Page 6 of Something Reckless

ALBA

M y heart is still clattering against my chest when I make it home.

So much for thinking a peaceful drive through the hills would calm me down. My skin is no longer crawling because of my pervy boss. But now I’m all out of sorts for a very different reason.

Easton Raines is back .

He could have been healing up on a balmy tropical beach somewhere with a pina colada. Instead, he decided to come back to Fairy Bush and turn my world upside down.

I spent years bracing myself, expecting him to turn up here eventually. For a visit after his first pro hockey season ended. For a summer getaway to escape the city life. For a day or two over the Christmas holidays.

But one year went by with no Easton. And then another. After this much time without a homecoming, I’d assumed he’d put Fairy Bush behind him. I’d accepted the reality of never seeing his face again—except through a television screen.

But now, he’s here .

There’s the loud, roaring engine of a moped tearing down my street. Then the frantic rattle of my creaky staircase as biker boots thunder up to my second floor apartment.

“Hun? Where are you?”

My best friend barrels through my front door only a minute after I walk through it. I texted Julissa with our 9-1-1 code on my way home, desperate for her to help me make sense of this.

“In here, Jules.”

She appears in the doorway, tall and lanky with her sleek, black chin-length haircut.

LIFE IS BETTER WITHOUT A brA , the bold yellow letters on her black crop top announce. I let out a little snicker.

Point taken.

Then I’m sitting on the counter of the small, old-fashioned bathroom while she helps clean and bandage the broken skin on my knee.

By the time I hightailed it off Easton’s property, blood was running all the way down my leg. But now that Jules has doctored me up, the cut doesn’t look so bad.

“It might scar, though,” she tells me, a worried look on her face.

I laugh darkly. “Oh no, and then our boss won’t want to ogle me anymore?”

She laughs, too, knowing full well what a pig he is, since she serves as a hostess at the restaurant where I work.

“So, are you going to tell me what the emergency was? Because as much as I like playing nurse, I don’t think this”— her chin motions to my injury—“was the reason you had me rush my ass across town.” Jules knows me too well.

I chew on the inside of my cheek and she grabs my shoulder, shaking it. “What’s going on, Alba?”

“It’s…It’s Easton.”

An apprehensive look comes over her face as she presses a large band aid across my knee. “What about Easton?”

I swallow. “He’s back.”

A string of curses falls from her lips as the first aid kit clatters to the bathroom floor. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she whisper-yells. “He’s back? Like back in Fairy Bush?”

I nod.

Jules is the only one who knows. Aside from my twin sister, Raya—Jules is the only one who knows the secret that ties my family to Easton Raines. She has been my rock through this entire ride. She’s been there throughout it all.

So she understands that Easton being back in town is a huge deal.

“He’s renting that nice house at the top of the hill.” I distractedly adjust my glasses on my nose. “I kind of crash-landed into his yard earlier when I got nosy and tumbled over the gate to his property.”

“What?!” Jules barks. Then she groans. “I’ve been telling you that you gotta chill with that.

At least wait until you get your realtor license before you start peeping on all the houses in town.

It’s creepy.” She stands up after picking up the first aid kit and putting it back in the cabinet.

“How did it go, seeing him after all this time? Are you okay?”

“You mean aside from it being the most embarrassing moment of my life? A moment I’d like to never retell?”

“Oh, now I have to know.” Her eyes widen with amusement and curiosity.

I point to my new injury as I hop off the counter and land on my feet. “Just know that it involved getting my knee busted and showing a whole lot of ass to a man who was just as surprised to see me as I was him.”

She cackles, smacking my butt as I turn to face the mirror. “Wow. This hot ass? Sounds like he got the better end of the deal.”

“Ouch!” I protest, batting her hands away. “Be serious, Jules.”

She throws her head back, cackling some more. “So, did you…talk?”

“Well, no. Not really.”

She tilts her head to the side and glares at my reflection. “ Alba… ”

“I was hoping…maybe I don’t have to talk to him.”

My best friend’s glare only goes sharper.

I try to justify it. “From what I understand, he’s not back-back. He’s just back for a little while as he recovers from his injury.” I grab a hand towel to finally clean my glasses. “He won’t be around for too long.”

“That’s not an excuse, Alba. Don’t you think this has gone on long—”

Before Jules can finish reprimanding me for being a chicken, I catch the sound of the front door swinging open. “We’re ho-o-ome!” my mother announces from the living room.

“In here!” I yell back, and then Jagger is bounding down the hall, into the bathroom Jules and I are still holed up in.

After everything that happened, Mom and I were lucky enough to find this duplex.

She lives in the unit downstairs, and I live on the second floor with Jagger.

The place could use a bit of sprucing up, but the landlord is understanding and the rent is cheap.

Thank goodness, because I’ve had to chip in to help Mom cover her own bills on more than one occasion in recent times .

“Mimi!” Jagger lets out a gasp when he sees Jules tossing my bloody paper towels into the trash bin. “Mimi, what happened?”

“Oh, I’m okay, sweetie. I was being silly and fell and hurt my knee.”

His eyes—those eyes that look so much like his father’s—well up as he wraps his arms around me tightly. I hug him back, cradling his tiny body against me.

“Does it hurt?” he mumbles against my T-shirt, visibly upset that I got injured.

My heart squeezes. I always say, Who needs a man, when I’ve got this protective eight-year-old looking out for me?

“Not at all. Auntie Jules fixed me all up,” I whisper back. I pull back so he can see the grin on my face and know that he doesn’t need to worry about me.

Mom appears in the doorway. Her concerned glance bounces between Jules and me. It’s a glance that tells me I’ll have some explaining to do later. “Hey, Jagger, why don’t we go get dinner started, so Mimi can have something to eat before she heads off to work again?”

I sigh heavily at the reminder that I’m working the night shift at the hospital’s reception desk tonight.

“Can we make chicken fingers?” he asks. “They’re Mimi’s favorite.”

“We’ll see what we can whip up,” my mother says, shooting me a small smile and giving Julissa an affectionate pat on the upper arm before heading to the kitchen.

Jagger wraps me in one last squeeze. Then he pops a kiss on my cheek and turns to Jules. “Thanks for taking care of Mimi.” He gives my bestie a hug before chasing after his grandma.

I love that little boy so much. He’s so darn sweet. No, seriously. Sometimes my chest physically aches with all the love I have for him.

And he’s not even mine.

When my fraternal twin sister got pregnant at eighteen, I never planned to end up raising her son. But not long after giving birth, it became clear that Raya wasn’t ready to be a mother.

Mom stepped in right away, picking up the slack that Raya left behind.

Soon after, my sister announced that she was ready to go off, gallivanting all over the world.

It wasn’t hard convincing her that leaving Jagger here in Fairy Bush would be in his best interests.

Thankfully, a judge made it official, granting guardianship rights to our mother.

But then all of my Dad’s dirty secrets got dug up to the surface, leaving Mom’s life in shambles. That’s how the bulk of the responsibility for my nephew fell to me. Now, I am officially Jagger’s legal guardian.

I’m well aware that my family situation is a bit unusual, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. That little boy is my whole life now. My reason for working three jobs. My reason for never giving up, even when things aren’t easy.

I can’t let anything threaten him. Not even Easton.

Jules quietly shuts the bathroom door. Then I feel her stare burning a hole into the side of my head as I now attempt to wrangle my unruly red curls into a ponytail. “Are you going to tell Easton about Jagger?” she asks, her voice quieter now.

I sigh tiredly. “I…I don’t know.”

I really can’t decide, and that’s the biggest reason I ran away from him today.

“Alba!” Julissa chastises softly.

“What?! ”

“Haven’t you kept this secret long enough?” my friend asks with a frown.

“You know I’m just trying to protect Jagger.”

“By keeping him from his father?” she counters.

“His father who clearly didn’t want to be a father to begin with?” I toss back as my reasons for resenting Easton twirl in the air between us.

“His father who doesn’t know he exists!” Jules refuses to back down.

I stand my ground stubbornly, all while knowing that Julissa is right. But this was never about Easton being a good guy or not.

“Look—this isn’t even my secret to tell. It’s Raya’s.”

“That’s a cop-out and you know it. Because Raya is probably in a bikini on a yacht somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean right now, showing off her newest ass tattoo and having the time of her life.”

I sigh. “Easton is only in town for a little while, so he can recover. As soon as his foot is healed up, I’m sure he'll be gone again. I don’t want to turn Jagger’s life upside down when Easton is only here for a few weeks or whatever. It would confuse him. It could crush him.”

“It could also be really good for him,” she argues. “Jagger’s a tough kid.”

I just don’t know. The risk of this hurting my nephew is too high, and I’m determined to protect him at all costs.

Before I can get another word in, my phone goes off.“Shit—my alarm.”

Setting down my hair brush, I limp in the direction of my bedroom.

“No time to sit around obsessing over Easton now,” I murmur to my best friend. “I have my next job to get to.”