His light brown hair was parted to the side and brushed neatly back from his high forehead. The deliberately sculpted scruff on his chin and jawline was a few shades darker than the hair on his head, and he looked like every professor I’d had the hots for in college. “Looking good, Karlsson,” I said. “Trying to look too good for your mom to hit you?”
His grin shifted into something warmer and he pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Trying to look good for that lunch date you owe me,” he said, stalking towards me across the industrial gray carpet. I couldn’t look away. I felt Maddie’s eyes boring into the side of my head. Carson still hadn’t acknowledged her. The closer he got, the more I had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes. Reaching the desk, he rested his knuckles on the top, leaning forward into my space. “Still missing the black jeans and long hair?”
I kind of was. That Jake I knew. This GQ-looking grown man was almost a stranger. I leaned back, rocking my chair away from him. “Is this how Carson Grieves dresses?”
Hurt flashed briefly across his eyes before his expression shuttered. “I told you to forget that name.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” I hope Maddie hadn’t heard.
He stood up straight, taking my stress alien with him. We both watched the eyes bulge out as he squeezed it rhythmically. He frowned, eyes narrowing as he looked over my shoulder, glaring at the wall as if he could see through it. “It’s how I dress,” he said finally, placing the toy carefully back onto the desk and then meeting my eyes again. “Do you like it?”
“I do,” I admitted.
“You look good, too,” he said with a smile.
Since it was Saturday, I was wearing faded jeans that had seen better days and a T-shirt with a cartoon winged eagle-lion on the front, a souvenir of my days with my very first professional team, the Grand Rapid Griffins. “Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m killing it.”
“You both look like shit,” Maddie said from her chair, startling both of us.
“Madison,” Jake said, voice deliberately neutral.
“Jacob,” Maddie said in the same tone. “Long time no see. Where you been?”
“Around.” Jake’s hands were back in his pockets, something he always did when he was feeling attacked. “What are you doing here?”
She set the magazine down on the floor and grinned at him. “Well, technically I work here. But I’m here right now to watch your mom tear you a new one.”
Jake shot a look at me, his eyes wide with a brief moment of fear, then he schooled his face into a calm expression. “I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” he said to her. “My mother is—”
The door slammed open and Jake’s mom stormed in. “Your mother is what?”
12 Carson
“Beautiful,” I said, thinking quickly as my mother stormed across Eric’s office. “A woman of class and substance.”
Since coming to La Crosse, it had been as if I was seeing two towns at the same time with the memories superimposed over the reality. A new housing development instead of the woods my brother and I had run through. A tapas bar where the coffee shop had been.
It was the same with my mother but now it was as if her younger face was the true one, and the lines and looser skin of the present was the mask. She wore unflattering high-waisted jeans, an ugly pink sweatshirt with sad flowers on it, and white sneakers. She looked beautiful. I forced myself not to run to her the way I wanted to. If she was going to hit me, I was going to make her work for it.
You good? Leo said over the coms. All the guys were around somewhere. Leo was at the bar.
My mother stopped a foot in front of me. “Good answer,” she said.
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
She’s gonna smack him, Ridge said.
Never, Breck countered. Bet you twenty she hugs him and cries.
“I—”
She didn’t let me finish. “Oh my God, Jakey.” She burst into tears and threw her arms around my neck.
Damn it, Ridge said.
Though she was seven inches shorter than I, I bent down and buried my head against her shoulder, willing the tears not to fall. It had been almost fifteen years since I hugged my mother. She held me as if she could send that hug back through time and make up for all the missed opportunities.