Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“Have I told you today how amazing you are?” Chelsea asked from behind the bar.
“Yup. And you bought me a beer,” I told her. “Now can we drop it? I’m trying not to think of the torture.”
Chelsea gave me a jaunty wink that held no remorse. “You know, I thought it would be West who put up the biggest fight.”
So did I. But after having a week to think on it, it was on brand for West—it stroked both his ego and, depending on who won the auction, it would end with a different kind of stoking, the kind that West got off on.
Instead of answering Chelsea, which would only encourage her down a path I didn’t want to go, I changed the subject. “Busy night.”
“Saturdays always are. Kids back with Shay?”
Fuck. I walked right into that one. The start of a week without my kids. A topic I never liked to discuss, mainly because I didn’t like to think about it.
“Yep.”
Thankfully, Valentine and Sophie sidled up next to me at the bar before Chelsea could ask any more well-meaning questions about my kids.
“Hi, Jase,” Sophie greeted, stepping forward for a hug.
“Hi, doll.” I returned her embrace and waited for her to fit herself into the curve of her fiancé’s arm before I took a jab at Valentine. “You ready to dump this asshole yet and run away with me?”
Valentine didn’t get a chance to respond. With a flick of her wrist, she waved me off and stepped away from her man while muttering, “Always such a flirt.” Then much louder, with more enthusiasm, she declared, “Perfect timing. We just got here.”
I turned to see who Sophie was greeting, not knowing that my world was about to splinter for the second time in a week.
And splinter it did—into a million spikes, each one piercing my chest.
“Rainy, this is my fiancé, Valentine Malone, and our friend Jase—”
“I know Rainy,” I cut Sophie’s introduction short, staring at the woman who owned my heart.
She was staring back at me in panic.
What the fuck?
“Oh, that’s right, she was at the Hope Center last week when you were there playing basketball.”
Hope Center.
Need, compulsion, longing.
Rainy was my mystery woman?
Rainy.
My Rainy, who had a son in Juni’s class and was likely married to that boy’s father.
Fuck!
I glanced down to check for a ring, but her left hand was in her pocket.
“You were at the Hope Center last Friday?” I asked, needing clarification that she was the woman I saw with Sophie and Josie.
“Um.” A barely there whisper, and those sea-blue eyes of hers darted away.
Anger overrode the shock of seeing her up close and personal.
“And you didn’t say hello?” I probed sharply.
A little too sharply, if her eyes narrowing were anything to go by.
Not stopping while she had her son in the car and a line of cars behind her, I could almost understand. Almost, in the sense I got why she didn’t jump out of her car right then and there to say hello.
But the Hope Center? No kids. No cars waiting. That just pissed me off.
“I didn’t see you,” she told me, and hearing her voice for the first time in fifteen years felt like a kick to my balls.
“But you saw me at the school,” I accused.
If I’d thought hearing her voice was painful, watching the familiar fire spark to life in her baby blues felt like someone had reached into my chest and twisted my heart.
“What should I have done, Jase? Blocked traffic so we could have a reunion?” she rapped out sarcastically.
I gave her an alternate scenario, the one I’d thought she was going for last Friday until I watched her pull out of the school lot. “I don’t know, Rae, you could’ve pulled into a parking spot and said hello.”
If I hadn’t heard her swift inhale, I would’ve thought she was wholly unaffected by my presence.
“Yeah, so, I think I’m missing something,” Sophie started.
I stared at Rainy, waiting for her to explain to her new friend how we knew each other.
“I, um…we…um knew each other,” Rainy stammered out, but offered no more.
I barely contained my grunt.
We knew each other? Knew each other, like our five-year relationship meant nothing. Like she hadn’t gifted me with her virginity. Like I hadn’t worshipped every inch of her. Like we hadn’t shared our hopes and dreams and confessed our biggest fears.
Just a bland, ‘We knew each other’.
“I’d say we more than knew each other,” I pushed.
Sophie’s gaze was ping-ponging back and forth between me and Rainy. Valentine, however, had already pegged the situation.
“Soph baby, let’s go say hi to Echo and Jackie and let Jase and Rainy catch up.”
Horror hit Rainy’s face.
What the actual fuck?
“Maybe—”
Valentine interrupted Sophie before she could voice her protest. “Trust me, Soph.”
“Will you be okay?” Sophie asked.
Rainy plastered on a smile that she used when she was uncomfortable but didn’t want to inconvenience someone else, so she pretended she was okay.
I both loved and hated I could still read her.
“Yeah,” Rainy chirped. “Of course. Go say hi to your friends. I’ll catch up with you.”
She wouldn’t. Rainy was going to bolt as soon as she could. And that was familiar, too.
Ironically, the last time I saw Rainy was in a bar two years after we’d broken up.
I was having drinks with a friend and his sister, who was visiting from California.
My friend had picked up a girl and left about ten minutes before Rainy showed up.
I knew by the way Rainy was staring at Sally that she thought we were hooking up.
I could’ve cleared the air, but the immature, pissed-off at her for being jealous when she had no right part of me stopped me from explaining.
I would feel the brunt of that decision from that day on.
“So, Juni,” Rainy started, and hearing her say my daughter’s name like a wall between us pissed me right the fuck off. “Lucas—”
“Seriously, Rae. Fifteen years, nothing. Last week I see you in the pickup line and you don’t stop and now you wanna talk about our kids?”
“Well…” she trailed off, looking anywhere but at me.
“Is your husband meeting you here?” I asked.
“What?”
“You keep looking around like you’re looking for someone,” I told her. “Is he here?”
I braced for her answer, knowing if she said yes, I’d be leaving—immediately.
I was too raw to be civilized.
“No. And your wife? Is she here?”
I didn’t miss the way the muscle in her cheek jumped.
“Divorced,” I told her.
“Oh. Um. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?”
Rainy’s head cocked to the side. “Am I what?”
“Sorry to hear I’m divorced.”
This time when Rainy answered me, she held my gaze.
She looked like she was on the verge of calling me out for being a dick.
But her expression cleared. And when she sucked in a breath to get her temper under control, I was almost disappointed.
When I met Rainy, she was a shy fourteen-year-old girl. Over the years her confidence grew. By the time she graduated high school, she was popular, outspoken, and had no problem putting me or anyone else in their place if they said or did something she didn’t like.
It was one of the many things that bonded me to her.
I’d witnessed her evolution. I’d watched her transformation from pretty freshman to gorgeous senior.
I’d been with her when she toured college campuses.
I’d been the one who listened to her wax poetic about the pros and cons of each school.
I’d helped her move into her first college dorm room.
And she’d done the same for me—except for the list of pros and cons.
The only pro on my list that mattered to me was that whichever college I picked had to be close enough I could drive home to see her.
“Yes, Jase, I’m sorry to hear you’re divorced. Especially sorry because of Juni.”
She’d mentioned my daughter twice, but not my son.
“I have two,” I told her. “Colson’s twelve.”
I didn’t understand her flinch. Or maybe I did.
I’d spent a week mulling over the idea that Rainy was back in Hollow Point—and not just back but with her family in tow.
My first inclination was to track her down and see her—demand answers.
But the painful knowledge she had a family had stopped me. The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me.
I should’ve wanted her to be happily married. I should’ve been happy she’d moved on and found something better. I should’ve been a lot of things, but I wasn’t. It made me a selfish prick, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d always hoped she still thought about me like I did her.
“Colson,” she whispered. “You always liked that name.”
Fuck.
She remembered.
There was a time in all our teenage delusions we’d talked about what we were going to do after we graduated. Marriage. Kids. A nice house.
We never got that far.
She ended us.
Then she ended the friendship we’d managed to spare. A friendship that I’d clung to, thinking it was a sign that neither one of us could give up the other. That we were still destined to be together.
I didn’t know what to say about Colson or if there was anything to say. Rainy was right, I’d given my son the name we’d talked about naming our son.
It was fucked up. I knew it then, when I vetoed all the names Shay had picked and made her a deal—she could name the second, but my boy’s name was going to be Colson. Shay never asked why I was so hung up on the name.
Shay didn’t ask about much of anything, and back then that was part of her appeal.
She didn’t want a deep, abiding relationship.
Then she got pregnant. And after we were married, she was happy to keep our relationship as it was—surface with no questions and constant jealous fits about Rainy.
It was actually surprising Shay never put two and two together when she had a knack for pulling Rainy into most fights.
“What brought you home?” I asked, needing a change of topic.
“Oh, um, it’s a long story,” she muttered.
That was another kick in the gut. There was a time when there was no such thing as a long-story brush-off. Once upon a time, I’d been Rainy Cross's go-to.
“How about I buy you a drink—”
“No,” she quickly denied. “I mean, no thank you. Sophie invited me out. It’d be a little rude if I didn’t go over and spend some time with her.”
“I think you get I know Valentine and Sophie. What you don’t know is I’m good friends with both of them. Valentine works SWAT out of my station. Trust me, neither will mind if I buy you a drink, so we can properly catch up.”
“Jase—”
“Rainy,” I interrupted her. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“Jase—”
“Rae, I haven’t seen you for fifteen fucking years. Don’t you think—”
“Okay.”
She couldn’t have made her reluctance any clearer, but it was the way her voice wobbled with fear I didn’t understand.
Rainy knew damn good and well I was no threat to her. She had no reason to be afraid of me, unless something had happened that made her wary of all men.
That thought made me murderous.
And more determined to learn why she’d returned home.