Chapter 10
RYDER
On Thursday evening, I’m driving toward Rhys’s school for a teacher-parents-volunteers meeting. I activate the blinker, wondering if I should keep going past the flower farm Rebecca manages at the edge of Hollow Creek or opt for a U-turn and drive back home.
Common sense and whatever delusion is driving me duke it out in my head.
Common sense throws a solid right hook: this is a terrible idea.
Delusion counters with an uppercut: but the meeting notice said parent volunteers are desperately needed.
Common sense goes for the knockout: she doesn’t want to see you.
Delusion plays dirty: but what if she does?
I continue down the road before I talk myself out of going.
Work’s done for the day. We’re almost out of daylight. And Rhys has a playdate at a friend’s house. Tommy Peterson’s mom is watching them until eight. I’d have to drive into town to pick him up soon, either way. I might as well swing by the school and make myself useful.
And if that comes with the side benefit of seeing Faye again, heck, I never was one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It’s been four days since I stood in her bedroom listening to a spicy fairy tale blasting from her speaker while she got down on all fours and crawled under the bed, her perky ass in the air.
Four days since she came out with dust bunnies in her hair and her face the color of the giant scarlet zinnias we grow on the farm and agreed to give me a clean slate.
Blessed naughty fairies.
I’ve thought plenty about that, too. My phone sits in the cupholder, screen dark, hiding my latest weakness. Sunday night, a quick online search for “Sarina,” “Ashren,” and “fae romance” led me straight to the title of the book Faye was listening to: A Court of Sea and Wings.
I bought a digital copy. For research, not because I tried and failed to fall asleep without knowing what happened after Ashren turned Sarina onto her stomach. Wondering if Faye was listening to that scene at the same time I was reading it.
After satisfying that curiosity, I went back to the start of the story and kept reading it in secret throughout the week. Now I’m down to the last few chapters, and I have opinions. Lots of them.
The plot has political intrigue between fairy courts.
Well-choreographed battle scenes. And sex.
Sweet merciful heaven, so much sex. Every position, location, with wings and tails involved in ways that required serious mental gymnastics to visualize.
The male lead, Ashren, spends two hundred pages being an emotionally unavailable ass before the heroine finally gets him naked and he transforms into a lovesick puppy—if a puppy can also be a psychopath who believes “touch her and die” qualifies as healthy communication.
I’ve been reading late at night after Rhys goes to bed, well past the time I should’ve gotten some shut-eye. I’ve been extra tired all week. And extra fucking horny.
And damn me to hell and back if I haven’t imagined Faye and me in every single one of those positions.
Yes. Even the aerial sex. Guess I can have wings in my dreams.
The point is, I’m in deep. Drowning in fairy spice and complicated feelings about a woman who makes me want to be better and also makes me want to do very, very bad things.
Faye Rose is a mystery wrapped in contradictions. Prim skirts in the classroom and wild hair on the dance floor. Designer clothes and steep rent on a teacher’s salary. High-end tech beside stacks of love stories. The secrets she won’t share, the past she hides.
I want to peel back each layer until I reach the truth underneath. Until I understand who Faye Rose really is.
So when the class email landed in my inbox about a volunteers meeting for end-of-year activities, it felt like a sign from above. Or below, depending on which force is orchestrating my descent into madness.
I told myself I’d go to support the school. To be an involved parent. To be more present for Rhys.
All valid reasons. And none of them the main one.
The truck rumbles through downtown Blue Crescent Harbor as the afternoon slides into evening.
I pass the hardware store where Earl is closing up shop, the diner where the dinner rush is picking up, and the library—a place I used to think was for people smarter than me.
Now I’m betting at least half of them know about the naughty fairies.
At the red light by the bank, I check my reflection in the rearview mirror.
I’m freshly shaven again. Hair combed and held in place with the resuscitated bottle of product that I should replace with gel from this decade.
I’m in clean jeans and a light-gray Henley.
I don’t look like a man who walked straight off a field. I’m presentable.
Datable?
For fuck’s sake; I pass a hand over my face as the light turns green and press the gas.
Thank goodness Remy and Rebecca didn’t catch me leaving. They’d never let me live it down.
I shudder thinking how relentless the teasing would be if they discovered my literary awakening. Actually, Rebecca would want to compare notes on the fairies. But Remy would be merciless about it.
The school parking lot is almost empty when I pull in. A handful of cars are scattered near the main entrance, but most of the spaces sit vacant. At half-past six, the sun has set behind the hills, the last daylight disappearing fast.
I grab the Tupperware from the passenger seat—fresh chocolate chip cookies I stole from Mom’s kitchen this afternoon—lock the truck, and head toward the entrance.
The building is quiet. The smell of chalk dust and industrial cleaner brings back memories of my school days, when my biggest worry was whether Mom packed pudding or applesauce.
Color bursts along the hallway walls—spring artwork everywhere.
Paper flowers, rainbow butterflies, poems about rain in shaky handwriting.
I stop at a bulletin board titled “Our Helping Hands,” where each kid has handprinted their palms. Each sheet is labeled with a name and surname by an adult.
My eyes catch on the drawing near the bottom.
The left hand is blue, the other green—my son’s favorite colors—the paint smeared where his palm didn’t press evenly.
Rhys Evans.
Is this Faye’s handwriting? I study the loopy, neat letters.
The calligraphy suits her. It’s orderly, but feminine, with swirls at the end of each word that are more turbulent.
I’m really losing my shit over that woman if I can’t even stare at a name she wrote without obsessing over how she crosses her T’s and dots her I’s.
I move on down the hall and stop just outside Rhys’s classroom. The door is cracked open, and voices drift from inside—all female from the sound of it.
No big deal, Ryder. Go in, sit, listen, contribute when necessary. Don’t make an ass of yourself.
The last part might be tricky. Faye’s in there. Probably in a pencil skirt that’ll strip away what’s left of my sanity. The chances of me doing something stupid are higher than my blood pressure. My heart has been pumping at double its normal pace since I got in the car.
Just knock and act like a normal person.
This is absurd. I manage a farm, I’ve dealt with cattle that outweighed me by half a ton, I’m a single father. I can handle a parent meeting.
Through the open door, I spy a circle of six women, chatting easily among themselves—not another dad in sight—and at the front, Faye.
Even from this angle, with only a partial view, she takes my breath away.
Her hair is twisted up in that low, complicated knot.
She’s not in a pencil skirt today but in a cream-colored sweater and dark pants; she looks professional and put-together.
And she’s smiling at something a mom said, her face animated and warm.
Gosh, I want to make her smile like that.
I knock on the doorframe, two quick raps with my knuckles. Then I step onto the threshold before I lose my nerve.
Six heads swivel in my direction. The conversation dies mid-sentence.
When Faye’s gaze meets mine, her lips pop in a surprised little O.
I can’t tell if it’s a positive or negative reaction.
But I hope she’s at least a little pleased to see me.
It’s for her that I’m standing in the doorway of a classroom, holding a Tupperware of stolen cookies, clean-shaven and combed, having spent the last four days reading spicy fairy tales instead of sleeping.
I smile and step inside with a casual “Hello, ladies.”