like a bunch of boxes to me, and I wasn’t sure what to do to get it to function.

  “So how does it work?” I asked, looking up at him hopefully.

  “You just have to input the numbers here.” He highlighted one column with the cursor. “And then you press calculate there.”

  I put in a selection of numbers, remembering what I could from the grade curves I’d been trying to make all this time, and clicked the calculate button. In a moment, a beautiful graph popped up, the numbers plotted out carefully onto it. My eyes widened.

  “Oh, Holy shit, it works!” I exclaimed, peering closer to make sure the numbers were where they all should be. “And how many numbers can it take at a time?”

  “As many as you need,” he replied, and I could tell he was trying to play it modest but was secretly pleased with my reaction.

  “Honestly, you have no idea how handy this is going to be,” I told him excitedly. “Wait till I tell everyone at work about it. Zoe’s going to be pumped.”

  “I’m glad it’s working,” he said. “I still want to do a few more tweaks to make it more user-friendly, but I think this is a good jumping-off point—”

  “It’s perfect,” I replied, and I leaned up to plant a kiss on his lips like I was giving my handsome knight a token for his efforts.

  “Good.” He grinned and caught my head in his hands to kiss me again, harder this time, a teasing little moment that made my heart pulse with excitement in my chest. He pulled back, and I stood up again.

  “I think that’s enough computer programming for tonight,” he murmured, taking my hand and leading me back downstairs.

  We curled up on the couch together, and I nestled into his chest, feeling sleepy and happy and a little tipsy. I loved these quiet little moments we spent together. They were the ones I came back to when I needed a boost, when I wanted to let myself revel in a little pop of happiness when I was having a hard day. He stroked my hair gently back from my face, and I laid my head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek.

  “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble for me,” I told him. “With the program, I mean.”

  “Well, it seemed like a gap in the market, and I had to take it,” he replied, and I could tell he was holding something back. I lifted my head to look him in the eyes, and he shrugged and smiled.

  “And I wanted to do something nice for you,” he admitted, brushing his fingers over my mouth for a brief second. He paused, took a deep breath, and then continued.

  “I don’t think… I don’t think what I feel for you is something I can put into words right now,” he confessed. “I haven’t felt this way about anyone in a long time, Autumn, not for years. Doing this for you—well, it’s some way I can show you how important you are to me. I know things were weird starting out, but I wanted more from the beginning. And now we have it…”

  He trailed off once more, and he was looking at me so intently, I nearly let the words slip out of my mouth. They hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, the big I love you, but the way he was looking at me, the things he was saying, they only had one real end. I caught my breath and drew my gaze away from him, cooling myself off. It wasn’t the time. Not quite yet. We hadn’t been together long enough, and besides, it seemed as though he was still getting his head around actually having feelings for someone.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I murmured, and I nestled back into his chest, noticing that his heart was beating a little faster than before. I knew that had been his way of telling me he loved me, the closest he could get to those words for the time being. And I smiled, inhaling his scent, as he wrapped his arms tightly around me. We were both barreling toward admitting how we felt for one another once and for all. And I was okay letting him take his time to get there. He had been through a lot the last ten years, and it made perfect sense that he wouldn’t be forthcoming with those words. But he was showing me they were true, every way he knew how. That made me happier than I could ever imagine.

  We lay there together, holding each other, the words unspoken but solid in my mind. I felt so safe in his arms, so safe in his affections, so sure we were doing the right thing by sticking this out. As the light dimmed outside, my eyes grew heavy, and I fell asleep, warm and comfortable, on his chest.

  44

  Holden

  “This is going to change everything,” Zoe exclaimed with excitement as I headed over to their computers and started to install the new systems. Autumn had invited me in that morning to apply the new grade curve program to the computers, and I had agreed, happy to see if it worked or not and get some hands-on testing for the work I’d done. This thing could look as pretty as it liked, but if people couldn’t use it, then it was back to the drawing board for me.

  “I hope it does.” I nodded to her with a smile, and I noticed her shooting a look at Autumn and raising her eyebrows at her. I hoped that was a good sign. A you got a good one sign.

  “Well, I was playing with it last night, and it seems to work well.” Autumn nodded to Zoe. “I’m hoping it’ll go fine with actual data this time around.”

  “No reason it shouldn’t,” I offer
ed hopefully, and Autumn smiled at me. I was glad to be helping out where I could, and if that meant getting on the good side of Autumn’s best friend as well, that was a bonus.

  “So the files are copied over, and now I boot it up?” Zoe asked as I handed her laptop back to her.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I agreed. “Just put in the data points in the—look, it’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m not going to patronize you by explaining it all. If you have any trouble getting it to work, let me know. I’ll help you out.”

  “Sure thing.” Zoe nodded, and she shot another look at Autumn before she ducked out of the room. Autumn grinned as she pushed the door shut behind her. We still had a few minutes before class was due to start, and the two of us were all alone in this little classroom, nobody here but us. The air was still as I moved toward her, double-checking that the door was shut tight before I went to her and wound my arms around her waist.

  “Mmm.” She grinned, as I nuzzled into her neck, inhaling that impossibly specific scent she had, the one that seemed to fill me from top to bottom every time I caught a hint of it. I could have lost myself in there, hidden in the depths of it. My next project would be finding a way to commit her scent to a bottle just for me so I could have her whenever I wanted.

  “Thank you so much for putting the program together,” she sighed as I pulled back. “Seriously, this has been a thorn in my side and for all the people who worked with me the last few years. Loads of people have been talking about making something to have it run a little smoother, but you just up and did it.”

  “Hey, it’s only an act of charity to my local school system,” I replied gently, and she grinned

  “And not at all an attempt to get on my good side?” she teased.

  “The thought never so much as crossed my mind,” I replied as I nuzzled myself into her neck a little farther, letting my lips brush up and over her skin. She softened in my arms, even knowing that someone could walk in and catch us at any moment The chemistry between us was hard to resist or ignore, even when the circumstances were less than ideal.

  “You need to get out of here,” she told me, but there was no conviction behind her voice as she spoke. I turned my head to find her mouth, kissing her gently, and she let out a soft moan and wrapped her arms tightly around my neck. She kissed me back, briefly but deeply, enough to let me know that what had been on my mind lately had been on hers.

  When I pulled away, her eyes were still closed, and she was swaying slightly in my arms like someone had run a jolt of energy through her, and she was figuring out what to do with it

  “Mmm.” She purred, kissing the corner of my mouth again. “Okay, now you really need to get out of here before someone catches us.”

  “Fine,” I replied, reluctantly pulling away from her and heading to the door. I paused for a moment, letting myself come back down to earth, and I could feel her watching me as I made my way across the room. Fuck, if I’d had a few minutes longer, I would have grabbed her, pushed her over that table, and fucked her hard—

  “Catch you later,” I told her, cutting off that train of thought in my head before it went to places I didn’t want it to go. Not then, at least.

  “See you later,” she said. “You’re coming back after school to pick Hunter up, right? After the club?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” I grinned. “So I’ll see you again then.”

  “Can’t wait.” She beamed, and I ducked out of her classroom and turned to head back to my car. I felt as though I had an actual skip in my step as I headed to make my way home. I had never imagined, not once in a million years, that things with Autumn would end up where they were. Not just the two of us together, but the two of us unable to get enough of one another, drinking deep from the well of our mutual adoration for each other. I wanted to do everything I could for her, to make her life easy any way I knew how, and for me, that was love. To show her how good her life could have been with me, that was my way of telling her how I felt, proving to her that she was making the right choice by staying.

  I drove back to the house and considered the fact that I would have to get back to my real, regular work since I was done with the program. That was a weird thought after I’d poured all that time and effort into putting it together. Maybe Raymond was right, and I should start thinking about hiring someone new to step up to the plate and help me out. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have someone keeping my projects ticking over while I was working on other things. Even just a person to touch base with my clients and catch them up on the state of their projects. It was certainly something to think about. Perhaps I would place an ad when I got home.

  And as I turned the corner to draw up outside the house, my thoughts stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a car there I didn’t recognize. I wondered, for a moment, if it belonged to someone from the school, if Hunter had landed in more trouble, but I had only just left. Anyone coming from there would have been forced to overtake me to get back here. It wasn’t Autumn, it wasn’t Raymond, and it wasn’t anyone from the school, so who in the hell was sitting outside my house, waiting for me to arrive home?

  I pulled my car to a halt behind the one already parked there and peered out at it through the window. It was beaten, a little battered-looking, the paint job needing another go over sooner rather than later, and there was a small crack running up one of the side windows. Whoever it belonged to, they were a little down on their luck. Maybe looking for a handout? Some help? A job? I had no idea how they would have found my place, or what—

  And then I saw her.

  I recognized her at once. Her face had run circles in my mind when she had first left me, when I’d been convinced all of this was an attempt to prove a point to her. And there were flashes of her in Hunter as well, little moments when he would turn around or laugh and frown, and I would see, with a certainty that I often tried to ignore, that he was her son as much as he was mine.

  Karla, standing there on my doorstep and pressing the bell, looked a little different than how I’d remembered her. The image I had of her in my mind was a young woman, messy hair with bleached-out ends, eyebrows plucked thin, with that enormous belly where she had been growing our son and those sharp eyes as she picked holes in me. She had aged a little—hadn’t we all—with her features growing a little softer around the edges, her jawline not quite as sharp, her cheekbones fading under a little fat.

  She heard me getting out of the car and turned around, her eyes lighting up when she saw me standing there.

  “Holden.” She came down the steps. “I’m sorry to turn up like this, but I didn’t know where to find you, so I thought—”

  “I was dropping Hunter off at school,” I told her carefully. How could she not have thought of that? It showed how out-of-touch she was with our own son, that something as basic as that wouldn’t even cross her mind.

  “Of course.” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “Sorry, I didn’t even think about that. But I guess… the important thing is that I have you here in front of me, right?”

  “Karla, what are you doing here?” I demanded. When she had first left, I would have given anything to have her come back, to have her turn up on my doorstep like this, but so much time had passed, and I had firmly grown out of desiring her back in my life. In fact, I knew I was better off without her. Yet, here she was, sniffing me out from God knows how far away.

  She took a deep breath and twisted her hands around one another, smiling and shaking her head.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” she confessed. “But I want… I want to see Hunter. I want to have him as a part of my life.”

  I stared at her some more, unable to believe the words coming out of her mouth. Did she think it was that easy? That she could walk back into my life, my son’s life, and act as though she hadn’t missed a beat?

  I thought back to Autumn, how good she had been with Hunter when we’d been out together, and I knew I couldn’t give in to this. I had seen what Hunter had
looked like when he was with people he liked, who he trusted. He’d never met this woman, not really, even if she was his mother. Why would I let her back in after everything she’d done—and failed to do?

  I wasn’t sure how to tell her, so I stood there for a long moment, letting the shock wash over me and waiting for it to dissipate. But before I could reply, she seemed to take my silence as an opening for something else.

  Stepping forward, she pressed her hand to my chest, through my jacket, her touch familiar but completely unexciting to me. I looked up, and she was gazing deeply into my eyes, staring as though I was the only living thing in the world.

  “And you as well,” she finished up. “I want you in my life too.”

  And time seemed to fall away as I looked into the eyes of the woman I’d loved before Autumn, the mother of my child, the girl who’d turned back up into my life after nearly a decade. And I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to her.

  45

  Autumn

  “How’s it going, guys?” I asked as I wandered over to check on Hunter and Amelie. They had been playing on the computers together from the moment school had ended and the club had picked up, and it was clear they were intently focused on the campaign they were working on.

  “Good!” Hunter grinned at me. He had practically been pinned to my leg all day at school, telling me about the sleepover he’d had with Jason and how much he’d enjoyed it, and I was delighted to see him doing so much better. I glanced at the clock. It wouldn’t be long until Holden got here, and I couldn’t wait to see him again. Even these little moments we managed to steal together were enough to sustain me, enough to remind me totally what I was doing with him. I missed him, even though he’d only been away a few hours. Which was a little silly, but I couldn’t help how I felt.

  The program had worked beautifully. Zoe had come running to me at break time to tell me as much, waving her hands around and exclaiming as though this was truly the most exciting news in the world.