8. Payton
EIGHT
PAYTON
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Filling my wine glass to the brim probably isn’t the best choice considering I’m blaming it for making me say as much as I have. Even though the little alcohol I’ve consumed technically can’t be at fault, for the sake of going back to the living room, it is.
Jace Hayes isn’t the person I thought I’d ever spill so much of my guts out to, and now he probably thinks I’m a freak. It feels nice to be heard , though. Gwen’s been supportive, but she didn’t attend school with us, so it’s not the same. Jace knew me pre-breakup. He witnessed the beginning of Aaron and me, was forced to endure Aaron’s antics when he’d come around our lockers, so it’s almost fitting he hears about our ending too.
There’s no reason I shouldn’t tell him about the notes, or even Aaron’s threats before he showed up. Unlike the police, who brushed me aside, Jace doesn’t seem like he’d do that. Then again, I’ve already unloaded so much on him. It’s been eight years, and if I reveal this, it might make him feel obligated to help. One of the promises I made myself after breaking up with Aaron was to never be reliant on a man again.
Taking my glass and my decision, I return to the living room and catch Jace’s staring contest with my coffee table—ironically at the drawer hiding Aaron’s notes. He loses the competition when I enter.
“You probably didn’t want to hear all that.” The couch sucks me back into my spot.
“I asked.” His thick voice has an edge to it. “Bennett’s a moron for fucking up the best thing that’ll ever happen to him.”
“I’m hardly a?—”
“The best thing,” he interrupts, his tone making my toes curl.
I can’t recall the last time someone referred to me as the “best.” Aaron never did, that’s for sure.
Jace is still watching me attempt to make any sense of what’s happening in my mind. Before I go insane trying, I say, “Your turn. Catch me up on what you’ve been doing.”
Jace sips his drink before settling against the couch’s arm. “I moved a few months after you did to get my apprenticeship in construction. Dad wanted me to take over the business, but I wanted to get all my certifications away from here, just to say I didn’t spend my whole life in this small town. Dad got sick, so I returned sooner than intended. He stepped down, and a year after that, died.”
“I’m sorry.” I never met his father, but saw him around at school-wide ceremonies. At one point, I think my parents hired him to fix the roof on our old house, but I would have been pretty young then.
He shrugs, taking another sip of his drink. “Part of life. Can’t help dying.”
That’s one way to look at it.
“You happy?”
“With the business? Absolutely. Work is steady. Jobs come in often. We get a lot of municipal and provincial contracts. Currently, we’re building a new neighbourhood in the next town over.”
“That’s really cool. It’d be nice to own a business. I’d love to open my own vet clinic one day.” Dreams require money, though, and I don’t have any, so they’re long on hold.
“You’d make a kick-ass vet, Payton. I’d bring my dog to you.”
“You have a dog?”
“No.” He smirks. “But if I did, I’d bring him to you.”
“Him?”
“I always imagined myself with a male bulldog. Something about their faces gets me every time.”
High school me would be rolling to know I’m discussing dog breeds with Jace Hayes.
“What about you? Dog or cat?”
“Why not both?” My gaze follows him as he rests his now-empty glass on the table. “More?”
“Nah, I should get going soon.” He glances toward the door, and my stomach can’t help but feel ripped apart. What began as an uncertain reunion shifted to something I’ve grown attached to. Clearly, loneliness is a thing, even if I’ve believed I haven’t been.
“Sure.” I stand to take his glass to the kitchen, but as my fingers graze the stem, he manacles his hand around my wrist, pulling me to a standstill between his legs. He tips his head back to see my face.
“He’s an idiot, Payton. Anyone else he was with during your relationship is a pale imitation of you.”
As though my heart wasn’t already about to hammer out of my chest, because this is Jace Hayes of all people, he releases my wrist to instead grab my waist, repositioning me closer until my knees hit the couch. My arms are awkward by my sides, the urge to rest them on his wide shoulders growing strong, but also uncertain.
High school me would have showered in chlorine before allowing Jace to touch me in any way that didn’t involve yanking on my hair or rifling through my stuff to steal my only pen—typical shit he pulled. Very glad I’ve grown up from being that girl.
“You’re gorgeous,” he murmurs, his grip tightening. “You miss him?”
“No. A few weeks after the breakup, I realized I was more pissed off than sad. Hurt, but not for the reasons you think.” Maybe this is the time. Tell him about the notes. Just do it!
“I wish I hit him a bit harder this morning.”
“I do too.” Normally, I’m not a violent person, but the satisfactory image of Aaron being taken away on a stretcher is an appealing temptation— especially after what he said earlier.
“Next time,” he promises, one hand releasing my hip to skate over the front of my stomach—over what, for a long time, was the most vulnerable part of me. Sometimes, it still is when I allow it to be.
“You’re smiling.”
Was I? “Thinking of the past.”
“What about?
“That past me would have died before letting you touch me.”
“Funny,” he murmurs in a dry, unamused tone countering his comment, “because past me would have died to touch you.”
My breath catches, the impact of what he’s saying barreling into me. That means?—
If that’s the case, every secret fantasy he starred in could have come true. Things would have been different, and I never would have taken Aaron back, meaning the past eight years could have gone so vastly different; I wouldn’t be swimming in debt, or receiving stalkerish threats from my ex.
Jace and Aaron are so opposite; it’s amazing they didn’t kill each other during school with their animosity or blow up the building or something. Which means whenever Jace glared at Aaron hanging around my locker, was he jealous?
A hand cuts into my vision. “Lost you.”
He can’t know where I went.
As he slides away, the jagged white line on the back of his hand catches my attention again. I noticed it this morning when he was drinking coffee and was immediately curious about its origins.
I stop his hand from lowering, thumb brushing the scar. “What’s the story here?”
“Work. Drill slipped, sliced my hand. It could have been much worse if not for reflexes.”
“Dangerous life you lead,” I joke softly.
“Only if you’re not paying attention.”
There’s nothing else to say, but I remain between his legs—a place I should back away from, to remember what the purpose of me being in town isn’t . Perhaps Gwen is right. Not necessarily about sex, but about Jace, trying a friendship with him not built around teenage antics.
“Are you going to the Easter hunt?”
A smirk plays along his lips, and he readjusts his hat, a nervous twitch I’ve seen him do many times in the past. “I debated it. You?”
“Same.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Maybe.”
Oh, look at me go. Woman of many words. In my defence, I didn’t really try with Aaron, so I don’t know how to do this…whatever this is. Maybe that says something about us, though.
Left with nothing else, I blurt the first thing that randomly comes to mind: the second half of my conversation with Gwen. “Heard a rumour about some guy sometimes coming around at Easter to host his own egg hunt. A private one, where he hunts a woman. Have you heard of him?”
Jace tips his head farther back, his dark eyes somehow becoming a shade closer to midnight. “I’ve heard of him, yeah. Haven’t seen him, if that’s what you’re asking. Though if the rumours are correct, I’m not his type.”
“Hm.”
Jace’s hands slide a few inches down my thighs as he leans back, regarding me curiously. “It scare you? Someone being out there like that?”
No, what scares me is my ex-boyfriend threatening anyone I may sleep with in the future. How much more do I admit, considering what I said earlier? How much more embarrassment can I handle?
“No.”
Huh. Guess a lot more.
Since I’ve said that much, I continue down the path of self-destruction. “That was something that drove Aaron and me apart. I wanted more…like that. Fantasies he refused to entertain. Sex with him was boring—and maybe that’s on me. But it should feel like more too, you know?” No, he doesn’t know. Shut up and stop embarrassing yourself. “I mean, there’s more I’d be interested in trying.”
“You two weren’t meant for one another. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He pulls his hat off again, runs a hand through his curls, then replaces it on his head. “Would you? Do that, I mean? Willingly get chased through the woods by a masked man, knowing you’d be fucked at the end.”
If I knew I wasn’t going to be murdered, sure.
My skin ignites like it’s on fire, basically telling him my answer before opening my mouth. “I like the concept of it and the heart-pounding fear it’d bring. The adrenaline. I’d try it, yeah.”
Jace nods once, his hands sliding farther down my jeans as he falls back against the couch. It’s in his slight movement I feel him slipping away, like I’ve fucked up.
He glances at the door, and it’s enough of a hint I turn for his wine glass to take it back to the kitchen, not wanting him to see my face while composing myself. What changed? What did I allow myself to feel for those thirty seconds?
Perhaps he thinks like Aaron; my interests aren’t normal.
Either way, I know a brush-off when I feel one, so I swallow the ache and stride back to the living room, finding him lingering by the door with his shoes already on. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and he seems as awkward as I feel.
“I’ll see you around. Maybe tomorrow, at the diner.”
“Great.”
Hand on the knob, he glances over his shoulder. “Sorry Bennett fucked everything up, but I’m not sorry you’re back.”
And with that confusing and contradictory statement, he leaves. A moment later, the rumble from his truck fills the room, and I watch out the window as he disappears down the road.
Sleep evades me because I’m ramrod still lying in bed, waiting for the moment Aaron shows up. Beside me, my phone rests unlocked, 9-1-1 already typed on the screen. The moment I hear him, they’ll be receiving a call, and then his police chief uncle can look me in the face tomorrow when I say, Told you.
Around 3 a.m., sleep sweeps me away, and outside remains silent.
Aaron never comes.
Asshole was only trying to trick me.