Page 16 of Paper Flowers (Stonebrook #1)

CHAPTER NINE

LUKE

I t’s been a week since I told Dayna about Juliette.

I felt like for the first time in months I wasn’t carrying this alone.

I actually slept all night Monday and every night since.

Dayna has been so supportive and we text every evening.

I hope this won’t be too much for her. I feel bad for laying it all out the way I did, but she handled it well.

I never wanted to make her cry, but that’s how she is.

Dayna feels everyone’s emotions as if it were her own.

When the feelings are her own, it shows exactly what she’s feeling on her face.

Yesterday, she gave me the flowers she made for Sadie.

I let her know we would be going to my in-laws this weekend and wanted to make sure Sadie had enough flowers.

The way Sadie’s eyes lit up when Dayna came into my classroom with the bouquet of paper flowers did something to my heart.

It was like the broken pieces inside my chest were slowly mending.

We have about three hours before the school day is over.

I have our stuff packed and we’re heading over to Nina and William’s house right after school.

My students are working on a worksheet of math problems. They are a great group of kids.

The class size is much smaller than my last school, about sixteen students.

They all laughed when I spilled my coffee on myself on the first day of school, it was a great ice breaker at my own expense.

Some thought I did it on purpose. I reassured them all, I would never waste coffee and I would never purposely pour coffee on myself.

My students now tell me to be careful when I take a sip out of my travel mug.

I open my desk drawer and tap on my phone’s screen. There’s a text message from Dayna and I noticed the gleeful ping in my chest as I read her name. I open her message and quickly respond.

Dayna: Can you stop by my office before you leave today?

Am I in trouble?

Dayna: No, I just wanted to check in with you. See how you’re doing.

I’m a little nervous, I know Sadie is excited. I’ll head to your office once she’s out of class.

Dayna: I can imagine how thrilled she is, she told Mrs. Emily, how much she misses her grandparents.

Dayna: Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.

See you soon, Dayna.

My classroom door swings open and Sadie can’t contain her excitement.

“Daddy, it’s time to go!” She runs to erase the date on my white board and adds Monday’s date for me.

I close my desk drawer and pack my laptop.

I reach for my backpack and walk to the back of the class.

“Alright Sadie Girl, let’s go say bye to Mrs. Emily and Ms. Carter.

” I turn off my classroom lights and we walk out to the hallway as I lock my door.

Mrs. Emily adjusts her metal-rimmed glasses as she sees Sadie and I walk in.

“I hope you have an amazing time with your grandparents this weekend! I can’t wait to hear all about it!

” Sadie walks around her desk and gives Mrs. Emily a big hug.

“I can’t wait until I tell my grandma all about you.

I think you two would be best friends.” That made Mrs. Emily giggle.

Those two have become so close in a short amount of time.

She reminds me a little of Nina. She takes a glance at me and I silently ask her to keep an eye on her while I sneak off to Dayna’s office.

She nodded her head at me and I walked to Dayna’s office.

I knock softly on the door and she’s standing up with her back side to me reaching over the table behind her desk.

Her ass looks amazing in those jeans. I stared at her a beat too long as she turned around and my eyes were still locked on her ass.

She immediately begins to blush and I know what she’s thinking.

“I, uh, I knocked but I hope you don’t mind.”

“That you were looking at my ass or that you walked in the office?” She says in a playfully whisper.

“Wow, um, both?” and I rub the back of my neck, and I think I might be red myself. God, I’m a mess whenever I am around her.

“What time are you getting to your in-laws?”

“With traffic, I think we’ll be there by 7 PM. Sadie will probably nap in the car after she sings through my playlist.” Then I’ll hit replay and listen to the same songs I have been listening to since college.

“Well if that happens, and you want some company, you could call me?” I would really like to talk to her more and I do have my AirPods packed for running.

“Yeah, I would like that. I don’t know when she’ll fall asleep but I’ll call you if she does.

” Dayna smiles as if she was expecting me to say no.

I close the gap between us and give her a hug and I smell strawberries in her hair.

That does a number on my dick. I move back a little hoping she doesn’t feel it.

But she looked up at me and I know, she felt it.

Her face says it all. “I better let you get going.”

“I’ll call you when I can.”

Sadie and I had been on the road for about an hour and a half before she fell asleep.

Before we left, I searched through my duffel bag for my AirPods and placed them in my cup holder.

I lowered the volume, and I inserted my left AirPod.

I called out to Siri to call Dayna. It started ringing, and she answered it on the third ring.

“Hi, she’s asleep already?”

“Yeah, she made it through the playlist about a quarter of the way. Before I heard her slowly doze off.”

“Awe, she is so precious.”

“She really is…so are you going to Alfredo’s tonight?”

“No, I’m skipping it. If I’m being honest, I was kind of hoping you’d call.”

“Oh Dayna, what if I wasn’t able to?”

I felt bad that she changed her Friday night plans to talk to me.

But on the other hand I think this trip back without talking to her would have me in a nervous frenzy.

She has become the calm to my storm. It’s crazy how natural everything is.

The friendship and I can’t deny the attraction towards her.

I appreciate whatever this is but it can’t be more than this right now.

“Well, if you didn’t call then, I would have started season three of Boy Meets World and called it a night in.”

“You would have stared at Mr. Feeny all night, huh?”

I hear her laughing on the other end. It makes me smile knowing we can joke like this.

“Like the way you stared at my ass earlier?”

I heard the curiosity in her voice.

“I’m sorry, that was inappropriate of me to do. I hope it didn’t make you feel uncomfortable.”

There was a long pause of silence before she said anything. It made me nervous that maybe it had in fact made her feel that way.

“It didn’t make me uncomfortable, I was actually flattered. Your face was the one that was red for a change.”

I let out a laugh of relief and I looked in the rearview mirror at Sadie.

She’s sound asleep with her travel pillow over her shoulders.

I started to think about how much she has grown in the last year and I can’t believe she’s going to be six next week.

God, one minute I’m okay and the next I feel like my chest is tightening.

Just then Dayna pulled me back by the sound of her voice.

“I’m really glad we can laugh together, Luke. It feels like we never stopped being in each other’s lives.”

I was beginning to feel the same way. Everything that we experienced together and then going our separate ways to being in the same town all these years later. It could make someone’s head spin.

“Yeah, I like how natural everything feels. It’s like we have been friends all this time.” Once the words left my mouth, I felt the sudden change.

“Friends, right. Of course.”

I hate hearing the disappointment in her voice but I can’t have her thinking there could be anything more than that because I’m not the man she deserves.

Even if I could love again, would she want to be with someone so damaged?

I have Sadie to think about. If anything happens between us, I know they’ll both get attached.

They already have this connection I can’t explain.

Then there’s Dean. With our initial meeting, he seemed trustworthy but after the interactions with him towards Dayna, I feel like there’s more to him than meets the eye. Changing the pace of our conversation to something a little more distracting, I want to get to know her again.

“So Dayna, tell me about your life, how are your parents and grandma Gwennie? How is the shop doing? Don’t hold anything back.”

“My parents are great, they sold their shop and retired. I saw them this summer before they went to Europe. My grandma is doing well, still the same sassy lady you remember.”

Dayna’s parents were always working at their family-owned skate shop, Enchanted Skates .

If they weren’t home for dinner, her older sister Sienna looked after Dayna some nights.

Most of the time Dayna was at her grandparents’ house or helping at the shop.

When she was home alone, Cara and I hung out with her.

My parents were always working late and my older brother was away at college.

Liam was across the country but he somehow managed to be the one I can count on. He watched my baseball games online any chance he could. After he graduated college, he stayed in New York. He is constantly working on a case, it’s hard to talk daily but he makes it work for me and Sadie.

He’s my only blood relative outside of Sadie.

My parents were killed in a boating accident when I was a sophomore in college.

Turns out my father’s business associate was drunk and high off his ass.

He had no business driving the boat. My father’s remains were never found and my mom was found two days after the accident.