Right Under My Nose

by Parker, Ali

“And what exactly have I done?” I grinned as I made my way over to Autumn and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She beamed up at me.

  “We were actually talking about your new program,” she told me. “The grading system? It’s been so useful, we actually have our weekends back.”

  “If I’m not stealing them from you,” I pointed out playfully. “They’re doing the job, then?”

  “Oh, they’re perfect.” Zoe nodded. “You need to roll it out across all the schools in the county. I can’t think how much time this might save teachers who really need it, you know?”

  “That sounds like a great idea,” I said. “I’ll need to speak to my people and figure out the details, but if you think it’s worth it—”

  “More than worth it,” Zoe urged. “And it would be big for you if you could get this into all the schools in the county, right?”

  “Sure would.” I glanced at Autumn, who was beaming up at me delightedly. “But that’s not why I did it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know you did it for love or something like that.” She shook her head teasingly. I didn’t meet Autumn’s gaze. Neither of us had said that to each other yet, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that word come out of my mouth as part of Zoe lightly roasting us.

  “Anyway, class is getting ready to start.” She glanced down at her watch. “I need to get out of here.”

  “So do I.” I sighed apologetically to Autumn. “I want to head home and speak to the administrators about the program. If you like it so much, I want to get ahead of it before it spreads anywhere else.”

  “You should.” Autumn waved her hand. “Have a good day. And I’ll drive Hunter home this afternoon after class, all right?”

  “All right.” I nodded and then stole one last kiss before I ducked out of the door and started back to my car, waving at Hunter as I passed by. Heading back to the house, I ran through all my contacts in my head, figuring out who the best point of contact might be to get ahold of within the school district. Because I had something that could change everything for teachers like Autumn, and if it was working well, there was no reason to sit on it a moment longer.

  I headed straight to my office when I was through the door and grabbed my phone. Though I had been something of a recluse when it came to my work for the last few weeks, I still had decent clout in the business, and I intended to take full advantage of that. A half hour of phone calls later, I ended up on the other end of the line with the woman who organized the resources for school teachers around the district.

  “And you said that you’ve been testing this program with a couple of teachers?” she asked. I could hear the incredulity in her voice—and she didn’t even know that the teacher I had tested this with was also the one I was dating. I decided to keep that on the down-low for the time being—to make sure my credibility wasn’t totally shot.

  “Yes, and they’ve both given me great feedback for the program as a whole,” I replied enthusiastically. “They told me the program has saved them a lot of time. One of them has started running some after-school activities with the time she had to spare.”

  “I see.” She sounded impressed. “And how much are you charging for this program? For, say, a ten-school rollout?”

  “I’d be happy to give you a trial run for free,” I told her eagerly. “Maybe six weeks? And if you like it, we can talk about packaging the program into the teacher’s software across the district.”

  “That sounds fair to me,” she agreed, and I could hear the grin on her face even through the phone.

  “You know,” she confessed. “I used to teach. And the grade curves were always my least favorite part of doing that. I always wondered why nobody put something together to make them easier! I suppose you saw a gap in the market, huh?”

  “I suppose I did.” I grinned. “And I’m delighted if I can help out the teachers in the district too.”

  “You have children at a school around here?”

  “Yes, a son. Hunter.”

  “And any spare time the teachers have to focus on their students will benefit him as well,” she rounded off for me. “Well, makes sense. Let me make a few calls and see where this program would be best suited to start out, okay? You’ll hear from me soon.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I replied. She hung up, leaving me feeling as though I could punch the air in victory. Things were starting to slide into place. I hadn’t heard from Karla in a while, Hunter seemed like he was opening up again, and Autumn and I were getting closer and closer to dropping that all-important L-word.

  And if I could pull off this project on top of everything else, that would be perfect. It could be huge if I pulled it off. Sure, it would be hard work getting off the ground and rolling out across the district, but it would be worth it. Not only would I be able to have a big impact on the world around me, and Hunter especially, but it could make me a lot of money. Maybe that was a little greedy, but every time I had a project like this one come through, I thought forward to what it could mean for Hunter—to everything I could do for him with that kind of money. I could send him to whatever college he wanted in the world. I could pay for any summer camp he wished to attend, could afford classes that would cover anything he wanted to learn. Every time I put this money aside, I was assuring a future for my son and the life I wanted him to have. And that made me happy.

  I was about to go downstairs to make coffee and plan out exactly how to roll out the program when my phone buzzed again in my pocket. I grabbed it, assuming it would be the same woman I had been on the line with, maybe calling to mention something she’d forgotten the first time around. Instead, I saw a number I didn’t recognize on the screen. Furrowing my brow, I lifted it to my ear and took the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Holden?”

  I recognized the voice at once. My body tensed from top to bottom, and my heart felt frozen dead solid in my chest. Karla. But I had her number. Where the fuck was she calling from?

  “Karla, what do you want?” I asked. I strained to hear what was in the background of the call, hoping it would give me an indicator of where she was. I could make out a little traffic, but nothing more than that. She must have been calling from a payphone somewhere. But why?

  “I wanted to let you know I’m standing outside of Hunter’s school right now,” she told me. If I hadn’t been scared before, I launched into full-blown panic mode when I heard those words come out of her mouth. No. I wanted to sprint down there, grab my son, and run as far away from the woman who claimed to be his mother as I could. I instantly went to grab my car keys, trying to keep her on the line.

  “What the hell are you doing down there?” I demanded. I racked my brains for where she might be. There was a pay phone maybe two hundred feet down the street from the school. Perhaps she was there. I hurried out to the car as I waited for her to reply, but she seemed determined to make me wait for the response.

  “I think that it’s only fair Hunter know about his mother,” she replied, and her voice was strangely calm as if this whole situation was almost funny to her. I wanted to scream down the line at her, tell her to get away from my son and never go near him again as long as she lived. But I needed to stay calm and get down there.

  “Karla, don’t do this,” I warned her as I turned on the engine and pulled out of the driveway. “You know this is a bad idea. It’s only going to make things worse.”

  “As if they could be any worse than they are right now,” she shot back cruelly. “You’re keeping me away from him, Holden, and you’re letting some new woman into his life at the same time? You don’t think that’s hypocritical?”

  Her voice was taunting now like she knew she had me where she wanted me. I clenched and unclenched my hands on the wheel. If only I could reach through the phone and drag her away from him, away from my son, away from whatever she had in mind.

  “Karla—”

  But before I could get another word out, the phone went dead. With an annoyed grunt, I to
ssed it to the side and dumped it in the seat next to me. All that mattered now was getting down there in time—before she had a chance to get to Hunter. I tried to soothe myself, reminding myself that Autumn was there and that she would do everything she could to take care of my kid any way she was able. That would be enough. It had to be. I had to believe, with everything in me, that it was as I sped through the streets of Portland and toward Karla, Autumn, and Hunter.

  64

  Autumn

  “Hey, you having a good day?” I asked as Hunter approached me with a smile on his face. He nodded.

  “Really good,” he replied, and I couldn’t help smiling. It was such a relief to see him looking happier and more relaxed than he had been in recent memory. It had been clear that the truth about his mother had been weighing heavily on him, but now things had calmed down a little bit, he seemed to be lightening up. I was still a little on edge, but it was my job to be. I was his teacher and more than that too. It would have been wrong if I wasn’t a little overly involved.

  It was break time at school, and I was on playground duty, hanging out by the gate to make sure nobody tried to slip out and grab something from the corner store across the street. Sometimes kids would head down there to get candy when they thought nobody was paying attention, but I was keeping an extra-close watch that day. Nobody was getting in or out of this school that I didn’t know about, that was for damn sure.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked, glancing around the street and inhaling a big lungful of air. It was starting to warm up now that the sun was high in the sky, and the day felt still and sweet, full of promise. As I looked across the street, a cold fear gripped my stomach. It couldn’t be her. Could it?

  I stared for a long moment, trying to figure out whether my mind was playing tricks on me. It had to be some kind of mirage, my mind filling in the blanks where there was nothing to see. Because there was no way in holy hell Karla was standing there, staring at the two of us from the other side of the street. She wouldn’t have dared. Would she?

  Then she started moving toward me, and I swiftly stepped in front of Hunter who stopped in midsentence.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice quivering with nervousness as he waited for me to respond. What the hell did I tell him? That the one woman who should have been nowhere close to him was making her way to us, staring me straight in the eye like she belonged there? I wanted to hustle him back into the school, but that might have given her time to slip through the gate, and getting her out was going to be a lot harder than keeping her at bay.

  “Who’s that lady?” Hunter asked curiously as she got closer, close enough that I could see the bile in her face.

  “Hunter, go inside and find Zoe,” I told him urgently, not bothering with her proper teacher name for that moment. He furrowed his brow at me, and I waved my hands at him.

  “Go, now!” I ordered him, and his face dropped as he did as he was told. I hated speaking to him like that, but he needed to get out of there before something happened, something I couldn’t put a stop to.

  “Autumn?” Karla was suddenly right in front of me as I turned back around to check on her progress. My heart dropped.

  “Karla, what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded. “Does Holden know you’re here?”

  “Yes, he does.” She nodded. My eyes widened. Had he given her permission?

  “Where’s my son?” she demanded. “I saw him here with you a second ago. Where is he now?”

  “He’s in the school, and you’re not getting anywhere near him,” I told her firmly. “Please, just leave. Before I call the police.”

  “What for?” She tossed her hands in the air. “You don’t have a restraining order against me. I want to see my son. That’s all. You know how heartless you’re being right now?”

  I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. She was manipulating me, and I couldn’t let her get away with it. I couldn’t let her get close.

  “Karla, I’m going to ask you one more time,” I warned her. “Get out of here. Leave.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do.” She pushed her face closer to mine, over the fence that was keeping us apart. The gate suddenly felt flimsy like it wasn’t even sturdy enough to keep her where she needed to be.

  “I work here, and I can tell you that we don’t allow anyone on the property who hasn’t been cleared by the school,” I snapped back. “I don’t care what you want. You need to get away from here. Speak to Holden, not to Hunter. He’s a kid, and he doesn’t need this—”

  “You don’t know what my son needs,” she sneered. “I don’t care what Holden’s convinced you. You’ll never be a parent to him. You can’t be. You don’t understand the connection we had.”

  Before, she had at least tried to sweet-talk me a little. Here, she was going for it, not holding back, not giving a shit how I felt or what my relationship with Hunter might have been. She only wanted to get under my skin, and I couldn’t let her do that. I was the responsible adult here, and it was up to me to reject the bullshit she was dripping and remind myself that she was nothing more than a pathetic, manipulative bitch trying to get what she wanted. I could almost guarantee that if Holden had let her see Hunter with no restrictions, she would have grown tired of him by now and moved on. The fact that she had to fight it—that was what she was attracted to. That was what she wanted. She was making a point here, reminding anyone who would listen that she was the one in charge and she was the one who would get her way. No matter what the cost.

  “You haven’t been a mother to him his entire life,” I shot back angrily. “You took ten years to come back into his life. Ten years! You really think he’s done badly without you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know since everyone has been trying to keep me from him,” she replied through gritted teeth. “I won’t stand for this. I’ll sue you, and I’ll sue the school. Holden might have the money to deal with it, but you don’t, do you?”

  I stayed silent. She was right.

  “That’s why you went after someone like Holden,” she taunted me. “You’re after his money, aren’t you? Well, you’ll never have the connection with him that I do. You could never dream of it.”

  “Karla,” I warned her as best I could. It was taking everything I had in me not to take a swing at this woman. I was deadly serious. I had never felt the urge to hurt another human being before, not seriously, but the way she was talking to me, the way she was looking at me like I was some kind of idiot, I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to prove she would never have the kind of relationship I had with Hunter and Holden—with either of them, but that would only prove her point. She wanted me to drop down to her level so she could show I wasn’t worthy for her son. I wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction. Not in a million years. Still, I found my fist clenched at my side, and I noticed her gaze slide down to take it in.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise from behind me.

  “Hunter, come back—”

  I spun around to find Zoe standing in the doorway to the school, a pained expression on her face as Hunter broke away from her and hurried over to me.

  “Autumn?” He grabbed my hand, and even though I knew he was just a little kid, his presence made me feel a bit better. He was on my side, and that was what mattered. In the whole mess of this nightmare, he was the only thing I cared about.

  “Hunter, go back inside,” I ordered him. Zoe went to stride over to us, but I held my hand up to keep her at bay. I knew that I had to handle this as it stood before things went any further.

  “Is this her?” Hunter demanded, looking up at the woman before him. Karla was staring down at him with the most curious expression on her face. I couldn’t have described it even if I’d tried. There was a whole lot going on there, but most of it looked like panic. As though she had been happy to talk a big game when she didn’t think anyone would take her up on it, but now that he was here looking her in the face, she had no fucking clue how to react.

&nb
sp; But all at once, she crouched down, wrapping her fingers around the bars of the gate and staring at Hunter intently.

  “I’m your mommy, Hunter,” she cooed to him, her voice sugary-sweet and clearly fake. I wanted to slap her away from him. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, and I looked down at Hunter, waiting for him to respond. He was eyeing his mother for a long time before he opened his mouth and then finally came out with it.

  “I don’t need you.” He shook his head, his voice small but firm.

  “But I’m your family, baby,” she told him, her voice growing spiked around the edges. I pulled Hunter back an inch, making sure there was plenty of space between the gate and him. She could have reached through and grabbed him if I wasn’t careful, and I wasn’t about to let her any closer to him than she had already gotten.

  “No, you’re not.” He shook his head. “Autumn is. And Dad. Not you.”

  Her face twisted into a mask of rage, and I could tell she hadn’t envisioned this reaction, not in a million years. I smirked, despite myself. It might have been childish, but seeing her not getting what she wanted was so satisfying.

  “I never wanted you anyway,” she spat back at him. Her voice was full of spite, lashing out at this helpless child because he wouldn’t go along with her crazy plan to suddenly be a family again after all that time apart. Something in her voice triggered a reaction in me, the kind of reaction I never imagined in a million years I would have to anyone.

  It all came in such a rush that I hardly had time to process it. I dropped Hunter’s hand and straightened up, grabbed Karla by the collar of her cheap shirt, and swung a fist at her. I hardly noticed the blur of pain punch through my hand as it made contact with her. It wasn’t that hard. I didn’t have it in me to hurt her badly, physically or mentally, but she went reeling back from the gate and staggered dramatically away from me.

  Zoe sped forward and grabbed Hunter by the shoulders, pulling him back inside the school, and I stared as Karla went sprawling across the street. She was waving her arms around to attract the attention of anyone who would look, and I hurried around the gate to catch her before she wound up getting hit by a car or something.