by Drea Stein
“I don’t want to. I can’t stop thinking about you. I haven’t stopped for ten years, and, well, I thought we had something together and then you just left, disappeared. Why? What did I do?”
“Nothing, Jake. I had to get away. I had plans, dreams, and you were …”
“A distraction? What? A complication?” He knew her biggest desire had been to escape her shitty dad, her unhappy mother. Colleen had dreamed of big things, bigger things than life in a small town.
“Yes,” she said softly.
“And what am I now?”
“Something I want but shouldn’t have.”
It was what he wanted to hear. She came to him, this time, and he kissed her. He could feel her falling into it, totally and absolutely. This time she didn’t pull away, and he let her feel his need for her, let him run his hands along her shoulders and down her back, pulling her tight to him. This must be how people become junkies, flitted through his mind.
He broke away for just a moment and looked at her. She was smiling, a small, tentative, hopeful smile. And then it faded.
“Jake, there’s something …”
There was the tinkle of the bell, the sound of voices, a little girl’s voice and Colleen jerked back, a look of horror on her face.
“Mama, we stopped for cookies,” a little girl called.
There, along with Lydia, who held onto the hand of a little boy, was a little girl. A little girl who came over to Colleen, who held out her hand and enveloped her in a hug.
“Hey sweetie,” Colleen said and gave the girl a smile.
The girl turned, big blue eyes fixed on him and asked, “Who are you?”
The resemblance between her and Colleen was unmistakable.
“Why were you kissing Mama?” she asked.
“What?” he managed to get out. It was if his tongue wouldn’t work. He’d never thought that being caught kissing someone’s mother would be worse than being caught kissing someone’s daughter.
If he had any hopes that Colleen would save him, he was sorely mistaken.
“Now that’s an interesting question,” Lydia said, her Southern drawl only emphasizing the question.
“I’m Josh,” the little boy said, standing there with his arms folded, staring up at Jake, as if he too were looking for an explanation.
“Josh,” he repeated, then turned to look at Colleen.
“I am Adele,” the girl said.
“Adele,” he repeated, but that was about all he could say.
“I umm, well, I have to go,” Jake said. He looked at Colleen, who raised one shoulder and shrugged, as if to say, I told you it was complicated.
He couldn’t get out into the spring afternoon fast enough.
Chapter 26
“Well, that went well,” Colleen said with a sigh, as the door slammed on Jake.
Lydia shook her head. “There’s more heat between the two of you than August in Georgia. Who are you trying to kid?”
“He ran out as soon as he saw Adele.”
“Honey, that was embarrassment. I have feeling he’s never really thought of you as a mother. Nice guys get funny about mothers. Not a bad thing. Probably just needs to wrap his head around the reality of dating a single mom.”
“I have to protect Adele.” Colleen said firmly.
“From what?” Lydia asked, a puzzled expression on her face.
“I don’t want people to judge her, because of me.”
“What, that you’re not married?” Lydia asked, shaking her head. “In case you haven’t heard, it’s a modern world out there. Things like these don’t matter anymore.”
“It’s not that,” Colleen said, groping for words. How could she put it in a way her friend would understand? She had left Queensbay after high school, shaking the dust from her shoes and vowing never to come back here. She was bound for glory and greater things, the first of her family to go to college. She wasn’t going to repeat the mistakes of her own mother and her absentee father. Colleen McShane had meant to make something of her life, to show the good residents of Queensbay that she was better than the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
And here she was to all appearances a marginally employed, unwed mother, living at home on the wrong side of the tracks. She knew that she was more than that. She had money in the bank, a career, and now her own business, but to anyone else it would look like she had essentially wound up right back where she started. She didn’t need a big house or a fancy car to prove that she had made something of herself. She wouldn’t fall into that trap. She just needed to be enough for her daughter, to know that Adele wouldn’t grow up feeling abandoned and neglected as she had. She would be both mother and father to Adele, and she wouldn’t let anything distract her from moving them forward. And Jake was definitely a distraction. Something, someone she could lose herself to.
“You know,” Lydia said. “History has a way of repeating itself, unless you make a real effort to change it. You have to have the will and gumption.”
“Gumption?”
“Moxie, cajones, you know what I mean. Seems like you’ve taken a few licks, and maybe you’re a little down and out, but at least you found someplace to rest your feet and that’s something. Don’t stay down.”
“Onward and upward, something like that?”
Lydia nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “Now it’s a nice day, so can we go to the park? Josh needs to run his crazies out before he breaks something in here.”
Colleen looked over to where Adele and Josh were. The boy was trying to climb some shelves. Colleen nodded in agreement. Fresh air would do them all a world of good.
Chapter 27
The park was quiet, and she was thankful for that. She was brooding, and Lydia, sensing her mood, rounded up Adele and Josh and took them to the swings, leaving Colleen alone with her thoughts. The encounter with Jake had left her riding a roller coaster of emotions. One of which was most definitely guilt. She never should have let Adele see her kissing Jake. She had been careful to keep men, even Olivier after he had made it clear he did not want to be a father to their daughter, out of her life. She was human and had her needs, but she had tended to them discretely, if at all. She wanted Adele to know that she was the most important thing in her life. Now that she had been caught kissing Jake, what would her daughter think?
On the walk over to the park, Adele had been quiet but Colleen knew that her brain was working furiously. She waited for the inevitable questions a four year old would have. She sighed and picked at some imaginary lint on her skirt. She didn’t know what to do. There was a part of her that enjoyed kissing Jake. Every part of her body responded to him. But she was more than a collection of physical needs. She had to be, even if it would feel good to respond to them.
Jake took a while to work up the courage to go find her. It had been a shock to see Colleen’s daughter. Sure, he had known about her, in theory, but he realized she had never once talked about her with him. And then, being caught like that, kissing Colleen in front of the girl, had made him feel like a jerk. He’d panicked and ran out of there. Which, somehow made it worse.
Jake paused, paced a bit. If there was a daughter, there had to be a father. Was that why Colleen had said it was complicated. He took a deep breath. If Colleen were married, if there was a dad, he could, would respect that. Jake shook his head. But if there was a dad, where was he? Colleen was living in Queensbay with her mother and her daughter. It didn’t quite scream nuclear family to him. And the way she had kissed him. There hadn’t been a hesitation like she was conflicted, not once she had let herself fall into him.
He needed to know, so he found his steps heading toward the park. They could talk, in public, if that was best, but he needed to know the score. And, if Colleen was spoken for, well then he would walk away. He would stop pressing her, stop being anything more than friendly to her. He would respect her wishes. His gut wrenched, even as his mind made the logical arguments. He didn’t want to think what he would do if t
hat turned out to be the case.
She was meant to be with him, he was meant to be with her. Jake saw her finally, in the park, sunlight from the giant oak tree that kept guard over the playground, bathing her and the swing she was pushing in a hazy, dappled kind of light. He caught his breath, fought the fierce feeling of possessiveness and longing that rose in him and tried to settle his nerves as he walked over to her.
“Why are you here?” she asked without turning around.
He was casting a shadow, and she knew it was him from the smell of fresh wood and sawdust that he always carried with him.
“I promised Mrs. Sampson I’d take a look at the gazebo and see what it would take to repair it,” he said.
She glanced at the gazebo. It stood as it always had, under that shade of a spreading elm, but she could see that it was starting to look a little the worse for wear.
“Looks fine to me,” she said.
“Wood rot,” he said authoritatively, watching her push the swing.
“Higher, Mommy, higher,” Adele said, delight coloring her words.
“Here, let me try,” Jake said, and he stepped in and gave a good push.
Addie squealed as she went higher, but not too high. Jake’s next push wasn’t quite so forceful, and Colleen was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Last thing she needed was Adele to fall off the swing and hurt herself. Jake pushed for a while, and they stood, not talking, the only sounds the squeak of the swing’s chain as it moved back and forth.
“I take it you’ve gotten over your surprise?” she said when Adele was at the apex and less likely to hear them. Lydia and Josh had gone home a while ago, after Josh had another one of his meltdowns.
“My surprise?”
“I could have sworn that you were going to have a heart attack back there.”
“It didn’t seem right,” he admitted. “Her seeing me kiss you like that. It gave me pause.”
“Sand,” Adele cried, her little legs slowing so that the swing’s momentum slowed with them.
“She wants to play in the sandbox,” Colleen explained.
Jake stopped pushing, and when the swing came back to the middle, he slowed it in his big hands.
Adele squirmed around and looked at him gravely. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Jake answered, his voice friendly. Colleen watched their exchange carefully.
“You were at the shop,” she said, and Colleen thought she saw Jake blush.
“I was,” he answered simply enough and waited.
“Why were you kissing my mama?” Adele asked as Colleen helped her out of the swing. One of her pigtails was coming undone, but Colleen froze. Adele had been silent on this point, and Colleen had hoped that maybe she had escaped the host of questions that preceded Adele no matter where they went. But no, her bright, inquisitive daughter had just been biding her time.
Jake stroked his hand across his chin, but he did not meet Colleen’s eyes, instead he kept his gaze focused on Adele.
“Because she smells nice,” he said.
Colleen sighed in relief.
Adele nodded, as if it were true.
“And she’s pretty.”
Adele nodded again.
“I’m Jake, by the way.”
“Adele McShane,” she said and held out her little hand.
Jake looked down at it for just a moment, then shook it.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he said, and she was off, racing to the sandbox.
Colleen made her way to follow her slowly, and Jake fell into step alongside of her.
“Gazebo is over that way,” she said pointedly. She liked it too much that he was next to her. That moment just before where he had pushed Adele on the swing and shaken her hand had been too perfect. He had known exactly how to behave with her.
It gave her a sharp sense of longing, for a sense of belonging and normalcy that she pushed away. She had always prided herself on being unconventional; it had been what led her away from Queensbay so long ago and why she had tried not to beat herself up for all the choices she had made since then. She hadn’t lived an ordinary life by any means, and when the result of all of them, which was Adele, was so perfect, she couldn’t pine after what she could not have.
“I’ll get to it. Too nice a day to be working.”
Colleen slanted her gaze up at him. Jake had never been one to shirk hard work.
He shrugged. “Can’t I enjoy a day at the park?”
“Not if you don’t have a kid. That’s called being a creep.”
“Told you, I have a job to do, and I am visiting with you.”
Colleen waited, her shoulders tensed.
“Why don’t you talk about her? To me, I mean.”
“I …” Colleen faltered. “I don’t not talk about it or her.”
“You think it would have come up.”
“Why would it? We’ve barely said two words to each other. I mean, you say, I’ll have a beer and I say what kind, and then you thank me and that’s about it. And then you just start kissing me. Sorry if I didn’t quite know how to work in my whole back story.”
“You won’t say anything else to me.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“So how did this happen?”
“Do you mean how does a woman get pregnant? Do I really have to explain biology to you?”
“Where’s her father?”
“What’s it to you?” Colleen threw back at him.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Because if he’s in the picture then I am out. I am not going to step on any toes. I will walk away.”
“He’s not in the picture,” she said, and she didn’t know whether to be annoyed or slightly pleased at his sense of decency. She didn’t want to point out that it was up to her, not him to decide if there were any toes to be stepped on.
“That’s all?” Jake asked.
“Why? Do you need to know more?”
He was silent, then he said, “I need to know you’re free.”
She twisted her hands. Was she free? What did free even mean? She had a daughter, and she would never be free from that gift, and the responsibility.
“He’s not in the picture for me. He knows about Adele, but she doesn’t know about him. I mean she doesn’t know that Olivier is her father. She thinks he’s just a friend of the family.”
She sighed, reading into his silence, feeling she needed to explain herself. “He’s married now. But before that, when we were together, I got pregnant. I knew right away that I would keep the baby. Olivier, I don’t know, but he was already moving on, as they say. So I agreed not to name him the father. His new wife wouldn’t have liked that.”
Jake was still silent. She knew that she needed to give him more.
She shrugged. “Naïve girl goes to big city, gets swept up by the glitter and fast-paced life, and makes some dubious choices. Fast forward a few years, she has a kid but no husband and decides it’s time to make a change. Simplest way is to go back to a place with free rent where she knows her way around.”
He looked down at her, his blue eyes thoughtful. Her silence compelled her to keep speaking.
“Our relationship was tapering off. He was more and more distant. But still I got pregnant. At first he seemed delighted. I never expected him to marry me. But then he got engaged, which I didn’t expect either. But, he didn’t leave me. I found out in the paper about the engagement, and he had the gall to say that nothing between us had to change, really.”
Colleen took a deep breath. This was the part she was not particularly proud of, but she hadn’t known what to do. “I stayed. I kept working for him, cashed his checks. Adele was born. He wasn’t there. He was at his engagement party. He sent a present and set up a bank account in her name. He came by a few times. To see her. To see me.
“He even spoke to me about a promotion and opening a store in a new city. Where I suppose he could visit me, without his wife knowing. Except Adele and I were the worst-kept secret in all of P
aris.
“Olivier, luckily, lost interest. And, I was happy, living my own life, with Adele. We had a roof over our heads, some money in the bank, but I knew that it was it at his sufferance. He kept mentioning the store, but when I asked about it, somehow it was always something he’d look into in another few months.
“I was ready to stop waiting. I had started to look into new jobs, to do something else when I got the letter from Phil. Well, from his lawyer. Coming back to Queensbay, even only to settle the estate, seemed like the best way to help me think through what I wanted to do next.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “It happens.”
“Even before I left Paris, it had been three months since he’d seen Adele. I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming him, but I didn’t want her to grow up waiting for a dad that wasn’t going to come home. Not like I did. I thought if I came here, just the two of us, that she’d only know that I was her family.”
“He sounds like a real winner,” Jake said drily. “Or is that just the French way of doing things?”
Colleen laughed, a bitter edge to it. It was the way Olivier did things. “Maybe. I told Olivier I was only coming over for a few weeks, a month or two to sort things out.”
Jake looked at her. “It’s been longer than that.”
“I know. I’m pretty certain Olivier knows we’re not coming back, but he hasn’t said a word. So that’s my story. I’m just a single mom who’s trying to get back on my feet.”
Jake shook his head. “You went out, you met someone, and you made some choices. You had a baby. And you’re raising her, starting a business, working a second job.”
He turned to her and held her hands. “I don’t see anything wrong with what you did.”
Jake’s hands were warm and strong, and she couldn’t deny the comfort she felt as he held hers. She had never felt this comfort from a man before. Excitement, but not comfort or security. She wanted to pull her hands away and tell herself not to trust it.
She looked at him. “I shouldn’t have left like I did.”
He knew exactly what she was talking about. “What were you afraid of?” he asked. “Getting knocked up by the ex-quarterback and being stuck in a small town?”
