Chapter 14
Bella
“If the piece isn’t fittin’, maybe you got the wrong puzzle.”
~ Papa Duke
“She’s beautiful.” Bryson peered over my shoulder as he walked behind me down to the opposite end of the bar.
“Thank you.” I stared down at the picture my ladybug just texted me.
She was holding Bark Wahlberg up to show that she’d painted his nails pink. I texted her back “lol”, which she’d told me multiple times wasn’t being used anymore and I should send her a laughing face with tears running down it, but I refused to go emoji. Communication had already been reduced to abbreviations; I just couldn’t contribute to the complete extinction of our language. I said as much and she countered by saying that cavemen used symbols and Egyptians used hieroglyphics in their writings.
She loved to argue with me.
She sent heart emojis and I typed that I loved her.
I missed her so much it hurt. Really hurt. Physically. My body had been so achy I thought I had the flu until I realized that my “symptoms” were always worse right after I got off the phone with her. But I felt fine during our calls and also when I was busy at work and distracted. I was heartsick.
The good news was, I was at the halfway mark. Three weeks down, three more to go. I was returning to Valentine Bay in exactly twenty-one days. I couldn’t wait to hug her and see her face in person and not on my iPhone.
“I still can’t believe you’re a mom.” Bryson passed behind me and opened the register.
I grinned as I put my phone in my back pocket and set up my station. After my first week cocktailing, Bryson promoted me to bartender. I wanted to believe that it was because I was doing such a kickass job as a server, but more likely than not it was because Jade had put in a good word—if you consider a threat a good word—for me. I appreciated her support, but I did feel kind of bad that Bryson was paying for the fact that I’d shown up in town broke and unemployed. I’d tried to refuse the job, but he’d made that impossible.
Bryson O’Sullivan could be very persuasive when he wanted to be, and even when he didn’t, I suppose. He was six-two with jet-black hair, blue eyes, charm out the wazoo and on top of all that, a hint of an Irish brogue. His parents emigrated here from Ireland when Bryson was eight and Jade was five. Jade developed a Texas twang in her speech while Bryson kept his homeland’s lilt. So, yeah, he was pretty irresistible.
From what I’d seen over the time I’d been back, he was a huge pull with the twenty-somethings of Clover County. Women in a sixty-mile radius flocked to this bar just to stare into his eyes and flirt. At first, I’d given him a hard time about being a player, but then I’d noticed the tired look in his eyes as woman after woman hit on him, so I stopped joking around about it.
In elementary school, I’d had a little crush on him. How could I not? But that all ended my first day of middle school when Colton asked me to be his girlfriend. After that it had been like I had blinders on. I didn’t see anyone but Colton.
Bryson counted the money in the drawer and didn’t look up as he asked. “So when do we get to meet Sadie?”
“I’m not sure.” Jade had been asking the same thing, especially after I told her that Sadie’s middle name was Jade. She wanted to meet her namesake. I wanted Sadie to come here, meet the people that were important to me and see where I grew up, but that was impossible. “She’s spending the summer with my in-laws in Oregon.”
“What about after the summer?” He closed the drawer and leaned against the counter.
I kept my attention focused on the lemons and limes I was cutting. “I’m not sure. Right now, I’m taking it day by day. I need to sell the farmhouse and then figure out where we land next.”
He was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “Would being back here be so bad?”
Yes.
We were minutes away from opening and I didn’t want to get into exactly how bad it would be. So I went with something that everyone that had grown up in a small town could relate to. “Sadie loves Starbucks, malls, and movie theaters. I don’t think she wants to spend her teenage years in a town that doesn’t have any of those things.”
“Yeah, but we have open fields, horses, and sunsets that will take her breath away. Besides, you’ve got years before she’ll be that age.”
“I have one year, she’ll be twelve next month.”
“Oh, she looked so young, I just thought…” Bryson pushed off the counter as his brow furrowed. “Wait a minute, you’re the same age as Jade. You’re twenty-eight…so that means you had her when you were sixteen?”
“Yep.” I nodded. There were a lot of stigmas attached to being a teen mom, not that I thought Bryson would look down on me, but still I found myself making the same joke I did when people found out how old I was when I’d had Sadie. “Too bad Sixteen and Pregnant wasn’t around then, I could have had my own reality show.”
I glanced over at him expecting to see him at least smiling if not chuckling. He was doing neither. He was just staring at me.
Oh, well. They can’t all be zingers.
I went back to prep, thinking that the conversation was over. And I was wrong again.
“You moved away Jade’s sophomore year. A month before her sixteenth birthday. I remember because she cried the whole day. Jade’s birthday is in February.”
“Yep.” I cried that day too, but for an entirely different reason. That was the day I found out I was pregnant. That was part of the reason I’d given Sadie her middle name.
“And you said that Sadie’s going to be twelve next month?” Bryson continued, “So that means you were pregnant when you moved.”
Oh shit. I’d spent so much time talking to Bryson that I’d gotten too comfortable. I didn’t even think about making sure I didn’t leave bread crumbs that would reveal things I didn’t want as public knowledge.
“So that means that the father is…” He didn’t finish.
“Yes.” I set the knife down. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
He stared at me in disbelief. “Colton doesn’t know?”
“Of course Colton knows. But, I don’t think he told anyone and I don’t want people to judge him for…anything. We were kids.”
Bryson shook his head back and forth. “You’re telling me that Colton McCord knows you had his child and he did nothing about it?”
No. He did something. He gave up all rights to her. “Yes. He knows.”
“Are you sure?” Bryson asked again, clearly unable to accept the truth.
“Yes. I’m sure.” I had the papers to prove it.
“I just…that’s so unlike him. I mean you were everything to him. He was so in love with you. From the time I moved here, he growled if anyone even looked at you.”
Since being back here I’d realized that people had built mine and Colton’s love story into something it wasn’t. I was trying to keep the urban legend from getting out of hand. “No, he didn’t. We didn’t start going out until middle school, you’d already been here five years.”
“Yes, he did and especially me because you were always with Jade, so I talked to you more than other third grade boys. He hated that you came over to my house to play. Believe me, he was marking his territory long before he was your boyfriend. I mean, he asked you to be his girlfriend your first day of middle school because he couldn’t exactly tell you he liked you when we were in third and you were in first. Or when he was in sixth and you were fourth. Or even when you were in fifth and we were in seventh. He basically waited for the first moment that it would be acceptable for him to be interested in you.”
I’d never thought about it like that.
“Well, whatever. That’s the past.” I started feeling panicked that now that Bryson knew, the entire town would. It was obvious that Colton wanted to keep it a secret. I was fairly sure that’s what he wanted to talk to me about. But, I’d come to terms with his decision a long time ago and I had no interest in discussing it. With him or anyone in this town. “Please don’t say anything. Jade doesn’t even know, or if she does, she hasn’t said anything. You know how this town is and with the show going on, I don’t want this getting out. I don’t want Sadie to be affected by this.”
Which is why we absolutely couldn’t live here.
“Alright.” Bryson put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I don’t like it. But if you don’t want me to say anything, I won’t.”
“Thank you.” I sighed in relief.
“It’s all right if I kick Colton’s ass on your behalf though, right?” Bryson lifted his hands in surrender. “I won’t tell him why I’m kicking his ass if you don’t want me to.”
“No. There will be no kicking of anyone’s ass.” I smiled. It was good to be around friends. Real friends that had known you forever.
“You’re no fun now that you’re a mom,” he teased.
“So Sadie tells me.”
“Oh shit.” He straightened and I saw a look of panic cross his face.
“What?” I froze.
“Colton’s going to be here tonight.” His eyes flew to the large clock that hung on the far wall. “He’ll be here in a couple hours.”
“What? Why?”
I’d heard through the grapevine that they were having a viewing party for the second episode of the show. They were halfway done with the show, which meant I was also at the halfway mark to the talk that I’d promised Colton.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’d been shocked at how little I’d seen him. There had only been two Colton sightings in the past fourteen days and those were both from a distance, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me. Granted, I was actively trying to avoid him. But this was a small town and that was a lot easier said than done. Especially since he was dating twelve women that were living at my house.
“They’re having a viewing party for the show,” Bryson explained.
Ah, well, that made sense then.
“You don’t have to be here. I don’t want you to have to see…” his words faded like a song ending.
“To see my first love and the father of my child date a dozen women? Don’t worry, I’ve been doing it for years and I’m getting used to it.” I hated how jealous I sounded and felt.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Like I said, it was the past.” Plus, this was a Friday night and I needed the tips.
“Okay, but if things get…weird…you can go. Anytime.”
“Thanks, Bry.”
There was a knock on the door. Regulars tended to get impatient if the doors weren’t opened at four on the dot.
“Looks like it’s about that time.” He made his way around the bar, pulling his keys from his pocket to open the doors. “Hey, you ever think things might’ve been easier if you’d fallen in love with me instead of Colton back in the day?”
“And rob Clover County of its most eligible bachelor?” I joked. “Never.”
When I heard the key turn in the door, I looked up with a smile, ready to greet the first customer, but my smile was short lived when I saw who was on the other side of it.
Colton McCord. And he did not look happy.