Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
I hadn’t noticed the faint mark on my neck until I stepped out of the shower and caught my reflection in the mirror. My hair was damp, cheeks flushed from the heat, and there, toward the back of my neck, was the ghost of Jake’s teeth.
I brushed my fingers over it, and just like that, the memories came rushing in—Jake’s hands gripping my hips. His mouth hot on my skin. The way he’d found that spot he used to tease me about, the one that always made me shiver. The low, broken sound he made when he came.
My stomach lurched, equal parts heat and panic flowing through me.
Back in my bedroom, I yanked open the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out a dark green turtleneck. Never mind that it was supposed to hit seventy-five degrees today. Better to sweat my way through the day than show up at school with a literal hickey on display like some lovesick teenager.
I dropped my head back and groaned.
It wasn’t the mark that had me rattled. Not really.
It was his silence afterward. No text. No call.
Nothing. I told myself not to read into it.
We were two consenting adults who’d gotten caught up in a moment—a very heated, very unplanned moment.
A one-time thing. I hadn’t meant for it to happen, and I was pretty sure Jake hadn’t either. It just … had.
And it couldn’t happen again.
Still, he could’ve called.
As I poured my coffee and packed my bag, the tight, twisting feeling in my chest refused to budge.
By the time I pulled into the school parking lot, I realized I barely remembered the drive across town.
My mind had been stuck in a loop of Jake’s mouth on my neck, his hands gripping my hips, the way he’d whispered my name when I rocked back against him.
The way he’d buried himself in me like he needed it just as badly as I did.
And now? Nothing.
So I did what I always did when life felt like it was spinning out of control—I snapped into teacher mode and threw myself into work.
At eight o’clock on the dot, my students started filing in, loud and energized for the week ahead. Backpacks thudded against desks and sneakers squeaked on the tile. I greeted each of them with a smile that I hoped didn’t look as shaky as it felt.
Cole bounded in like he’d been launched from a cannon, dropped his backpack by his desk, and marched straight over to mine, his eyes bright. “I caught a grasshopper the size of my hand last night,” he declared. “It almost got away, but I trapped it with a paper bag.”
I laughed at his enthusiasm. Bugs really weren’t my thing. “Oh really? Where is it now?”
He screwed his face up in thought. “Uh, still in the bag, I think?”
“You should probably let it out when you get home,” I explained. “I don’t think grasshoppers were meant to survive in bags without food or grass.”
“You’re so smart, Miss James. You know everything.” He beamed at me, then wandered back to his seat.
I gave the class instructions for their morning journal entries, then moved through the rows, glancing over shoulders and offering encouragement as they settled in.
And for a moment, everything almost felt normal.
Almost.
Until Cole popped up beside my desk again about forty minutes later.
I’d read his IEP, so I was prepared for him to get distracted, but in the time he’d been my student, I realized the issue wasn’t necessarily distraction.
Cole Mercer was an incredibly bright and gifted little boy who usually finished his assignments before everyone else.
“Hey, Cole. You’re done with your character coat of arms already? ”
“Sure am!” he chirped, rocking on his toes. “My Uncle Gage said you and my dad got a strenuous workout in the barn yesterday.”
I choked on my coffee. Full-on sputtered, my hands shaking as I grabbed for tissues at the corner of my desk, heat flooding my face so fast I probably looked like a tomato. When I finally caught my breath, I croaked, “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Cole blinked, totally unfazed by my outburst. “You guys moved a bunch of boxes and tables, right? For the fundraiser? He said my dad was complaining this morning about being sore, and he bet you were, too.”
I stared at him for a beat too long, then forced a laugh. “Well. Yes. Hauling all that stuff around was definitely a workout.” I couldn’t look him in the eye as I said it.
I felt a prickle of sweat break out on my nape as I recalled the way my quads had twinged this morning—not from moving boxes, but from the way I’d used them to brace my body as Jake fucked me from behind.
The sting in my palm from pressing it against the old barn beam while his teeth found my neck, while his hands?—
I caught myself, horrified at the direction of my thoughts in a classroom full of children.
Cole grinned, oblivious to where my mind had wandered. “I can’t wait for the fundraiser. I’m gonna win bobbing for apples this year, I just know it. And Aiden and I are gonna decorate our scarecrow like a zombie cowboy. And did you know there’s a dunk tank? I’m totally dunking Mr. Marsh.”
“Sounds like you have big plans,” I said, ruffling his hair as I walked him back to his desk to check his assignment, though my heart hadn’t stopped racing since he’d first opened his mouth.
What the hell was I doing?
Cole was my student. Jake was his father. I had no idea what the Academy’s employee handbook said about hooking up with a student’s father, but honestly, if it didn’t forbid it, that felt like an oversight. It was a terrible idea, no matter how you framed it.
As I thought about all the ways this situation was ripe for disaster, a note in Cole’s file popped into my head: after the death of his mother, he struggled to form bonds with female authority figures. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case with me.
I’d been a teacher long enough to know when a kid felt safe. When they wanted to share their world with you, and Cole absolutely did. He genuinely liked me. And here I was, sleeping with his father.
This could only end badly … not just for me, but for this precious boy, too.
By the end of the day, I was a mess of nerves.
I kept sneaking glances at the clock, each tick bringing me closer to pickup time. I wasn’t even sure what I expected. For Jake to pull me aside? Smile at me like he had yesterday?
When I stepped outside, I scanned the lot, my stomach lurching when I didn’t immediately see the black truck with the Three Pines Ranch logo on its door.
And then I did, only it wasn’t Jake behind the wheel.
It was his brother Colt. Still handsome as ever, but sterner somehow. All traces of the young man who’d followed his older brother around all summer had been erased from his features. I didn’t want to say he looked sad, necessarily, but he didn’t look happy, either.
Cole ran to the truck as I followed behind, climbing in with a wave for me.
I watched as Colt said something to his nephew and then got out, shutting the door behind him, his jaw tight as he approached me.
“Hey,” he said, nodding.
“Hi, Colt,” I replied, suddenly hyper-aware of my posture, my tone, the slight chill in the air now that the sun was dipping low on the horizon.
“Mind if we talk for a sec?” he asked.
I hesitated, unsure how to answer. Had Jake sent Colt in his place to give me the brush off? No, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t have. Not after yesterday.
“Sure,” I said eventually, pasting a smile on my face.
He waited until Cole was buckled in and the door was shut before turning back to me.
“It’s not my business what goes on between you and Jake,” he said, his voice low and his eyes darting around the pickup line. “But I’m asking you to please not screw with him.”
My breath caught, and my throat tightened. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Maybe not on purpose,” he said, folding his arms across his broad chest. “But I didn’t think that’s what you were doing ten years ago either, and look how that turned out.”
I flinched, guilt washing over me.
“Look,” he continued, one hand flexing at his side.
“I get it, okay? You had your whole life planned out when you met my brother, and it didn’t include getting tied down to some small-town cowboy after only three months.
Hell, I probably would’ve run too.” He glanced back at the truck, then fixed me with a hard stare.
“But you’re back, and a lot has changed since you left.
Jake’s not the same guy you left behind, Eden. None of us are.”
He angled his body away slightly. “And Cole? That kid’s been through more than most adults I know.”
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly bone dry. “I know.”
Colt turned back to me with his eyes narrowed, brows drawn, and his mouth pulled into a tight line. He didn’t look angry necessarily. Just … guarded. Wary. Like someone who’d seen too much hurt and wasn’t about to let it happen again on his watch.
“Do you?” he asked, his voice quieter now, but no less firm.
I nodded. “Yes. I do. Jake told me what happened with Jenna. I swear, I would never do anything to hurt them. Either of them.”
Colt stared at me a beat longer, like he was trying to decide whether or not to believe me.
Then, finally, he exhaled through his nose and gave a short, reluctant nod.
“Okay then,” he said, stepping back. “Just be careful, Eden. Because whether you mean to or not, you’ve got the power to break my brother and my nephew. ”
He turned like he was going to walk away, then paused.
“For what it’s worth.” He glanced back at me over his shoulder. “Cole likes you—a lot. Jake does too. That’s probably what scares me the most.” And with that, he headed for the truck, climbed in, and pulled the door shut behind him, ruffling his nephew’s hair before pulling away from the curb.
I stood there long after the taillights disappeared down the road until I eventually made my way to my car on unsteady legs.
I drove home in a daze, Colt’s words hanging over me like a storm cloud, and spent the evening going through the motions—dinner with Aunt Mags, grading papers, pretending everything was normal.
Later, once the house was blissfully quiet, I sat curled up in bed with my phone in my lap, my conversation with Colt replaying in my mind.
Only this time, I heard it differently.
You’ve got the power to break my brother and my nephew.
At the time, I’d assumed he was simply being protective of his family. Dramatic even. But now, I couldn’t help picking that statement apart.
Break Jake? That didn’t track. Not when he still hadn’t reached out to me.
Fucking someone and then ignoring them wasn’t the sign of a man with delicate feelings, especially considering the first night I met Jake Mercer all we had done was kiss—with a little dry humping in the front seat of his truck thrown in for good measure—and even then he’d called me the next morning to check in.
If anything, yesterday’s … encounter felt a little too much like revenge, or something revenge adjacent.
If anyone was going to break, it was me.
But Colt’s voice had held certainty. Like he knew something I didn’t. And then there was that parting comment: Jake likes you, too.
How did he know that? Had Jake said something? Had the brothers talked about me … about what happened in that barn? God, had Jake bragged? Had I misread everything?
I sat with those thoughts for a long time, the knot in my chest pulling tighter with each question I couldn’t seem to answer … until finally, I tapped Jake’s name on my screen and brought the phone to my ear.
When he answered on the third ring, his voice was rough, cautious. “Eden?”
The sound of my name on his lips sent a shiver running through me, but I pushed past it. “Hey,” I said softly. “We need to talk.”