Page 24 of Playing With Temptation

“It’s good to see you, too,” I whispered, afraid if I spoke any louder, he’d hear just how much I meant it.

Torture.

Pure torture.

“Let’s start with something easy,” he suggested. “How’s your mom?”

She misses you.

She’s still low-key pissed we broke up and still doesn’t understand why I let you go.

“She’s good. She sold our old house and moved into a condo in Ravenwood.”

Jase looked thoughtful when he shared, “Not too far from me. I’m over in the Griffin Park neighborhood.”

When we were in high school, houses in that neighborhood were just starting to be built. Since I’d recently spent time on Zillow trying to find a house to rent or buy, I knew that area wasn’t exactly inexpensive and the houses were fairly large—way more space than I needed for just me and Lucas, not to mention out of my price range.

“I bought it at foreclosure,” he told me.

“Foreclosure?”

“You were thinking about my neighborhood. You’ve probably spent time looking at real estate before you moved back. Houses are expensive in Griffin Park. I got mine because it was in foreclosure, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. The timing wasn’t ideal, but I wanted to give my kids something better than the townhouse we were in. Something permanent. So I bought it even though closing was two days before Christmas.”

“Please tell me you didn’t subject your children to moving on Christmas? Lucas would instigate a rebellion if Christmas morning deviated even minutely from tradition.”

Tradition.

We hadn’t had a holiday without Zoe yet.

The knife that had been lodged in my chest since I was told Zoe was dead twisted.

“No, I paid an extra month’s rent on the townhouse so my kids could have Christmas without the house being in boxes.”

I didn’t need to know he was a good dad.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How have you been? What area did you move to? Why’d you move home? Are you married? Did you stay with journalism or switch to marketing like you were thinking? Where have you been the last decade?” he tossed out questions. “Take your pick.”

There was a lot there. Almost none of them I wanted to answer. So I went with the one that was intentionally impersonal. “Marketing. I mean, I switched to marketing. After I graduated, I worked for a small company, gained experience, and learned all the things they don’t teach you in college, then I moved to a large firm. About four years ago, I went out on my own. I only take on five or six clients at a time, depending on their budget and the scope of the project.”

“Damn, Rae. That’s impressive.”

It wasn’t. Not really. My business was small. I wasn’t rolling in money, making millions, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I’d never been the type of person who had champagne taste and caviar dreams.

“Lucas and I get by. I could take on more clients, but that would mean I’d have less time with my son. And you know me, less is more when it comes to materialistic junk that no one really needs anyway.”

“Yeah, I know you,” Jase noted.

It wasn’t so much what he said, or even the tone in which he said it that conveyed the meaning behind that statement. It was in the way his face had taken on a hard edge. The way his brown eyes had sharpened that told me I’d said something very wrong.

“Listen, Jase⁠—”

His phone ringing stopped me from attempting my second apology.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” Jase said, while pulling his phone out of his pocket. His frown deepened when he looked at the screen. “Hey Shay, is everything okay with the kids?”