Chapter 7 #2
Dropping her backpack on the floor, she sank into the cold metal that put her just a few inches away from him. Well, their knees were that close since the chairs were angled. But the rest of her still sat two feet away from him.
Had he done that on purpose? Her heart skipped a few beats.
“That’s every school.” He slouched lower, his long legs sprawled so that one knee loomed even closer to her.
He smelled good, like shampoo or soap, maybe. This close, she could see a fresh cut just under his chin, a tiny red slash that might have been a shaving mishap.
Overhead, an old institutional clock hummed away the minutes.
“Where did you go before this?” Was it okay to ask that? She didn’t know how long he’d been in the foster system, so maybe he’d just left his real home. Or maybe he’d gotten transferred from one foster family to another.
Either way, it couldn’t have been easy. But it was too late to take the question back without another awkward moment.
“Memphis. Three schools in two years. And they’re all alike.” He shifted toward her to tick off items on his fingers, the angle making the thin gold chain around his neck glimmer dully. “Same athlete pricks. Same entitled rich kids. Virtually identical cliques.”
“Really?” She couldn’t imagine any student body being as mean-spirited as this one. She tried not to envy him the opportunity to try out other places, knowing his life couldn’t have been easy.
Then again, she wondered if his mother was in jail the way hers was. That had to even the score a little.
“Definitely.” Straightening in his chair, he peered over at her. “Who’s your clique, Bailey?”
Something about the way he said it sounded like a challenge. As if he already assumed she would be in one of his predictable groups? She saw no point in denying where she stood in the social pecking order. He’d find out soon enough once he enrolled.
“Currently, I’ve been abandoned by all my former friends except for Megan—the girl you met who babysits with me. So I guess I don’t have a clique these days.” She avoided his eyes, wishing they could have gone on talking for a while before this subject came up.
“Been there.” He nodded, his expression remaining neutral. If he thought she was a giant loser, he didn’t show it. “But you know what? Better to have one real friend than ten bogus ones.”
Out in the hallway, a woman’s shrill voice rose to a shout.
“I know my son’s rights! You can’t deny J.D. access to his education. He is as entitled to be here as those girls—”
“Oh God.” Bailey stood, her reprieve from her real life effectively over. She did not want to face J.D.’s mother. And what if J.D. himself were out there in the front office? “I need to get out of here.”
“Why?” Dawson stood, instantly alert. “What’s wrong?”
He looked ready to bolt, too. Together? The notion calmed her a little.
“Nothing.” She shook her head, still feeling jittery and scared. Why had she let herself get separated from Megan? “I mean, there’s a lady out front who will be really—and I mean really—unhappy with me. You can stay. I just... I have to go.”
Hurrying over to the door of the testing center, she gripped her backpack under one arm and peered toward the front office. It was around a corner, though, so her view was blocked.
She strained to hear the lowered voices speaking nearby.
“...there is no restraining order in effect,” J.D.’s mother, the social-studies teacher, was telling someone.
“But perhaps the young ladies didn’t expect him to be out of jail...” That sounded like the vice principal, Mr. Cornish.
“He was never in jail!” Mrs. Covington insisted. “He’s just a boy who got caught up in his father’s mistakes—”
She was shushed again, and the rest of the conversation became more garbled, as if they’d stepped deeper into one of the offices off the reception area.
Bailey’s stomach knotted.
“You want a ride home?” Dawson’s soft voice in her ear was an oddly pleasant sensation in the midst of a firestorm of scary shit.
Bailey wanted to cling to it with both hands.
She really didn’t want to be here. She needed to speak to her father about what to do now that J.D.
was back in school. And even though her car was out in the student parking lot, she was already shaking in her shoes at the idea of walking through the front office to leave.
Her old Volvo would be wrapped around a tree if she tried driving herself anywhere.
So no matter that she knew it was selfish to rope this boy into her problems, she nodded.
“Ready when you are.”
brIGHT BLUE EYES stared up at her from the most angelic little face.
Amy had sprinted into the darkened nursery, grateful to escape an awkward conversation and her failed flirting attempts with Sam. But she’d gone from the frying pan into the fire because now she held a warm, wiggling bundle that was every bit as precious as she’d once imagined a newborn would be.
Only in her imaginings, it had been her child she’d held in her arms. She’d spent months dreaming about her baby, envisioning herself as a mother, and knowing somehow that the journey to being a parent would heal the broken pieces inside her.
“He likes you,” Sam observed over her shoulder as she held him.
She hadn’t even heard him enter the warm yellow nursery decorated with brightly colored dinosaurs.
It smelled like baby powder and infant laundry detergent, with a basket of half-folded tiny clothes near the crib.
She had to close her eyes to shut out the vision of Aiden’s sweet expression, the moment so beautiful and painful at the same time after what she’d been through.
“It’s probably my rocking technique that he likes,” she said finally, her voice husky from the mix of emotions tugging on her heart.
She’d spent too many hours staring into the hospital nursery after her miscarriage, watching the nurses care for the newborns.
Hastily she swiped at a tear that welled in her eye.
She told herself to hand the baby over. To walk out of the nursery and away from Aiden before the boy stole another bit of her heart. Instead, she kept rocking and patting the infant’s warm back where she’d wrapped him in a thin cotton blanket.
“Maybe he misses his mother.” Sam’s voice took on a hard note, and she turned to find him scowling. “She called me this morning to ask for more time—”
He stopped himself as if he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to talk about it. Amy, for her part, was all too glad to talk about something besides all the dark feelings inside her. Loss. Regret. Longing for the kind of life she wouldn’t have now.
“For what? She wants you to watch him longer?” Curious, she pivoted to face him, her socks sliding on the hardwood.
“According to her, she’s in treatment for postpartum depression.”
“You say it like you don’t believe her.” She remembered what her sister had said about everyone in town thinking Sam was intimidating.
Just now, with the dark scowl on his brow, she understood why.
“I’m not sure I do. She hasn’t given me many reasons to trust her, though I’d hate to think she would use such a serious condition as a cop-out.
It’s damn unfair to the new mothers who truly suffer from postpartum depression.
” He retrieved a black gym bag that had been stored under the changing table and started filling it with diapers, wipes and baby clothes.
“I have to drop Aiden off at my mother’s before I make a few stops around town.
Any chance you could take a ride with me?
I figure the more we reminisce, the more likely it is that we’ll stir some memories that could help the case. ”
She watched him collect supplies from around the nursery, his broad shoulders stretching the cotton of his blue button-down in the most appealing way.
She had been crazy to try coming on to him.
But then again, he’d grown only more appealing in the years since she’d seen him last. She liked that he was a serious guy.
He never made her feel that she needed to pretend happiness or lightness.
Even better, he made her feel safe just with his presence.
“I thought you weren’t interested in my kind of reminiscing.” She shifted Aiden when he stretched like he might cry again, holding him upright against one shoulder and rubbing his back.
It took all her willpower not to tip her temple to his and sing him a lullaby.
What was it about a baby that inspired such an immediate need to cuddle and care for them?
It wasn’t just her own loss. Even before the miscarriage, she remembered how fun it had been to care for her brother Scott’s daughter when Ally had been a baby.
Across the nursery, Sam straightened. He set the bag on the top of the changing table and stuffed in a blanket before turning to face her.
“I am very interested.” He stalked toward her, his cool gray gaze unflinching as he watched her.
“If I didn’t have a job to think about—or my son to consider—I can promise you this afternoon would have proceeded very differently.
” He let the words simmer between them for a minute while she took in the import of the suggestion.
“But I’m going to view this extra time to think as a good thing. ”
He smoothed a strand of her hair away from where it was caught on Aiden’s blanket. He hadn’t even touched her and her heartbeat tripped over itself.
“You’ve had ten years, Sam Reyes.” She narrowed her gaze.
“How much more time could you possibly need?” She could almost hear the argument brewing in his head.
But she didn’t want to hear it. So she tucked Aiden closer to her chest and brushed her cheek along his downy head.
“Don’t answer that. I’ll go with you, and we can argue all you like on the road. ”