Chapter 4
PRESLEY
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Of all the people in this town who could have found my child, it had to be Jace Hayes.
Jace fucking Hayes.
I hate my life.
The relief that had been filling me halts, my body tensing up again as the grown-up version of the man I like the least stares me down. No…the man I like the second least. Cody has now claimed the top spot, dethroning Jace after a very long reign.
Jace Hayes. Who unfortunately is just as sexy as he was seventeen years ago. Maybe sexier. Shit, that’s inconvenient.
“Otis…” I let out on a strangled sigh, this wild mix of emotions still raging underneath the surface.
“Mama!”
My little boy’s voice is cheery and playful, but he doesn’t continue to reach for me the way I expected. Instead, he holds tight to Jace—who is holding on equally as tight.
Be still my heart…
Only, I don’t have time for that. Nor should I even be entertaining the idea. There shouldn’t be anything swoony about Jace Hayes holding my child. About my child holding on to him. Except, there is.
Making this whole moment that much more inconvenient.
“Baby, what did I say about staying with Paps? About holding on tight?”
“I hold tight.”
As if to show me, he wraps his free arm around Jace’s neck, smearing frosting across his neck. I bite my lips, holding back my laugh, not only at how cute the moment is, but at the look on Jace’s face. A look that seems equally amused and annoyed that he now has frosting all over him.
“He’s yours?” Jace asks, not bothering to hide the accusation from his voice.
No, dummy, the kid is just calling me Mama for shits and grins…
“He is. Meet Otis Benjamin Callahan the second. Named for his grandpa.”
“Paps!”
My father appears by my side, letting out a long, relieved exhale. I can feel the tension release from him, his shoulder dropping as he turns to look at me, his face morphing back to the kind, gentle older man that I know. The grandpa who has been reunited with his favorite person.
“Oh, Jace, thank you,” Dad says, hand resting on his chest. “You have no idea the scare we’ve had.”
“No problem, Otis,” Jace replies, his polite smile incredibly disarming. “Little Man here just wanted to play with the duckies.”
Little Man…fuck me…
My tummy flips, the nickname hitting me right in all my feels, like an arrow hitting a bullseye. Making it that much more annoying. He has no right to be bonding with my baby, giving him pet names, or thinking that he has any kind of…anything.
Nope. He found him, that’s it.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful. There are worse people on this earth that could have picked up my kid. But at the bottom of the good people list is Jace.
“Duckies? Well, buddy, what do you say we go see the duckies?” Dad says, reaching out for Otis.
Otis lights up, nodding emphatically, but still holding on to Jace. A knot forms in my chest, uncertainty taking over. I’ve never seen Otis not want to go to Paps. Ever. Hell, I’ve been left in the dust more times than I can count because Paps showed up.
“Otis!” A beautiful, older blonde woman greets my dad, her voice a lovely, singsongy coo.
Everything about her is just as graceful and stunning as I remember from years ago, but other than being Jace’s mother, I can’t remember her name to save my life.
Looking between the boys, recognition dawns on her, the bright smile on her face widening.
“Otis and Otis…I don’t know why I didn’t put those two together. This must be your little guy.”
“Indeed it is, Miss Belle.”
Miss Belle! That’s it…
“He and Presley just moved back to town. It’s gonna be nice having them close.”
“Oh, I bet. I have to say, I’m a little jealous.
I’m looking forward to being promoted to Glam-ma.
” She turns and looks at Otis, giving him a grandmotherly once-over, her smile never wavering.
“You, good sir…” she says, tickling my preschooler’s tummy.
He giggles, loving the attention. “…need some cleaning up. Let’s get you a napkin. ”
“O’tay.”
Dad reaches out for him again, and this time, Otis willingly piles into his arms, smearing cinnamon roll over the both of them in the process. Thankfully, my father laughs, a deep, jovial sound that makes him sound like Santa.
I watch the three of them step to the side to start the clean-up process, nerves and insecurity rising in me as I’m left alone with Jace.
Time to put aside any hurt feelings I may have been harboring for nearly two decades over events that if I stop and think about, were probably a lot more inconsequential than they felt like back then.
Ones that I hate to admit still live rent free in my mind.
Suck it up, buttercup…
“Thank you,” I say, mustering up all of the manners I possess. “It means a lot that—”
“You need to watch your kid.”
Excuse me?!
I blink, hard. Did he really just say that? He did. Jace Hayes really just scolded me—in public—for something he doesn’t have any clue about.
“W-w-what?” I stutter, so taken aback by his harsh words cutting me off.
“You heard me.” He steps in closer, his face scrunching in serious annoyance. “You need to watch your kid. The farmers’ market is busy, and there’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s not a place to just let him run wild.”
“I do not let him run wild,” I defend.
“Doesn’t look that way to me.”
“You don’t know anything about us.”
Not that such trivial details have ever stopped him before. He made assumptions then, and he’s making them now. Jackass…
“Doesn’t take much to see that you’re being an irresponsible parent. You and your husband need to keep a closer watch on him. This is how things happen.”
Oh, no, he didn’t…
I don’t know what to lose my shit about first. Calling me an irresponsible parent, or the husband comment.
My father has been the compliance officer for Hayes Industries for years—it’s why we moved to Hickory Hills in the first place.
I also know how close he is to Auggie, the patriarch of the family and the man who is still owner/operator and CEO.
Meaning, there is no way the soap opera that has been my life for the last three plus years hasn’t been discussed.
There is no way that my being a single mother isn’t public knowledge.
Ire flashes through me, my blood starting to boil at Jace’s words. I am not an irresponsible parent. Far from. My child knows he’s supposed to hold on to an adult at all times. He knows that he’s not supposed to let us out of his sight. I always make sure one of us is with him.
That said, he’s three. And the expression threenager is a thing for a reason. Otis is a good kid, but he isn’t different from any other kid his age figuring out their own personality, how to test boundaries and express a weird desire for independence, considering he can’t even tie his shoes yet.
“I am not an irresponsible parent,” I bite back.
“Evidence points to the contrary.”
Oh, fuck him. Seriously. I don’t know where he gets off saying shit like this, but I am not going to stand for it.
“Are you a parent? Huh…huh?” I snap. I know the answer—he’s not. Miss Belle just said so. Which means he has zero idea what it’s like. “No, you’re not. Which means this conversation is over.”
I don’t wait for a response. Because there is absolutely nothing he can say that is going to rectify this.
I’m still grateful that he found Otis and made sure he was out of harm’s way, and I said my piece in thanking him.
But that doesn’t mean that I need to stand here and take his unfounded criticism.
Who cares that he’s a Hayes and that they basically own this town. Or that Hayes Industries is my new employer. Jace himself isn’t.
I turn on my heel, storming off to find the rest of my family. The one that knows how hard I work to be a good mom. How hard I’ve fought on Otis’s behalf. How I will never stop.
“See, I told you everything would be okay,” my mother says, rubbing her hand up and down my back. “I know it’s scary, but we found him. That’s all that matters.”
“I know, I just…” I trail off, not wanting to rehash that last conversation.
It’s bad enough that I’ll relive it in my mind for days, thinking of all the things I could have said. All the comebacks I wish I had come up with in the moment.
“I know the two of you didn’t exactly see eye to eye in high school,” my father starts, shifting Otis on his hip. “But Jace Hayes has turned into a fine young man. You should give him a chance.”
Give him a chance? Not likely. Especially since he doesn’t seem to be giving me one.
And didn’t exactly see eye to eye? Talk about an understatement. I wouldn’t call starting a rumor that I cheated on my SATs and that I bribed our teachers for my grades not seeing eye to eye.
I earned every single fraction of my 4.1 GPA.
Jace can be as mad as he wants that Knox County High School didn’t offer the same weighted classes I took at my previous school, bumping my grade point average up above a 4.
0, knocking him out of the top spot in the rankings.
There’s also no way to cheat on the SATs.
It’s been seventeen years, and I know I shouldn’t care. I’ve moved on. I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s from one of the top digital marketing programs in the country, a solid career, and a fantastic little boy. High school doesn’t matter anymore.
But I will never forget the way he looked at me when it was announced that I had won Super STAR student—the award given to the high school senior with the highest GPA and best test scores—nor will I forget what he said to me.
Karma’s only a bitch when you are. I hope you get everything you deserve.
Those words still sting. As does the memory of how quickly my heart shattered hearing them.
Jace wasn’t just my competition for the top spot academically; he was without question the object of my teenage desires.
He was the first boy I noticed when I moved to town, his dark brown eyes stealing my heart in an instant.
Those same eyes that I thought about every night, even after his spewed venom.
The very ones I fantasized about looking into after he apologized, telling me about how he really liked me, and how his actions had been nothing but an older version of the clichéd playground hairpulling.
Teenage Presley was willing to forgive. She was too smitten to do anything else. But that apology never came. I spent senior year getting the cold shoulder from Jace and his friends, dirty looks from the other girls, and being left to eat my lunch alone. I couldn’t leave for college fast enough.
“That’s not how I would put it, Dad,” I reply, not knowing how else to respond. He doesn’t know the whole saga—just enough to know that there was no love lost between us. So to him, maybe that is the best way to put it. “But if I never have to talk to Jace again, it might be too soon.”
“That’s gonna be tough as the social media manager for Hayes.”
I look at him, the comment making me wonder.
Yes, Jace is a Hayes and works for the family company—doing I don’t even know what—but that doesn’t mean we’ll be working together.
I’m running social media campaigns. The only people I’ll be interacting with is the marketing department.
Maybe the brother who runs the brewery and the one that owns the camping store.
Oh, and self-defense. Bronwyn, my new boss, specifically mentioned wanting to do a series on self-defense.
“I doubt we’ll cross paths.”
Stopping in front of the duck pool, my dad puts Otis down, my mother taking his little hand and leading him over to see the ducklings again. I watch him, careful not to take my eyes off him for a single second this time.
“The Hayes kids are very involved in the day-to-day. Each one of them actually works in the department they’re over. They aren’t just figureheads.”
Oh.
So, he’s a department head. Well…that might be an issue.
“Which department is his?”
“Personal Safety and Security.”
Oh, shit. Personal safety—that means he oversees the self-defense. Well, that sucks.
Except…I’m a professional. I can put my dislike of him aside to put the best product forward. There’s a reason I was the one hired into this role—and it has nothing to do with my dad working for the company. I am damn good at my job.
“Well, I’ll figure it out.”
“I know you will, Pres. You’re going to be amazing. This is a whole new start for you. The one you and Otis deserve.”
Throwing his arm around me, he presses a kiss to the top of my head and then goes and joins Mama and Otis by the pool. I sigh, letting his words soak in, my heart full at the sight of my family all together again.
He’s exactly right. I do deserve this.
And I’m not going to let Jace Hayes ruin my fresh start.