My stomach drops before I even turn my head.
Chapter
Three
Penelope
* * *
Decker walks through the gate, tall and loose-limbed, as always. He doesn’t look toward me. Instead, he goes straight to Hayes. They talk, heads bent as if they’re discussing something serious.
“Did you ask him to come?” There’s a note of teasing to Leighton’s voice.
“No.” I’m trying to read Decker and Hayes’s lips across the yard as though I’m the lead detective in a spy movie.
Hayes points toward one of the stations, directing Decker where to go, but he doesn’t get two steps before Hazel and Monroe intercept him. They fling themselves at his legs as if he’s the latest Disney star, and he says something that makes them scurry off, giggling.
Hazel darts away to do whatever he asked, then looks back over her shoulder. Her eyes find mine. And she smiles so wide it tugs something inside my chest that I don’t want tugged.
This is trouble.
Not because Decker is here. Not even because he’s smiling at my kid as though she means something to him.
Because Hazel is happy to see him.
Because I know that look.
It’s the same look she had when she was a year old and I thought I’d finally gotten rid of all the pacifiers—packaged them for the fairy, had a ceremony, the whole production—until I checked her room before bed and found her sucking on one as if she’d been hiding her favorite thing for weeks.
“Why can’t you and Decker…” Leighton keeps her voice low. “You have a past, and I know he has feelings for you.”
I don’t want to have this conversation here, where the school moms could turn us into an instant rumor. Plus, I need to shut it down, otherwise I’ll allow hope to sink in. Her words open a door I’m not brave enough to walk through.
“It’s… there’s a lot of history. A friendship.”
Leighton frowns. “A friendship where you haven’t talked in almost a decade?”
“Didn’t you just marry your best friend’s brother this offseason who you’d had a crush on since high school?”
She chuckles. “Touché.”
I shrug. “It’s complicated.”
Her mouth quirks. “Isn’t it always?”
I could entertain Leighton’s version, where Decker’s been pining for me all this time, where he’s stalked my social media the way I’ve stalked his, where his silence was never from indifference but based on fear. But what good would that do?
Hope is a risk I stopped indulging in the moment Hazel’s father made it clear he didn’t want any part in her life.
“I think it’s time I start dating.” The words feel strange on my tongue.
“Yes!” Leighton’s brown eyes brighten. “Decker.”
Her cheeky smile does something treacherous to me—makes me want to believe there could be something there, makes me want to turn around and catch him staring.
But he’s had years. Years to make a move. Years to change what we are.
And he hasn’t.
