Page 17 of Playing With Temptation

A wave of sadness washed over me.

All the what-could’ve-beens bounced around in my chest until my heart broke all over again.

My Jase now belonged to someone else.

Suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up. Moving back, I knew there would be a possibility I’d run into him. It wasn’t like Hollow Point was a bustling city. But I never imagined the first time I laid eyes on him again it would be at my son’s school.

Juni.

Shit, shit, and double shit.

Our kids were friends.

A horn beeped, startling me out of my reverie.

“Mom?”

I jerked my gaze away from Jase, and muttered, “Sorry.”

I pulled forward, barely resisting the urge to peel rubber out of the parking lot.

The drive to the grocery store was a blur. Lucas prattled on about his day and told me about his lunchtime chat with Juni.

Juni. God, even hearing that name is a stab to my heart.

He asked me about my presentation. With absolutely no enthusiasm I told him I landed the job. And when I pulled into our driveway, I had no recollection of what actually made it into the grocery store bags.

I reached into the truck to grab a handle when Lucas muscled his way in front of me.

“I got ‘em,” he told me.

This was something new. Something that was all Lucas without me or Zoe telling him it was the polite thing to do.

My little boy, showing yet another sign he was no longer my baby boy simply by carrying in the groceries for me—little pieces of the man he’d one day grow into shining through.

“Thanks, dude,” I said, stepping away from the trunk of my car. “Am I ordering our pizza from Stoner’s again or do you want to try Marco’s?”

“Stoner’s was alright, but let’s try Marco’s.”

I really hoped Marco’s delivered because my recent lapse in memory proved I wasn’t fit to drive.

No, my memory wasn’t the issue—I could remember every detail of Jase standing a few feet from my car. The strands of gray that weren’t there the last time I saw him. The five o’clock shadow that I knew from experience wasn’t from one day of missed shaving but at least three. When we were in high school, he was tall and lean—cut muscle from the gym and sports. After he went to college he kept up with the gym and added running. But now he looked bigger, broader, like in the years I’d been gone he’d filled out.

He’d aged in the last fifteen years, just like I had. But time had been kind to him. If he hadn’t been right in front of me to see with my own two eyes, I would’ve said it was impossible for Jase to get better looking. I also would’ve been very wrong. But it wasn’t his looks that had me spiraling. It wasn’t even the memories that had me in a near comatose state.

It was the heartache.

A pain so absolute I couldn’t think.

Seeing Jase shouldn’t have had me wanting to run and hide. And not from him necessarily, from the myriad emotions that surpassed rational thought.

It had been years.

He was no longer mine.

He never would be again.

That painful thought had my hand going to my chest.