Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Jake Mercer was the last person I expected to see when I stepped out of the front doors of the school at the end of the day.
He was leaning back against the front of his truck, one boot crossed over the other, the fingers of his right hand drumming a restless rhythm on his folded arm.
The brim of his hat cast his eyes in shadow, but I could see the tension in the set of his jaw.
We hadn’t spoken since the fundraiser meeting a few days ago, and the few times I’d seen him at drop-off and pickup, he’d barely spared me a second glance.
As I approached, he looked a bit unsettled … as if he was sorting through a tangle of thoughts and not coming away with any answers.
I stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. “Hey,” I said, my tone cautious.
He cleared his throat and pushed off his truck, meeting me at the curb. “Hey. You got a minute?”
I nodded, and forced myself not to fidget with my hair. “Yeah. What’s up?”
He glanced around, giving me the impression that whatever he had to say, he didn’t want an audience for. That wouldn’t be a problem. The kids were on an overnight field trip at the museum, and I was fairly certain I was the only teacher still on campus since I’d had a ton of grading to catch up on.
Jake cleared his throat. “I wanted to apologize,” he said, his thumb working along the edge of his belt buckle. “For the other day. For shutting you down when you were just trying to do your job. I was kind of an asshole.”
“It’s fine, Jake,” I said, my grip tightening on my purse strap. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not,” he replied, his voice dropping low. “But I didn’t like how that played out. How I felt about it afterward.”
The breeze picked up, chasing leaves across the lot.
The days were still hot, but as evening approached, there was a crispness to the air that hadn’t been there even a week ago, that particular bite that warned of a long winter ahead.
In the distance, the aspens on the mountainside were already touched with gold.
We stood there, the silence stretching long enough to turn awkward. I shifted my purse higher on my shoulder and shuffled my feet, preparing to walk away.
“You settling in okay?” he asked suddenly, stopping me in my tracks.
“I am,” I said slowly, weighing my words. “It’s strange being back, of course, but the kids are great. Your son, especially.”
That tugged a small smile out of him. “Yeah. He’s something.”
I hesitated. “He mentioned you tried to find me after school yesterday.”
“Yeah, but I saw you with someone. Thought maybe it wasn’t the right time.” His jaw tightened as he said it, the intensity of his expression catching me off guard.
“Oh, that was probably Ben,” I explained, though I wasn’t sure why I was offering up the information. Jake didn’t care who I was talking to or why; only that he hadn’t wanted to interrupt. “He was trying to convince me to come out and sing karaoke with him and his husband.”
His eyes darted back to mine. There was a flicker of something—relief, maybe—that softened the set of his shoulders.
“I seem to recall you loving karaoke,” he mused, his ears turning a bit pink, like he regretted admitting he knew things about me, or rather, the me I used to be.
“I used to like getting drunk. The karaoke was a natural progression. I’m afraid my singing days are over.”
For a second, neither of us spoke. Then he shifted, like he wasn’t sure how to keep going but had something left to ask.
“Did you ever … umm … think about me?” he asked suddenly, his voice stumbling over the words. He lifted his chin, and I could suddenly see everything written across his face—hope and dread warring in those amber eyes I’d never quite forgotten.
“Jake.”
“Just wondering,” he added quickly, his neck flushing above his collar as he looked away, wincing as if he regretted the words the second they left his mouth.
“I used to look you up sometimes. You went off and built this whole exciting life with your fancy job and condo. I’d see you smiling in pictures with that guy … figured you had everything you wanted.”
“Of course I thought about you,” I said finally, my fingers automatically tucking a strand of hair behind my ear—an old nervous habit I’d never managed to kick.
“Particularly when I’d hear Tim McGraw.” I chuckled, my face splitting into a grin as I recalled all the nights we’d driven the backroads around Three Pines with the windows rolled down, my hand riding the wind.
But then my smile fell as I also remembered what usually happened next on those nights … the way Jake made my body come alive under his expert touch.
His shoulders tensed, and his gaze dropped to the ground. He kicked at a pebble with the toe of his boot, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he wasn’t sure he should say. When he finally looked back up, there was something new in his expression that made my chest tighten.
“It looked like a good life.”
It was, in a way, but those old photos didn’t tell the whole story. I’d curated those moments carefully. I knew what angles and filters made my life look fuller than it felt.
“Parts of it were good,” I said softly, more to myself than to him.
And they were. Aside from the way my marriage ended, I’d been happy in Chicago. Well, happy-ish. Most of the time. Some of the time.
But standing here now, with Jake looking at me with something that resembled quiet concern, I realized how much of that happiness had been me trying to convince myself I’d made the right choice in leaving here in the first place.
Jake was quiet for a long moment. “What parts weren’t?” he asked softly.
The question hung between us, and I found myself caught between the instinct to deflect and an unexpected urge to tell him the truth. Maybe it was the way he was looking at me—without judgment, just genuine concern. Or maybe I was just tired of carrying it alone.
“My marriage fell apart,” I said finally.
“Or maybe it was never really solid in the first place. Turns out we had fundamentally incompatible goals in life. And my job …” I lifted my shoulders and then let them drop, my palms slapping against my thighs.
“It paid well, but I spent most days teaching from a prescribed lesson plan, feeling like I was just going through the motions.” I blew out a breath.
“What you saw on Instagram was me living someone else’s idea of what my life should look like. ”
His jaw tightened, and I could see him processing my words, probably wondering how much of it traced back to the choice I’d made to leave him. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually.
His kindness was almost harder to bear than anger would have been.
“I was sorry, too, to hear about your wife,” I said quietly. “Cole talks about her a lot.”
Jake’s brow furrowed, confusion flickering across his face. “My wife?”
“Uh, Jenna?” I clarified, suddenly worried I had the woman’s name wrong. “Cole’s mom?”
Understanding dawned in his eyes, followed by something that looked almost like embarrassment. He shook his head, running a hand along his jaw. “Oh. Jenna wasn’t my wife.”
I blinked. “She wasn’t?”
“No.” He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable.
“We were … friends. Real good friends, in fact. Had been since we were kids. Over the years, we’d hook up sometimes when neither of us was seeing anyone else.
” His voice grew quieter. “When she got pregnant, it was a surprise to both of us. But we decided to make it work—as co-parents, not as a couple.”
I stared at him, trying to process information that was reshaping everything I thought I knew. “But Cole says?—”
“During the lockdown, he and Jenna moved in with me and my brothers at the ranch. Made more sense than trying to juggle custody when everything was so crazy.” His jaw tightened.
“She died that winter … car accident on an icy road. Cole’s memories of that time are a bit fuzzy.
” He shrugged, but I could see the pain in his eyes.
“I think in his mind, we were just one big happy family. He doesn’t really remember the details of how we all lived before then, or that Jenna and I weren’t actually together. ”
His voice grew softer. “Her death was real hard, I won’t lie. She was a good friend, and Cole lost his mom. But it wasn’t …” He trailed off, then met my eyes directly. “It wasn’t romantic grief, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The ground felt unsteady beneath my feet. For the last month, I’d carried this image of Jake falling in love after I left, getting married, and building the family he’d so desperately wanted.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
Jake studied my face, and I saw the exact moment he realized what I’d been thinking. His expression softened, but there was something else there, too—maybe hurt that I’d assumed the worst of him.
“Seeing you again … it’s been harder than I thought it would be,” he continued quietly.
He looked down at his hands, then back up at me. “I told myself I was over you. Spent ten years trying to convince myself that what we had wasn’t real, wasn’t worth mourning.” His voice grew rougher. “That you were right to leave, that I wasn’t enough.”
He stepped closer, his right hand reaching up to cup my face.
“But I was lying. To myself, to everyone.” His thumb brushed across my cheek.
“But you’re still here.” He placed his left palm flat against his chest, where his heart was located.
“And I don’t know what the hell to do about it.
The truth is, there hasn't been anyone since you. No one who mattered.”
I stared at my bedroom ceiling. Sleep felt impossible when Jake’s words kept echoing in my head like a song stuck on repeat.
There hasn't been anyone who mattered since you.
I rolled onto my side, pulling the pillow over my head as if I could muffle my own thoughts. But there was no escaping the way his voice had gone rough when he said it or the vulnerability that flickered across his face before he looked away.
Ever since Aunt Mags told me about Jake’s son, I’d carried a story in my head of Jake moving on after I left, finding someone better suited to him, to the life he was destined for.
I’d pictured him falling in love with his son’s mother, maybe even being a tiny bit grateful that I’d freed him up to find his person—someone who’d give him the family and future he desperately wanted.
The narrative had been oddly comforting in its own twisted way. It meant that my leaving hadn’t destroyed him. But now that story lay in pieces around me.
The thought made my chest ache in a way I wasn't prepared for.
I sat up, running my hands through my hair. I threw off the covers and padded to the kitchen, needing to move, to do something with the restless energy thrumming under my skin. I filled the kettle with shaking hands, my mind spinning through every interaction we’d had since I'd been back.
His hesitation around me suddenly made more sense.
The way he’d pulled back at the fundraiser meeting, the careful distance he maintained at school pickup, that flash of something that looked suspiciously like jealousy when he’d asked me about Ben.
I’d attributed it all to old resentment, but what if it had been something else entirely?
The kettle whistled, and I poured hot water over a chamomile tea bag, watching the steam curl in the dim light. My hands continued to tremble as I lifted the mug to my lips, a million thoughts swirling around in my brain.
The questions I’d been avoiding all night brought forth a flood of emotions I’d spent years trying to bury.
Because the truth was, seeing Jake again had awakened something in me I’d thought was dead.
The way my pulse quickened when he looked at me, the way my skin seemed to remember his touch even after all this time.
I’d been telling myself it was just nostalgia, just the pull of first love and a shared history.
But standing in my aunt’s dark kitchen, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
I still loved him.
The realization hit me like a blow, stealing my breath and making me grip the counter for support. I’d loved other people since Jake—or at least, I thought I had.
Hell, I’d built a whole life with someone else, convinced myself I’d moved on and found what I’d been searching my whole life for.
But Richard and I never had what Jake and I had.
We’d never shared that bone-deep connection, that sense of coming home to each other.
What I’d mistaken for compatibility had really just been …
settling. Two people who looked good together on paper, who, in theory, checked each other’s boxes but never really touched each other’s souls.
In one summer, Jake Mercer had ruined me for anyone else, and I’d been too afraid to admit it until now.
I sank into a kitchen chair, the tea cooling in my hands as tears I hadn’t expected started to fall. Not sad tears, exactly, but something more complicated—grief for the years we’d lost, but underneath that, a dangerous flutter of hope I didn’t know what to do with.
Because if there really hadn’t been anyone else who mattered … what did that mean now? Was it too late for us? Had too much time passed, too much hurt accumulated?
Or was tonight the beginning of a second chance I never thought I’d get?
I thought about Cole, about how easily he’d accepted me into his world, how he talked about his mom without the weight of romantic loss attached to her memory.
I thought about Jake today, the way he’d apologized, the genuine concern in his eyes when he’d asked about the parts of my life that hadn’t been good.
He wasn’t the same young man I’d left behind. He was a father now, and had been through loss and heartbreak and responsibility in ways that had clearly shaped him. And I wasn’t the same young woman who’d run scared from commitment and small-town life.
The clock in the hallway chimed three times, and I finally forced myself back to bed, though I knew sleep wouldn’t come easily.
Tomorrow, I’d have to face Jake again at school pickup, and I’d have to look him in the eye knowing that everything he’d told me had rearranged everything I thought I understood about who I was and what I wanted from my life.
I didn’t know what I’d say to him, or even if I’d have the courage to say anything at all. But as I finally drifted toward sleep, one thought kept circling back: what if it’s not too late? What if running away had been a mistake, but coming back was the beginning of finally getting it right?