by RJ Scott
“She doing okay?” Robbie asked from a stall, leaning on the wood and looking at Jack with a know-it-all expression on his face. “Were you worrying for nothing, Pappa?”
Jack shoved him lightly. “You wait until one of your two leaves home, when Louise goes to college, or gets engaged, and then come smirking to me.”
Robbie grinned, “Louise is never leaving the house,” he said.
They worked for a long time, just like every other day, and when Vaughn joined them, Jack felt every small bit of tension leaving him. They worked long and hard, Jack ending the day at the school, with the horse program, getting his hands dirty.
“I don’t want to worry you,” Janet said. She was one of the new carers who accompanied the children from a local school. No sentence starting like that would end up well, and Jack tensed.
“What is it?”
“Mitchell is missing. He was here, and he’s gone.” She was checking against a clipboard, struggling to corral the kids, not used to the different ways in which they enjoyed the riding school.
Jack didn’t panic. Mitchell was on the spectrum like Max, and he loved one thing more than any other when he was here.
“It’s okay; he’ll be in the stables. I’ll go get him.”
He’d learned so much over the years with this school, how to talk, when to talk, when not to talk, and Mitchell liked it when he hummed. Jack didn’t even realize he hummed, not until Mitchell patted his face and smiled at him a few months ago.
He found him cleaning the stall, methodically working in small strips, and waited until Mitchell noticed him. He was non-verbal and struggled with communication, but his smile? It was beautiful. Jack held up the notebook he always had with him when he was at the school, the cards with images on them, and he held up the one for Mitchell, a picture of the bus that took them home.
Mitchell never argued, he placed the shovel very carefully by the wall and then dipped his head to scurry past Jack, bumping elbows with him as they passed. He didn’t like to be touched or watched, unless it was on his terms. He was eighteen, just about to drop out of the education system and into adult care. One day Max would be at this point, thankfully not for a couple more years, but what happened to kids when they became adults?
“You know we could use Mitchell’s help here,” Liam said, standing next to Jack, his thumbs in his belt loops. Jack didn’t think he was joking either, and maybe they could somehow work with young adults on the spectrum, offer them part-time jobs, work with carers and form some kind of program.
“What if we—?”
“Already on it boss,” Liam interrupted.
“With a—?”
“I have a guy coming in to talk it through, offering placements, wanted to hand you the completed investigation, but yeah, I’d like to run with it if I could.”
Liam was his second at the school, the man who ran things when Jack was working with Robbie, training, or on the breeding program. He shouldn’t have to check with Jack about something like this, nor ask if it was okay to run with something that would be so good. He was working with Kyle at Legacy, running the school, and he was as intrinsically a part of the D as Jack was.
Jack made a decision, right there and then, and held out a hand, which Liam took, looking confused.
“Consider yourself promoted to manager of this place.”
“Jack—”
“Keep doing what you’re doing, count me in for my usual work here, but you take over, make decisions, follow your instincts. Work with Darren on the accounts, budgets. You want it?”
Liam was lost for words; then he shook Jack’s hand firmly. “God, yes.”
Chapter 22
Riley stood back and admired the sketch. “See,” he began and tapped the design he’d drawn up for a house for Hayley and Logan. “Three bedrooms, all with bathrooms, a kitchen/diner, a living room—”
“They’re having a ‘living room’?” Jack teased.
Riley looked affronted. “Every house should have a special room to sit in with company.”
“Okay then, carry on.”
“So anyway, another room for family, and a loft room here.” He tapped the top of the house emphatically.
“You’re sure this is what they want?” Jack asked, some of that doubt he’d expressed when Riley first proposed the wedding gift creeping in. He wanted to do this for Hayley, give her a place that was hers on D land, and no, it wasn’t because he couldn’t bear the thought of her moving away. Or, yes, maybe it was that, but still, they had the money and the land, and they could make something special for them.
“It’s what we can give them.”
“What about Josh and Logan’s office?”
Riley had considered that, “We could add something to the ranch, offices. He scribbled an ‘X’ on the map of the ranch. “Right there, near the school.”
Jack placed a hand over Riley’s. “Riley, stop a minute.”
Riley tried to move his hand, but Jack was clearly not letting it go. “What?” he asked, not recalling why was there a need for Jack to be all calming influence on him.
“Let’s talk to Hayley, and Logan eh? Before we go on planning out the rest of their lives.”
That hurt, right inside Riley. He wanted Jack to think this was a good thing, the best kind of wedding present, and something that Riley could do.
“They need somewhere to live,” Riley said.
“And Logan wants to work for it, you know why.”
“No, I don’t, Hayley’s fathers have money, an obscene amount of money that we could use to help them with a start in life.”
“Riley.” Jack curled his fingers around Riley’s and tugged him, and Riley went with the flow, ending up being hugged and held close. “He wants to prove he can look after Hayley, is that so hard to understand? Will you respect him if he takes the money, or the house, or the freaking private jet you probably have on the list?”
“Of course I’ll respect him, this is Hayley I’m thinking about.”
“And so am I. Let them make their own way, we’ll help them out as any kind of normal parents would, and give them some land here if they want to build a place, but Riley, let them do it for themselves.”
Riley hated that, even at his most stubborn, Jack had this way of pushing through things enough for Riley to realize Jack was probably right. He loved that about Jack. He hated that about Jack.
“Fuck’s sake,” Riley muttered against Jack’s shirt.
“So we look at their gift list, give them something from there, and talk to them about how else we could help. Agreed?”
Riley sighed. “I don’t suppose there is anything on the list that says a new house, or a private jet, or maybe an island in the Caribbean?”
Jack laughed and kissed Riley hard. “No,” he said when they separated. “I doubt it.”
They parted and Riley turned the page in his notebook. He wasn’t ready to destroy the house he’d sketched, and maybe one day Hayley and Logan would want this place but at this moment he knew in his heart that Jack was right.
“Ready to pick her up and go?”
They were dress shopping this morning, something that normally filled both men with dread, but this was a wedding dress, and she wanted her dads to be there. There was a whole group of people wanting to be involved, and at first Riley had thought that it was too many but Hayley had family, extended family, and it was right that she wanted to share it. She’d asked both of them to give her away, and for that they needed fitting for suits, something he loved and Jack dreaded.
But anyway, the dress.
They picked Hayley up from work, and headed to the wedding dress place, a huge sprawling area that Hayley had to herself. The ceilings were low, the lighting bright and there were racks upon racks of dresses.
Alicia, the bridal consultant, introduced herself, there was champagne, canapés and a lot of laughter.
And only one dress, the first dress she picked. Riley didn’t know much about dresses, waistlines, beading,
or veils.
He just knew that seeing Hayley in the dress made him cry.
Dinner was noisy; they’d gone home and Logan joined them, Jack teasing that he’d seen the dress and would Logan like to know what it looked like. The two of them went and sat on the porch post-dinner, which left just him and Hayley in the kitchen after the kids had gone to bed. They washed up, bumping arms, and finally, they gave up all pretense, and she walked into his arms and held onto him.
“Your momma would have loved to have been there,” Riley said, emotion choking him. They had another letter for Hayley, which was why Jack had taken Logan outside. Was now a good time? He couldn’t say, but the note on the front in Hayley’s mom’s handwriting was very clear, for the day Hayley chooses her wedding dress.
She knew as well, clinging to his hand when he handed it to her. They’d moved to Riley and Jack’s room and sat on the bed, Riley tried to release her hold, but she wouldn’t let go.
“Can you read it, dad?” she asked softly, the letter in her lap, untouched.
“I think maybe it’s for you to read first,” Riley insisted.
Hayley shook her head and handed him the letter. “She’d want to know that you were part of this.”
Riley looked out the window a little desperately, hoping to will Jack back inside, but there was nothing he could do, and he sat on the bed next to her and took the paper. The seal wasn’t as sticky as the earlier letters, and it was the penultimate letter, the only other one was for if Hayley had kids. A small package wrapped in tissue was inside the envelope, but he didn’t unwrap it; that was for Hayley to do. Each time he thought of Lexie, the woman who’d given him Hayley, he was struck by a special kind of grief, that Hayley wouldn’t have her mom for the special times. So even beginning to read the letter he was a mess.
“Dearest Hayley,” he began, and coughed to clear his tight throat. “I can’t believe that my little girl is now choosing a wedding dress. I’m not exactly sure what to write here, because I didn’t have a wedding,” Riley stopped, and grief flooded him. He hadn't even known that Lexie was pregnant, but he’d treated her wrong, and he carried that with him every day. They’d never had a wedding, not like his and Jack’s.
What would he have done? Would he have married her if she’d told him? He tried to imagine the bastard he’d been, the kid who’d used to drink to excess and whore about, and hoped to hell that maybe he would have done the right thing if he’d got a girl pregnant.
Hayley linked hands with him again. “Go on,” she encouraged, and he realized he’d stopped.
“Okay,” he cleared his throat again and settled his breathing. “I didn’t have a wedding,” he repeated, “but I had you, and that more than made up for any kind of special day with some man I’d fallen in love with. I hope the man you have met is good to you, treats you well. I hope he works hard, and you talk, and that he is everything you wished for. And for the dress, I hope that what you have makes you feel like the princess you always pretended to be as a child. There won’t be a letter for your wedding day, because that should be the happiest day of your life, with no tears of grief.
Riley cleared his throat, pushing back the tears and then continued.
“There is a gift here for you, it’s not an heirloom, but it’s a present I bought that I would love for you to sew into your dress on your wedding day. You don’t have to wear it, but to know it was with you, that would make me happy. As always, my darling, I love you, and I know that you looked absolutely beautiful today trying on dresses and veils.” Riley couldn’t help being choked, the lettering so familiar, and the link to the past so visceral. He passed the small wrapped gift to Hayley, and she opened the tissue paper to reveal a small pendant on a gold chain, a pale blue sapphire hanging from it.
“Oh,” Hayley said, holding it up and watching the sapphire spin and catch the light. “Oh,” she said again. “Momma.”
Riley held his daughter close, until the grief became something else. Until it became a recognition that her mom would always be there for her, and that the necklace was her connection to family.
“I’ll wear it, I won’t sew it somewhere hidden,” Hayley announced, and held the chain close to her heart. “I won’t,” she replied fiercely.
Jack and Logan were in the kitchen waiting for them, and Logan held back a moment, allowing Jack to hug Hayley.
Then Logan took Hayley’s hand and led her outside to talk; to be alone. He was the man she would turn to at the end of things. Not him and Jack anymore, not for everything.
And that was just as it should be.
Chapter 23
The day of Hayley and Logan’s wedding didn’t start so well. There might have been the dress, and the cake, and a million other things that were really important, but that didn’t mean things couldn’t go wrong.
“Hayley’s crying,” Connor announced as he ran past Riley and Jack as if the hounds of hell were on his tail, slamming out of the kitchen and vanishing from sight.
When Lexie sauntered out after him she shook her head. “He can’t handle a woman crying,” she said with all the adulting an eleven-year-old could manage. Riley would have laughed, but all he could think was that Hayley was crying. “And Aunty Eden doesn’t know what to do.”
“Why is Hayley crying?” Jack asked before Riley could.
“Who knows.” Lexie slumped at the table. Her sapphire blue bridesmaid’s dress stuck out at an angle, and she smoothed it down. She’d been wearing it since this morning, and nothing Riley or Jack said could pry her out of it.
“Don’t spill anything on your dress,” Jack commented, as he had been doing all day, and then gestured for Riley to go first.
Hayley was crying, and maybe she needed her daddies.
Riley knocked on the door, even though it was ajar. He didn’t want to go barreling into her room without giving her the chance to say go away.
Eden came to the door.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said. “But she wanted me to come and get you.” She hugged Riley briefly, and patted Jack on the chest and then went the way of Connor and Lexie.
They exchanged brief looks of worry, and Riley didn’t have to know Jack as well as he did to see that they were thinking the same thing. That maybe she was regretting this? Maybe she didn’t want to marry Logan?
She was sitting on her bed in a robe, her long blonde hair all twisted up in the complicated knot that Eden had helped her with. No hairdressers for Hayley, or anyone to do makeup, today for her was all about doing things with Eden. She glanced up when they walked in and she wasn’t crying now, but she looked lost.
Riley sat down beside her; Jack took the stool that sat in front of the vanity, impossibly huge on the tiny thing.
“What’s wrong, Hays?” Riley started when Jack looked at him and nodded.
“Mom didn’t write me a letter for today,” she said, and twisted her hands in her lap.
“Oh sweetheart, is that is what’s upsetting you?”
“No,” she said, “she said all she wanted in the last one, told me she didn’t want me to cry on my wedding day. You know that.” She fiddled with the chain around her neck with the sapphire, twisting it around her finger and holding it close.
“I know, but maybe it would have been better if she had,” this from Jack.
“No, it’s nothing to do with Mom, or it is, but it isn’t.” She bowed her head, and there were fresh tears.
Riley’s heart broke seeing Hayley so upset. “Hayley, if you’re having second thoughts about the wedding, sweetheart.”
“We had plans,” Hayley sobbed. Jack stood and closed the door, locking it so there were no accidental interruptions. Something was seriously wrong here. “We were going to get a place near his work, just a small place, and I would commute from there when I was in the office. We were going to have a garden, and go for walks, and maybe get a dog, because Logan can take a dog to his office, and we were going to sit on our sofa and watch TV and cuddle and he sai
d we could travel the world, and visit places we’d never seen, and we were waiting…” she sobbed again.
“Hayley, calm down honey.” Jack reached for her hands and held them, and Riley put an arm over her shoulder. “Talk to us.”
“Is it Logan?” Riley felt this rush of protective-dad, and when Jack caught his eye he knew he was feeling the same. The kids and each other were everything. “Did he do something?”
“No,” she sobbed, “Yes. No.”
“I’ll kill him,” Jack said and made to stand up.
She held out a hand. “No, Pappa, it was both of us.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Riley said.
“It’s all ruined,” she murmured, and leaned into Riley. “And I don’t know how to fix it. No,” she looked up at them then, her expression stricken, “I don’t want to fix it.”
Silence.
Then Jack cleared his throat, imagining the worst. “Okay, so I’m not killing Logan, but are we canceling the wedding Hayley? It’s okay, you don’t have to worry, but guests are arriving so I’d need to go out and—”
“No, I need to talk to Logan. I don’t care if it’s bad luck, can someone find Logan?” Jack stood, and nodded, he would find Logan, but she reached out and stopped him. “Pappa, don’t hurt him, he hasn’t done anything wrong. I just need to talk to him.”
Riley held Hayley close when Jack left. “You can talk to us,” he said, hoping that would be enough to get through to her, but she shook her head sadly.
“I want to talk to Logan first; I need to.”
“Okay.”
Jack came back with a concerned Logan, dressed to the nines in a dark gray suit with a sapphire tie the same color as the bridesmaids’ dresses.
As soon as he saw Hayley, he rushed to her, “Hayley, what’s wrong, please…”
Riley released his hold, and left the room to stand with Jack, but not before he sent Logan his best daddy-frown, to which Logan’s eyes widened. Riley shut the door behind him.
“I don’t know what Logan did,” he whispered, “but I will kill him if he’s hurt her.”
