Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
I was halfway through my third cup of coffee when I heard Cole’s boots hit the floor upstairs.
The kid moved like a baby foal, all long legs and clumsy determination.
He stumbled down the stairs in jeans that didn’t quite reach his ankles—I’d have to go shopping again—and a T-shirt with a triceratops drawing on the front.
His backpack was already slung over both his shoulders, looking far too heavy for the first day of school.
“You wanna eat?” I asked. Sometimes when Cole was nervous, food sat too heavy in his stomach, and he’d end up throwing up. I’d learned early on not to push.
Cole shrugged his bony shoulder, which I took as a yes. If he didn’t want food, he’d scrunch up his nose and actually tell me no.
He climbed up onto the barstool at the counter and started flipping through the dinosaur book he never left behind. His lips moved when he read, eyes scanning the page.
I cracked two eggs into a pan and grabbed a clean glass from the cabinet. “You nervous?”
He hesitated. Then nodded, just a slight bounce of his head.
“Remember, Buddy, this school’s different. Lots of other students like you.”
Around the time Cole started kindergarten, his mom noticed he could have trouble focusing if there were too many distractions.
He was also slow to pick up letters and numbers.
She’d had his vision tested, but that wasn’t the issue.
After a lot of back and forth with his pediatrician and his school, Cole was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD.
Jenna and I had worked with his teacher and the district to get him on an IEP, but her death a couple of years ago had set him back. Making the situation even worse, around that time, some of his classmates started bullying him for his perceived weaknesses.
After a lengthy discussion with the principal, his teacher, and his intervention specialist that left me feeling like I wanted to put my fist through a wall, I decided to enroll him in Wild Ridge Academy, a progressive K–12 program that believed education should adapt to the student, not the other way around.
My friend Tommy’s daughter went there and she loved it.
“What does that mean?” Cole asked, looking up from his book.
I set the plate of scrambled eggs down in front of him and handed him a fork. “Ones who think a bit differently … process things at their own clip, like you do. You’re gonna do real well, bud.”
His face flushed as he took a bite of his breakfast, but he didn’t say anything else. When his shoulders visibly relaxed, so did mine.
By the time we walked out of the house to hit the road, the sun was burning the fog off the pasture. Three Pines Ranch looked beautiful in the morning light—vast fields, low fences, the mountains in the distance rising up to meet the sky.
The ranch spanned nearly a thousand acres just outside Bridger Falls, a patchwork of pasture, scrubland, and timber that had been in my family for four generations.
My great-granddad built the original barn with his own two hands.
Every fence post, every trail through the hills—there was a story behind it.
It was the kind of land that got in your blood.
You didn’t just live on it. You lived for it.
I didn’t need much else in the world besides it, my brothers, and my kid.
Not anymore.
We drove the whole way into town with the windows cracked, silence sitting easy between us.
Cole read his book, and I sipped from yet another cup of coffee.
Pulling up to the school and sliding into a parking spot next to a truck that could be my truck’s twin, I turned to Cole and asked, “You want me to walk in with you?”
At his age, I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to escort me into school, but I had to constantly remind myself that at his age, I was about three inches taller, ten pounds heavier, still had my mama, and wasn’t starting a new school.
“Would you?” he asked, his eyes shifting between me and the line of kids filing in with their parents … or in the case of some of them, their young nannies.
“Of course I will,” I said, pulling my gaze back to my son.
Once inside, the halls buzzed with typical first day of school energy—parents taking pictures of their kids, other kids chasing each other, staff trying to maintain order with cheerful voices and genuine smiles. A woman I recognized as Principal Carol Connors waved us over.
“Good to see you again, Jake.”
“Hello, Carol,” I greeted her, rocking back on the heels of my boots. “Uh, I mean Mrs. Connors.” I scratched my temple, embarrassed over my slip.
The vibe at Wild Ridge was much more chill than Cole’s old school, but despite its many differences and relaxed approach to education, I still figured you should address the staff respectfully.
Carol—uh, Mrs. Connors—chuckled and waved away my obvious discomfort. “Just Carol’s fine.” She turned to my son. “You must be Cole. Welcome to Wild Ridge Academy. Your teacher should be out any second to greet you.”
That was another difference between Cole’s old school and here.
With a ten-to-one student-to-teacher ratio, the teachers here had time to greet each of their students individually each morning.
Cole’s last teacher had twenty more kids to wrangle, and there’d been a lot of shouting and clapping to try and get them wrangled for the day.
“Hi,” Cole said, clutching the straps of his backpack tightly.
I settled my hand on his shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze.
That was when I saw her—Eden Fucking James—walking toward us. My hand tightened on Cole’s shoulder—probably too tight, because he glanced up at me with a questioning look on his small face. I forced myself to relax my grip.
Christ . Ten years, and she still had the power to undo me completely.
I’d been running into Eden’s Aunt Mags around town for years, and every damn time, I’d spend the next couple of months stalking Eden’s Instagram like some lovesick teenager, torturing myself with glimpses of her life in Chicago.
The sleek apartment. The polished husband with the smarmy smile. The dream career she’d chosen over me.
But seeing her again in person? There was no preparing for that.
Her blonde hair was pulled into a low bun at the nape of her neck, a few pieces falling softly around her face.
She wore a loose patterned blouse tucked into flowing wide-leg pants cinched at the waist by a thin leather belt, and even though it’d been a decade, I still remembered exactly how that waist felt under my hands.
How she used to arch against me when I’d roll those lush hips over my cock straining against the zipper of my Wranglers.
My body responded before my brain could stop it, heat pooling low in my gut, as if no time had passed at all.
Get a grip, asshole , I admonished myself. You’re in a fucking school .
I dropped my hand from Cole’s shoulder and shoved it into my pocket—both to keep it from shaking and also to adjust myself as inobtrusively as possible.
I took a breath, and another, willing my body to behave.
Focused on the steady thrum of conversation around me, the clatter of shoes on tile, and the buzz of parents telling their children goodbye.
And then I heard her laugh.
The sound hit me like a sucker punch to the gut.
What the hell was she doing here? In Bridger Falls? At my son’s school?
That’s when the pieces clicked together. If she was back in town, that must mean her dream career back in Chicago hadn’t worked out.
I should have felt vindicated. Should have felt some satisfaction that the life she’d chosen over me—over us—had fallen apart. Instead, all I felt was the familiar ache of wanting something I couldn’t have.
When she turned away from her companion with a smile, her gaze landed on me.
Her steps faltered, her lips parted, and her eyes widened.
She stood there staring at me like I was a ghost for only two …
three seconds, tops, but it felt like an eternity.
Then she blinked, shook her head slightly, and continued forward.
I took a step back, instinctively putting more distance between us, but there was nowhere to go in the crowded hallway. I couldn’t just run away. My free hand clenched into a fist at my side.
When she stood in front of us, she looked down at my son, all trace of her surprise gone from her expression. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to look casual instead of like a man barely holding it together.
Her smile for him was wide and welcoming, and if I hadn’t seen her just stumble in her tracks like a record scratching, I never would have known she’d been thrown for a loop by my presence. “Hi there,” she said gently. “You must be Cole. I’m Ms. James.”
He nodded shyly, and she knelt to meet his eyes. “I like your shirt. We’ve got a dinosaur model in the classroom that I bet you’re gonna love.”
“Stegosaurus?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper.
She smiled. “Close. But you’ll have to come see for yourself.”
Eden stood back up, and her eyes found mine again. This time, she didn’t flinch. Her expression was … unreadable. Once upon a time, I swore I could read all this woman’s expressions.
I gave her a nod. Nothing more. Then I turned and walked out of Cole’s new school before I could say something I’d regret, fighting the urge the entire time not to run.
I got back in my truck, gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles went white. My heart was pounding hard enough that I could hear its echo in my ears and feel it in my temples.
Ten years of telling myself I was over her. Ten years of choosing women who looked nothing like her—tall, lanky brunettes or redheads—anyone whose softness, whose smile didn’t remind me of what I’d lost. Anyone who didn't make my blood run hot just by existing in the same space.
But seeing her again? My body remembered everything my mind had tried to forget. The way she tasted. The sounds she made. The way she felt wrapped around me. I was thirty-three years old, and one look at Eden James still made me hard as a teenager.
She’s your son’s teacher , I told myself with a disgusted shake of my head.
As if I wasn’t reeling enough, that’s when the enormity of the situation really hit me—Eden James was Cole’s teacher.
The one person who could destroy me all over again was going to be in our lives every single day.
Parent-teacher conferences. School events.
Drop-off and pickup. There was no avoiding her now.
I sucked in a shaky breath and started the truck. Ten years I’d managed to survive without her, and now the universe had dropped her right back into the center of my world. The universe had a fucked up sense of humor.