A laugh rolled out of me and I didn’t recognize the sound, or the lightness in my chest. I felt happy, and the sad thing was how foreign the feeling was to me. Welcome, but definitely foreign.
We’d just begun to eat when there was an assertive knock at the door. I glanced at my watch. It was only eight o’clock. Finn danced over to answer it, and I dropped a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. “Let me get it please,” I scolded.
I pulled open the front door and my heart sank. Jeff. He looked haggard, having aged more years in prison than the time he’d actually served. The drugs and alcohol had stolen years from his life, probably, but they’d left those years on his face in the form of sallow skin, sunken eyes and lines around his mouth and eyes. This was not the man I’d loved once upon a time.
“Going in late, huh?” he said in an accusatory tone. “I made a trip up here to see you and you weren’t in the office. Your receptionist said you might be sick, so I came to check on you.”
Jeff glanced at Finn and nodded, then swung his gaze back to me, his eyes narrowed.
I sighed, and all the exhaustion I’d been feeling before the distraction of last night and this morning came rushing back in, the crushing weight settling upon my shoulders again. The man could barely acknowledge his child, and he wanted to fight for custody? “Jeff, what do you want?”
“Who the hell is this?” Jeff asked, leaning into my doorway and spotting Chance at the table. Thank God he’d put his shirt on before he sat down to eat. Chance stood up now, eyes finding mine and asking a silent question. I knew he wanted to help. He would probably take over this entire situation if I wanted him to, but that would only make matters worse.
“This is Chance Palmer,” I said, my voice every bit as defeated as I felt.
Chance strode over and shook Jeff’s hand, the two men staring daggers at one another the whole time.
“Palmer,” Jeff said, drawing out the name, and he squinted—it was his hard thinking look. I used to find it cute. “Of Palmer Construction? Aren’t you the one with the bid on the property up in Kings Cove?”
“Kings Grove,” Chance and I both said automatically.
Jeff looked between us and then down at Finn. “Well,” he said, his gaunt face breaking into a smile that was anything but friendly. “This is a really cozy little scene here, Mike. You’re shacking up and playing family with a contractor, huh? I bet you’ll get some pretty good discounts on services in exchange, won’t you?” He swung his gaze up to Chance, the sneer still in place. “How’s it work, man? Sliding scale or some shit? She go down on you yet? This one’s got a mouth like a—“ Jeff was interrupted by Chance’s hand pushing him backwards out the door onto the porch.
“Finn, go get ready for school,” I said, pushing Finn back into the house. His face was a mask of confusion, and I wanted to comfort him, but first I needed to get rid of Jeff.
I stepped back around the door to see Chance towering over Jeff, his voice calm and strong. “You don’t show up at someone’s house and insult them, I don’t care who you are,” he was saying. “And you might have some care for the way you speak in front of your eight-year old son. Especially about his mother.”
Jeff scoffed, but he took a step back. “Real professional, Mike,” he called past Chance. “Dad will be interested in hearing about this for sure. We’ll see who keeps the fancy job now.” He waved his fingers at me and spun around, heading to a tinny-looking pickup parked at the curb behind Chance’s huge red truck.
As we sat before cold waffles at the table, the morning had been sucked dry of the magic. “He has a point,” I said after a while. “It looks bad, you being here like this.”
Chance was watching me intently, those expressive eyes looking sad. “I’m sorry Mike. I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I should have been smarter, should have—”
“Don’t do that,” he interrupted. “Don’t put yourself down or blame yourself for a situation you can’t control. He showed up—uninvited and unannounced. What you do in the privacy of your own home is up to you. You’re an adult.”
“I love that you think that, but it’s more complicated. I’ve got Finn to worry about, and this won’t look good in the custody hearing.”
“Mom?” Finn was standing in the door to the hallway.
“Hey Finn,” I said, turning to face him. “Sorry about all the hub-bub.”
His face crumpled, but then he sniffed and pulled his shoulders back. His eyes were pleading and huge, and my heart swelled and broke all at once when he asked, “How come Dad didn’t even say hi to me?”
I sighed. I didn’t know how to talk to him about this, but I didn’t want to keep him in the dark either. It would only make things harder if Jeff actually got custody. “I’m sorry, buddy.” I went and knelt in front of him so we were at eye level. “I’m sure he meant to. He was just surprised to find me at home, and he wanted to talk about work stuff.”
“Maybe he didn’t recognize me. It’s been a long time.” The hope and optimism in Finn’s eyes made my heart ache.
“That’s true. We’ll find some time soon for him to say hello properly, okay?”
Finn stared at me a long second, biting his bottom lip, and then asked, “What’s custody?”
“It just means there’s a chance you might get to spend part of the time with me, and part of your time with Daddy,” I said. Though it pained me, I continued. “And you know, Finn, he loves you very much. You might like getting to know him again.”
Finn shook his head lightly, demonstrating he doubted my words every bit as much as I did. “He didn’t even say hi.”
“Mike, I’m sorry,” Chance said, his voice a whisper across the table.
“Not your fault,” I said, hugging Finn and then standing to clear the table as I struggled to keep the tears at bay. Chance helped with the dishes, both of us moving around the other carefully now, as if aware there was something dangerous here, something that might strike one of us at any time.
“I better get going,” he said, once the kitchen was tidy. “Let you get on with your day.”
“Okay,” I said. I needed him to go, needed to attend to the pieces of my life that would undoubtedly be even more scattered and broken as a result of Jeff’s visit this morning. But it was hard to let go of the little fantasy we’d lived for the past day. The fantasy that happiness was a possibility, that domestic content was a real thing, that maybe one day I could have it.
“Thanks for…” Chance trailed off as Finn wrapped himself around the man’s leg. “I feel like I might’ve sprouted a growth of some kind while I was here,” he said, his voice suddenly louder, more cheerful.
I turned and grinned at the false confusion on Chance’s face, the open glee in Finn’s smile. “Oh, yeah, I think I see it,” I said, playing along. “That’s a nasty one.”
“Hey!” Finn said, turning his face against Chance’s jeans.
“Yeah, it’s kind of lumpy and hard. I might need to lance it.” Chance’s hand was on Finn’s back, and I couldn’t help noticing how huge it looked there.
“What’s lance?” Finn looked up at Chance.
Chance shuddered. “You don’t want to know, little growth. It means poke you with a pointy stick until your insides come out.”
“Ew! Gross!” Finn released Chance’s leg, and Chance knelt down to look in his face. “I’ll see you soon,” he signed, and a jolt went through me as the two years when Finn didn’t speak came rushing back in a flood of emotion.
Finn signed back to Chance. “Okay. Soon. Promise. I’ll miss you.”
“Me too,” Chance signed back, and then he pulled my son into those strong tanned arms and held him close in a way I didn’t think Jeff ever had.
This was bad. This was really, really bad. Everything in my body wanted this man to do so much more than bid on the resort property that might save my job. My heart was beginning to want him too, and it was taking e
verything I had to stand still and hold the door open to send him away.
“See you soon,” he said to me, standing. And then he touched my face. Just a light caress, but he might as well have called forth a bolt of lightning for the effect it had on me. I grasped the door to keep myself from slumping to the ground as my knees turned to jelly.
“Okay,” I managed. And then I watched him climb into his big truck and drive away.
“Are you going to marry Chance?” Finn asked suddenly.
I came to my senses. I needed to focus on saving my sinking life. I couldn’t stand here mooning over Chance. “No, buddy. We just work together.”
That’s all it should be. That was all it could be. I was a professional and we had a professional relationship. Plus, I was about to enter the fight of my life. I was going to have to fight for my place at McLaren, and I was about to fight for my son. There was no time for this…whatever this was. I closed the door and vowed to get on with my life.
I went back to my room after directing Finn to brush his teeth for school, and finished getting ready for work. As I picked up my purse to head out the door, my phone rang. It was Harvey, clearly Jeff had gone straight to his father, just as he’d promised.
“Mike?” he said, his voice low and emotionless. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 11
Chance
I stopped through the office in the valley before heading back up to Kings Grove, and each step I took away from Mike’s house seemed to invite more doubt and confusion into my head.
I knew I liked her—I wanted her. More than I had wanted anything since I’d met Rebecca. I also knew I wanted to build the McLaren property.
But Mike wasn’t a ripe apple hanging for me to pluck easily and keep. She wasn’t even a beautiful woman smiling my way and making it clear she was available. On the availability spectrum, Michaela Grayson was pretty fucking far from available. Her life was messy and complicated, and if this morning’s run-in with her ex-husband was any indication, it was only going to get more complicated in the near future. I drove home with a sinking feeling settling in my bones.
Despite the domestic bliss I’d found playing house with the Graysons the night before, I was experienced enough to know it was a mirage. Finn and Mike were still someone else’s family, and until that got worked out, the last thing they needed was me, plunging in with unrealistic expectations about what could or couldn’t be between us. I squeezed my eyes shut thinking about Finn, my heart swelling in my chest. I was falling in love with both of them, and the realization was terrifying.
I parked in front of the office and sat in the cab of my truck for a long time, gripping the steering wheel and forcing myself to breathe, to think.
The last time I’d fallen in love—the first time—it had been like flying, like walking a tightrope, your heart full of the terror that you might fall, and then realizing you wanted to fall, and that the flight on the way down was all you ever needed, and that the ground wasn’t where you thought it had been in the first place. Falling in love had turned my world upside down. Rebecca made me question everything I’d ever known, everything I’d believed—about myself, about women, about love and life itself. I’d allowed myself to love her with abandon, with my entire being. When she’d been ripped away, everything inside me was crushed and broken.
Maybe I’d been slowly healing over time, I didn’t know. I hadn’t actively tried after I quit therapy, I’d just continued, playing the part of Chance Palmer and trying hard not to feel anything. But seeing Sam and Miranda together opened a piece of my scarred heart, and maybe started to mend it. Seeing them happy was both painful and wonderful. It reminded me what was possible, and made me think maybe it would be possible for me again someday too.
And then Mike had appeared, with Finn at her side, and she was such an enigmatic mix of strength and fragility, beauty and pain, that I’d been drawn close without thinking about the consequences. But that scar inside me was tearing painfully open, and I thought with a shudder about the likely outcomes of this situation. Few of them were good, and most of them involved me ending up alone, and worse off than I already was. I couldn’t bear the pain of a loss like Rebecca again. I honestly didn’t believe I would survive it. It didn’t matter what Rebecca had made me promise—I was still here and she was gone. She hadn’t known what she was asking when she pulled that promise from my lips—before she’d finally closed her eyes.
After all, she wasn’t the one who had to go on, who had to move forward feeling like half of her was dead.
I shook my head, trying to clear the dark thoughts taking up space there, and released my death grip on the steering wheel, wishing I could rewind and just live in the certainty of that morning. I’d woken happy, and seeing Finn and Mike first thing had amplified that feeling. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how close I was to the utter brink of disaster. I knew I needed to pull back, to stay safe.
The Palmer offices were empty when I entered, even though Sam’s car was out front. I stood in the lobby for a long moment, pulling myself together. That’s when I heard the giggle from behind Sam’s closed office door. Miranda.
I let out a long weary sigh. I couldn’t take their happy togetherness right now. I turned and went back to the truck, heading into the little village beyond the main town of Kings Grove. I guided the truck slowly over potholed roads, letting the familiar path pull me forward. I drove by Cam’s crew, working at Mrs. Teague’s house to rebuild her back deck, and Cam waved. I guided the truck to a stop on the side of the road and got out.
“Hey Cam, how’s it going here?”
The older man tried for a smile, but it looked like it pained him. He had intense blue eyes and dark hair cut short on his head and worn longer on his face, making him look tough, severe. He was broad and tall, but his shoulders slumped slightly, giving him the appearance of a man who’d given up. Maybe he had.
“Chance,” he said, coming over to talk. “Thanks for the cookies, man.”
I’d forgotten about those. “Oh yeah,” I said, not sure what to say next. One man delivering cookies to another man—it was a bit strange. “Sure.”
He was peering at me, his eyes narrowed like he was trying to figure something out. “You doing okay?” he asked, and the irony of this openly troubled man asking me if I was okay was not lost on me.
“Yeah,” I said quickly, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Talk?” Cam asked, shrugging.
In silent agreement, we both turned and started to walk away from Mrs. Teague’s house, from the other men on the crew. We followed the little road, which made a loop around a meadow, and would bring us straight back to where we’d started, allowing the walk to be mindless. The movement made words come more easily.
“What’s going on?” Cam asked. “Maddie said she thought you wanted to talk to me anyway.”
I glanced at him, remembering it was him I was supposed to be worried about, not myself. “Right, yeah.” I took a breath. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. And not to me,” I said. “But I know things have been hard for you, and I guess maybe understand a little about what you might feel about everything.” I didn’t want to say her name. It felt like bringing up the name of his dead wife was crossing some kind of line, like walking into someone’s house uninvited.
“Jess,” he supplied, making it easy.
“Right. Jess,” I said, my voice low and quiet. The tall trees that stood around the edges of the wild green meadow seemed to bend down slightly, lowering their full supple branches to help dampen the conversation, keeping our words here, between us only. “It’s just…I had a fiancée. Rebecca. She was killed almost two years ago in a car accident. And I…” I trailed off, wondering how to use simple words to finish the sentence that was meant to explain how everything inside me was less than it had been before, how every part of me had been touched by Rebecca and left changed in her absence. “It’s been hard to adjust to her being go
ne.” Master of understatement.
“Right.”
One word answers were going to make this awfully one-sided. I took another deep breath, preparing to try once more, when Cam started talking for real.
“Jess wasn’t just a girl, you know? I mean, we were married, so she was my wife too, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. She was like—she almost wasn’t human, I guess.” He paused and I waited, our feet still making a steady plodding rhythm on the soft asphalt of the village road. “She was more than I ever realized a person could be. Like a whole different species of human. She was so good, and real, and present. She taught me how to live,” he said, looking up to glance at me and then quickly look away.
“I get it,” I said, thinking about how Rebecca had shown me that I was a person completely different from who I thought I was supposed to be. She made it okay to evolve.
“In a way,” Cam said, thoughtfully, “she showed me who I was. And I guess I’m finding it hard to figure out who I’m supposed to be without her.” His voice cracked a little on the last word and I pretended not to notice. That was what men did. We gave each other room to break and acted like everything was fine.
“How did you,” he started, and then turned to face me, stopping our forward motion. “How did you figure it out?” he asked, his bright eyes pleading with my own.
“Figure what out?”
“How to keep up? How to keep going? I just feel her around me all the time, find myself starting to laugh about something and thinking about how she would have loved it—and then I realize all over again that she’s gone. And sometimes…” his voice got quiet. “Sometimes I wish I’d never met her. Because then at least I wouldn’t know what I’m missing.”
I dropped a hand on his shoulder, as his words bounced around inside me. “Yeah. I get that. And I don’t know. I don’t know how to move forward. I guess you just do it.”
“I want to,” he said, his voice rough and raw. “I really do want to.”
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