Page 22 of Before We Fell

“That’s the plan.”

She rolled her eyes and huffed, shaking her head. “He’s in the house, cleaning up.” She waved her arm toward the house. “Go on with you then. But tell him I want him back for dinner.”

That only gave us three hours to work and it wasn’t nearly enough. If my early morning work was going to start being delayed, I needed to work later. My goal was to have the addition done enough in the next few weeks so the contractors could come in to finish.

I could do a lot myself and wanted to, but I was also about fifteen years out of practice from any hard labor. My dad though, could build anything.

“Chiefs pre-season game is tonight,” I told her. And like she always did, she knew exactly what I meant.

She turned and walked toward the barn, flipping her hand in the air. “Fine then. Then tell the old man not to drink too much and I’ll see him tonight. Riley and I will just have to make do with each other.”

I laughed as I headed into the house. Like that’d be hard for Mom to do. I figured she already had the day planned anyway. Horses. Baking. Probably some fingernail painting. Cooking. More baking.

Whenever Riley came here, she never wanted to leave.

And it wasn’t the first time since I sat in the lawyer’s office for Amanda and Jake’s will reading that I wondered why they left Riley to me, a bachelor, completely unknowledgeable about kids or what they needed when they could have chosen my parents.

Two of the best damn people we knew on Earth.

My eyes drifted to the sky, bright blue and cloudless, sun shining so bright I squinted again. “What in the hell were you thinking?” I asked.

Like always, the sky held no answer.

Eight

Lauren

I hesitated,my thumb hovered over the send button on my phone. Ten minutes ago, I had emailed a new app to the parents on my list suggesting they download it as a way to stay connected with what their kids were learning in school. I used it throughout the year to showcase subjects we were learning and recorded special events like holiday songs or award ceremonies. It allowed working parents who couldn’t attend classroom events the ability to see their children.

Earlier this week, I had my class try it for the first time, practicing reading a book out loud while recording themselves. When they were done, they uploaded the video to the app.

It wasn’t all the parents who I was excited about trying this technique through the year.

No, currently, my thumb was hovering over a text message I sent specifically to Noah. Sending a text to a parent wasn’t inappropriate, I did it often. What did make this particular one inappropriate was the feeling in my lower stomach as I typed in his phone number from my class records for the first time.

Two weeks ago, I’d stomped into his yard, and left reeling from not only his interaction with me, or the way his hands had felt on my body as he patched up my scrapes but watching him with Riley.

It wasn’t lost on me he was frustrated. His brows furrowed whenever she smiled at me. Her speaking to me made him more angry and it didn’t take long to understand. In the thirty minutes I’d been at his house, braiding Riley’s hair while talking to her about her favorite things to do at her grandma’s and listening to her prattle on and on about the horses she got to ride when she went there, I got the impression she spoke to me far more than she did to him.

And that hurt him.

For the last two weeks at school, Riley spoke more. Definitely not chatterbox levels. She was still hesitant to answer when I called on her. She still didn’t play with other kids on the playground, but occasionally she wandered off the bench and used a swing or went down the slide before returning. Perhaps she’d always been more of a quieter, shy and timid child. I doubted it, but as she grew more comfortable in class and at school, little glimpses of a sweet personality shone through.

Mostly in the way she read. She didn’t read by rote like most kids, stumbling over punctuation. Riley used inflection to a degree far beyond third grade. She read fluently, and I’d finally found a set of books she truly enjoyed.

Some days, she came to me in the morning with tangled hair and some days on the playground, she’d ask me to braid her hair. I would take a few minutes, untangling her hair with my fingers and doing up two quick braids and before long, several of the little girls would get in line and I’d do their hair as well. But it was Riley who was tugging at my heart more so than the other children.

This is Miss Frazier. Please check your email ASAP. I think you’ll enjoy what I’ve sent you.

I read the text I’d written again and before I could triple-guess myself, I hit send.

It was the end of the day and the students had already left, so I gathered up math quizzes they completed earlier and tucked them into my bag. I’d grade them tonight after I swung by Providence Market, hit up a yoga class, while I could relax with a glass of wine and catch up on my favorite police and fire drama shows. Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney were drool-worthy heroes.

The likes of which I only ever saw in the romance novels I occasionally made time to read.

Gathering up my work as well as my lunch bag and water bottle, I gave another quick glance around the room to ensure everything was how I wanted it for the morning. Then I headed out, forcing myself to once again stop thinking about Noah Wilkes.

It was harder than I thought possible, but since I’d been at his house, he was never too far from my mind. I blamed my interest in Riley and my joy at how she was improving, albeit slowly. It wasn’t all because of her. When my mind drifted toward Noah, the thoughts I had were anything but professional.

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