Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“So while I’m in bed with WME, I’m really having a ménage with Glitz & Glam? Got it.”
“Pretty much. Now I’m gonna get back to my boyfriend, and I’ll be sending you and Elliott some ideas for those silly other clients we have to deal with on the side.”
“Oh my God, you just said the B-word like it was nothing. That’s it. I don’t even know you anymore. I quit.”
“Later, Carter.”
“Send me the deets on the wedding.”
I was laughing as I hung up.
“I like hearing you say boyfriend.”
“Apparently, you aren’t the only one. But the only one who matters, as far as I’m concerned.”
He smiled, but then his expression turned serious. “Are you cool? With your mom showing up today like that, I mean? It clearly bothered you. A lot.”
“If I thought she’d come down to see me or to bring attention to the good work you were doing—or for any reason other than herself—I would have probably been thrilled.”
“But…” Jace offered the segue for me.
“You saw her there, taking those pictures with everyone, dressed for a red-carpet premiere, ready to get a little something for herself. In the back of my mind, while all this has been going on, I’ve been worried she would find a way to use it to her advantage, without regard for you or me. She’s done it in the past, and I’m not eager to see it happen again.”
“That makes a lot of sense, but I do think she loves you. She’s your mother.”
“She loves me. I know that. In better times when I was a kid, when she was around, if I was having a bad day, she’d say, ‘Let’s get out the face masks,’ and we’d do these homemade facials and she’d make herself a cocktail and me a bowl of ice cream. We’d watch a movie together, and she’d work to make me laugh…just as hard as she works to charm a room full of people. When she did give me her attention, she had the power to bathe me with all the love in the world. But that almost made it worse when it all went away.”
“I know the feeling,” Jace said. “Doubt I mentioned this, but I was on the football team in high school.”
“A big man like you? Say it ain’t so!”
“Big everywhere it counts,” he teased before his expression turned serious again. “Crawford couldn’t make it to my games because he worked Fridays. I was good, or I felt like I was good. Eventually, he managed to swap nights with another guy at the station to come see me, I think because he could tell how proud I was whenever I’d catch him up about it. Of course, the night he came to a game, I fumbled and fucked up in just about every way possible, and we lost 77-13.
“Needless to say, I was devastated, because I knew his schedule, I knew that was the only game he’d likely be coming to all season, and I’d fucked it up. When I met him in the stands after the game, I didn’t even want to face him. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. But he slung his arm around me and said, ‘Looks like I’m gonna have to find someone to swap shifts with so that I can prove I’m not bad luck.’”
Jace’s chin quivered, his eyes luminous as he choked up slightly. “The next game, we stomped the other team’s ass, and I scored two touchdowns. He never missed a game after that. I guess he saw how important it was to me. Crawford could just read a person like that. And it must sound stupid how much it mattered to me when he came to my high school football games, but it meant the world to me.”
“That’s not stupid at all.”
He nodded, twisting his lips into a frown. “But then we lost him. This man who gave us all that love…and then the rug was ripped from right under our feet.”
I could feel his pain once again, the despair of his loss as he spoke the words. Mine felt so trivial in comparison to what he’d experienced, because at the very least, I still had a chance to have moments where I could feel what I hoped was Serena’s love.
“Anyway,” he continued, shaking his head like he didn’t want to fixate on that morbid thought, “I can imagine what that was like with Serena, when she was having issues.”
“Even when she wasn’t, sometimes it was just these things she did that got in the way. This selfish, showy part of her nature is the reason why we had so many problems when I was a kid. I don’t want to be a tool she’s using to get back to a moment she wishes she could freeze in time, one that can never be what it once was. At the same time, because of our lives and all that’s happened, I’m not sure I can tell the difference between her trying to be in my life and her trying to get back to that moment…a moment that was so toxic and destructive for us.”