Page 102 of Hearts of Fairlake

Then again, his father had managed to get through life taking criticism left and right, though he had been a screenplay writer. After dating so many roughnecks and blue-collar men, having someone whose head was in the clouds and had a softer approach to life was a breath of fresh air. He’d been kind and sweet and even tried his hand at poetry to show how much he loved me. After working with and dating so many rough guys, I even let myself believepoetry could be love.

I was twenty-six then and should have been wise enough to know better. I certainly figured it out when, after I'd told him I was pregnant, and there was no way in hell I was getting rid of the baby, he had grown quiet and pulled away, though he'd agreed to stick around and help. The day I'd told him it was twins, I knew I was staring at a ghost. It took less than a week before he disappeared in the night, leaving behind his book of poetry and a goodbye note that only said he was sorry.

The poetry had always been garbage, but I'd saved it in case his children wanted some piece of him in the future. I had shed tears for the man I had believed andthe man he had actually been. Then I had prepared myself for single parenthood, knowing damn well I had a whole host of people to back me up. It was an advantage I’d taken because my boys deserved to have a family like this their entire childhood rather than just the last half like it had been with me.

"I don't fuckingcarewhat Bennett said. He's an idiot. You should know that since you married the moron," a familiar growl rose from the tree line, and I smiled. As Devin and I were fond of saying, Chase was Chase, and that was all he would ever be, love him or leave him. In truth, he had calmeddown over the years, yet the subject of Bennett and his eternal shenanigans would forever get him riled up.

He appeared, Devin trailing behind him as Adam walked beside him, shaking his head and looking amused. Not that I was surprised, he’d always been amused by how Chase and Bennett's relationship worked. And as far as I knew, he had never once batted an eye that Chase and Bennett had once been...something before they'd switched to a purely platonic relationship. Maybe he’d known that whatever had been between them had run its course, or maybe that when it came to Bennett, there was no one but him and that when it came to Chase, there was only Devin.

Connor looked up, and his face brightened. He scrambled up from the ground to run over to Devin, nearly slamming into him. Outside of me, Devin was easily Connor's favorite person in the entire world. Ironically, he’d been wary and outright scared of Chase. Of course, Chase had always been confused by the positive attention he'd received from kids in the past, so he thought Connor was the only normal kid in the group.

All things considered, I had to agree with him on that one...though maybe calling any child I've raised 'normal' was a bad call.

"Hey there," Devin said in that sweet voice as he bent down to see what Connor had to show him. I noticed he got onto the ground rather than squatted, and I wondered if his knee bothered him more than usual. It was the echo of some injury he'd had while he was living in Fairlake, an injury that, if asked about, he would get a small smile on his face and say it was another life. "What do you have for me today?"

"Hey, kid," Chase said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and squeezing it. "Doing alright?"

"Like you didn't just see me this morning," I said with a roll of my eyes. "Or is the dementia setting in."

"Alright, fuck you too," he grumbled, but I caught the way his lips twitched. He was now the full owner of the car shop, having bought it from the last one and started running it his way. I'd been working there for over a decade, and I could attest that he was a good boss, a hard ass at times, but fair. He'd only ever asked me in the beginning, when I'd returned from two years at college if I was sure I wanted to work at his shop.

"I can still take pictures," I had told him with a roll of my eyes. "But college kids? Annoying. At least in this shop, if I tell someone to shove their wrench up their ass, I don't have a whole council of stuffy old people wagging their fingers and telling me to behave. Plus, I know a lot of this shit, and you can teach me the rest."

He had snorted, leaning on his desk and raising a brow. “You know I won't treat you any different to anyone else around here, right? Might even be harder."

I had rolled my eyes and flipped him the bird, and then flicked my fingertips along the underside of my chin to give him a double 'fuck you' for good measure. "Like I didn't already know that, I'm fine."

And in typical Chase fashion, that had been that. He had just needed to get a measure of how serious I was about taking on the job, and since he'd seen what he’d been looking for, that was all that was necessary and I'd had the job. It paid well, especially once he started making me the floor supervisor because I could run circles around half the crew, and the other half didn't want the job anyway. He got to sit in his office and make sure things ran smoothly, sometimes coming out to fix something whenever he wanted to.

"Heyyyyy," Bennett called out, pulling my attention away. "You made it!"

I turned to see that Grant, Felix, and Luke had arrived. Felix and Luke waved as they approached, but Grant stoppedwith a large box in his hand. “Of course we made it. Were we not invited?"

"He's excited to see us," Felix said with a shake of his head. "Julian and Isaiah will be showing up later. I just saw Isaiah, and I guess he's going to be staying a little late so Chief Borton can show him some more."

The announcement that Borton would be retiring next year hadn't been a surprise. Neither he nor Trevor were young anymore. At some point, even if you weren't taxing your body, you were still taxing it through all the stress. Better to take the nice government retirement package and try to have some peace in your life. However, what surprised some people was the announcement that Isaiah was chosen to take his place.

No one, and I meanno one,had been more surprised by that announcement than Isaiah himself. From what I'd been told, none of the guys had been surprised, though some wondered if it might be Julian instead. From the sounds of it, though, no one in the station was remotely upset by the choice, so now it was up to Isaiah to learn everything about administration that he hadn't learned yet.

"Speaking of," Chase grunted, eyeing Bennett. "Did Trevor ever manage to get anything through that thick skull of yours before he retired?"

"According to my husband, no," Ethan said with a roll of his eyes. "But we all know how hard it is to please him, so I think Bennett probably managed. Plus, the city hasn't gone down in flames in the past five years, so I think he's managing just fine."

Now, almost everyone was here, the setup began while everyone chatted and fell into easy, comfortable conversation. At some point, Carter came back with Gray, Carter all smiles, and Gray...well, he wasn't smiling on the outside. You had to be around him enough to sense when he was inwardlysmiling, which he was. Felix once mentioned that Gray would have been a good teacher for younger kids. He was patient with them in ways he wasn't with others, was careful, and liked interacting with them.

"He said he'd think about it," Felix had finished saying a few months ago. "But who knows how long that’ll take."

Brendon made sure to help with the grilling because it involved fire, making all the right assuring noises when Bri told him to be careful. Bennett was telling a story that made Eileen and Keith laugh while Chase threatened to shove a spatula in...well, I didn't catch the specific area, but it was undoubtedly uncomfortable. Connor sat by Devin, who told him a story about me when I was younger, while Carter decided to play with Maria, which meant we all needed to keep an eye on them.

"There's the birthday boy," someone called, and I smiled to see Trevor slowly approaching. He wasn't exactly immobile, but he’d pushed past sixty, and seventy was always around the corner, as he put it. He was slower than he used to be, but there was still that same warmth in his eyes, and despite his slower pace, there was a steadiness to his step. The three kids swarmed to wish him a happy birthday, and he talked to each of them until he made it to the group.

"You know, you could have just called me. I would have come and got you," Ethan said with a shake of his head.

"I wanted to take a walk, so I did," Trevor said, sitting down at one of the tables, using his hand to steady himself. "Nice days like this don't last."

"That's my husband, optimistic to the end," Ethan said, bending down to kiss Trevor on the temple. "Stubborn old man."

That was when I heard a shriek that brought us all around, and I saw Maria on the ground crying, her arms and legs covered in leaves and dirt. Carter stood over her,looking surprised for a moment, and then I saw the look that sealed my suspicion…defiance.

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