Chapter 11 #2
The idea that my son would be subjected to the public limelight that follows Jonas everywhere makes my heart shrivel.
Bash deserves a normal childhood.
To know people love him for who he is, not for who he’s related to or how much money he stands to inherit.
If he grows up and takes over my accounting firm and feels like I gave him special treatment for giving him a job at the family business, I can live with that.
That’s small stuff.
Growing up getting preferential treatment because his father is Jonas Rutherford?
No.
I grab my coffee and a baby monitor, which I turn down to the lowest setting. I’ll still hear Bash when he’s done with his slow wake-up—mama instinct and all that—but Jonas might not.
Time to fight to be able to continue raising my son in peace.
The chickens erupt in squawking the minute I open the back door. Bash will help me feed them and collect their eggs after he’s up.
But now, they’re doing the job I want them to do.
They’re waking Jonas up.
He bolts upright, grabs his neck, sways on the porch swing, and tips off, landing on the ground with an oof .
But he springs right back up and smiles at me.
Smiles .
At six in the morning.
After he face-planted into two-day-old deer poop.
“Emma. You have chickens.” His voice is husky with sleep, but there’s a bright, happy quality to it that’s impossible to miss.
Like there’s no place on earth he wanted to sleep more than right there, with his body all akimbo on my porch swing where he could’ve been eaten by a cougar.
Like he’s still the guy he was before he freaking ran away back home after sleeping with me.
And without a goodbye.
Or a single acknowledgment of any of my messages.
Until now.
I sip my coffee and watch him. It’s a technique I’ve learned from Sabrina.
She’s the best gossip in all of Snaggletooth Creek, and it’s because she knows when to be quiet and when to tell what she knows.
Usually.
“Right. You know you have chickens.” He rubs his face, then freezes for a split second like he’s realized there’s stuff on his face that shouldn’t be there.
I point to the hose hung on the back of my house. “Deer droppings. Help yourself to the water.”
Wariness sneaks into his expression. “You’re mad.”
“I—”
“Of course you’re mad. You should be mad. I was an asshole. Didn’t leave you any way to contact me. You tried. I didn’t answer. And you’ve been doing this by yourself.”
“I like doing this by myself.”
Bash’s voice drifts out of the baby monitor. He’s moved on to his version of a Taylor Swift song. I probably have three minutes before I hear “ Mama? ” in his adorable little voice.
But the bigger problem right now is that Jonas apparently has excellent hearing.
“Is that him?” he whispers, his gaze drifting to my hip where the monitor is clipped to my pants, awe and wonder filling his face in a way that makes me both furious and light at the same time.
And that makes me even more furious.
He has no fucking right to show up here and look completely smitten with the sound of my son’s voice, and no fucking right to earn a soft spot in my heart again.
“I have a busy day today, so let’s get right to it. What do you want?” This is not me.
Not the me that I like being, anyway.
I like giving people the benefit of the doubt and smiling and laughing my way through my mornings with Bash.
Feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs.
Washing Bash after he cracks too many eggs all over himself.
Waving at my neighbors while we walk our pet chicken.
Being a calming presence in my office when clients suddenly have need for me in stressful situations.
Volunteering at events at Sabrina’s café and other places around the community while my friends and family play with my son and give him the sense of belonging that he deserves.
I do not like being a grouchy mama bear who has no intention of giving this man an inch for as long as I can hold him off.
And I know being a grouchy mama bear won’t get me what I want, but I’m too on guard to be nice .
Judging by the extra wariness settling into Jonas’s eyes, he’s ready for me to turn into a feral grouchy mama bear.
“I—I don’t know,” he finally says. “I didn’t stop to think when I finally got your emails. I just came here.”
“When you figure it out, you can have your lawyers contact my lawyers.”
Dammit dammit dammit, Emma .
I’m nice. I’m too nice.
Always.
But apparently not today when it matters so damn much that I charm him.
Feral grouchy mama bear is ready to fight with everything I have in me to make the rest of my life just as peaceful and happy as it was twenty-four hours ago.
Seeing him again after all this time has apparently not only sparked overprotective instincts that I’d finally started feeling like I didn’t need, but also a few latent feelings about the way he left me and ignored me after fucking me in Fiji.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m eternally grateful to have Bash, and I know I wouldn’t without Jonas’s contribution to the whole baby-making process.
But that doesn’t excuse the fact that he didn’t even say goodbye.
“I’m sorry.” He says it so earnestly, so easily, that I don’t know if he’s said it often enough in movies that it’s second nature or if he means it.
But I absolutely mean my entire answer with my whole heart.
“I’m not. I have a good life. I’m giving my son a good life.
He’s happy. He’s loved. I’m happy. I’m loved.
We have the best friends and family we could ask for.
And we have everything else we could possibly need.
So thank you for coming. Thank you for apologizing.
But I sincerely mean it when I say you can go .
We don’t need any more from you than what you’ve already done for the past two and a half years, and I’m happy to sign anything necessary to absolve you of any responsibility here. ”
His lips part and move like he’s working through how the script flipped when he wasn’t looking.
His cheeks turn a shade of pink that I’d call honest embarrassment if I trusted him.
Bash’s little voice goes whiny.
I have to get back inside.
Time for mama to rescue him from his crib and give him morning snuggles and song time and breakfast.
“Can I meet him?” Jonas asks.
My heart splits in two.
If we hadn’t met in Fiji, if we hadn’t had those days together, I wouldn’t have Bash.
Jonas gave me a gift that I will move heaven and earth to protect.
But he also left. I tried to get in touch as soon as I found out I was pregnant.
I didn’t want to. Not when I knew the same thing that I know today—that any child Jonas Rutherford publicly acknowledged would grow up under scrutiny and have to deal with the reporters and the social media rumors and the whispers that I’d already endured after my wedding video went viral.
But it was the right thing to do.
And I got silence in return.
I sent a few updates. Ultrasound pictures. Notes that I was fine and didn’t need anything, but in case he hadn’t seen my last messages, I wanted him to know I was pregnant, and he was the only possible father.
My last message was almost two years ago.
The day Bash was born in mid-October.
I emailed him a birth announcement.
And I got crickets in return.
“You left .” My voice cracks and my eyes get hot.
“You made me think you cared. You made me think I mattered. You made me think we were friends . Then you slept with me and you left . And I sent you at least a half dozen messages in the only way I could find to contact you. And then I started thinking that I’d been the biggest fool in the history of the world, and that someone who looked like you and knew all the right things to convince me that you were you had fooled me.
All because I didn’t want to believe that you would’ve fucked me and ghosted me.
So please excuse me if I don’t want you to see my son.
He has excellent, reliable father figures in his life, and that’s what he deserves. Once again, you can go .”
“Emma—”
I march back toward the house. Bash is ready to get up, and I’m ready to get away from Jonas Rutherford. “And if you won’t go on your own, I’m calling the sheriff. After I call my brother. I’m sure he’d like to finish what he tried to start yesterday.”
Do I mean it?
Completely.
Absolutely.
Unequivocally.
There is no room for nice when my son’s safety, comfort, privacy, and possibly even his future are on the line.