Page 6 of Shot Through the Heart

By the time I’ve finished my food and am placing my dishes in the dishwasher, I’ve made up my mind.

ChapterTwo

STELLA

“Thank you for doing this,”my boss, Paige, says from the speakerphone of my cell on the counter. “We didn’t expect your first actual client to be so last minute. I wanted to go over everything with you before the meeting, but Garrett’s nervous the client will get cold feet if we wait any longer.”

“We’ve gone over everything more than enough times. I’m ready. Thankfully, I got my printer set up yesterday, so I have a copy of the contract ready to sign with me.” I glance at the clock on the stove while zipping the purple lunch box closed. “If I have any issues, I’ll call you immediately. But I need to get my little hellion out the door so that I’m not late.”

“Okay, okay. Let me know if you need anything.” Paige’s reluctance to hang up is clear through the phone, but I don’t have time to fight off all her worries now.

The company was originally built on publishing and design, but over this past year, they have expanded to encompass more assistant and help options. Which is what I was hired for.

None of us planned for my first SweetHeart Assistance client to happen with only fifteen hours’ notice, but I’ve been here for just over a month, training and preparing. Sometimes the only way to find out if your studying has paid off is to dive right into the deep end.

I set the lunch box next to my sleek brown laptop bag.

“All right, little miss!” I call out, my voice echoing through our new townhouse, and make my way to the bottom of the stairs. “Did you pick out what you want to wear today?”

The thuds of tiny feet patter overhead before Harper appears at the top of the stairs holding a sparkly purple playdress.

“Dis!” she exclaims, starting her wobbly descent down to me. It’s taken her a few weeks to get the hang of the steep incline, and for as much as I offer to carry her up or down to fight off my own paranoia, my four-year-old’s independence streak is hitting hard.

“You’re lucky we don’t have more time, kid,” I mumble to myself. If we weren’t in such a hurry, I would try to convince her to wear something more practical for daycare. However, this is not a battle I want to pick right now. Besides, there’s a spare set of bike shorts and a T-shirt in her backpack if she ends up needing to change.

Harper jumps off the final step and holds her dress up toward me.

“Pretty dress pwease, Mama!”

As she grins innocently up at me, my breath catches at the uncanny resemblance she has to her father. Aside from sharing my bronzed skin and pale blue eyes, Harper is practically the spitting image of Greyson. Especially when she smiles.

“Sure, Princess. Let’s get dressed and do your hair quickly so we’re not late.”

Harper squeals in excitement and flings the dress at me as she runs into the living room, pulling her sleep dress off as she goes.

The familiar twinge grips my heart as I watch her run amuck and I force the ache down, just like I do almost every day so that I can focus on getting my daughter out the door.

Even after these past few years of doing everything on my own, it’s nearly impossible to make it through an entire day without thinking about how quickly my life changed. I might have only been nineteen, but I was convinced I had a good grip on how things would play out. Thought that no matter what was thrown our way, the love we had would make it through anything.

It only took a car crash and a positive pregnancy test to prove me wrong.

To this day, what hurts more than anything is the fact that he couldn’t face me. He spent years getting through my walls and weaving himself in, until one dayhewas my safe space. Then, at a time when we both should have turned to each other for support, he shut me out. What’s worse is that he couldn’t even do it himself. He sent his mother to do it for him.

Thankfully, I had one last place to turn. All it took was a phone call to my nana and I was leaving Georgia two weeks later to move to upstate New York with her. She gave me a place to live, helped get me into one of the colleges where I met my friends Eva, Thea, and Addison. None of them blinked twice when they found out I was pregnant. If anything, they were excited to live vicariously through me and get some baby time in. Without them, I might not have graduated.

I hadn’t second-guessed my decisions once since leaving.

Until I accepted the job here in Tampa.

I had kept up with Greyson’s career on the down-low. Maybe it was a masochistic tendency, but no matter what, I couldn’t bring myself to stop. He was always the best at hockey in high school, so it’s no surprise that he went on to play for one of the top teams in the league. His team has already made it to the playoffs three times and won twice during his time on the Bobcats. Something I doubt he would have been able to do if he was tied down with me and our baby.

The dangerous thought about what it would be like to run into him now that we’re in the same city again creeps in. What would it be like to show him the amazing tiny human he is missing out on?

But then Harper’s little giggle breaks through my haze of thoughts, reminding me that it’s not my job to convince someone to be in our lives. If he wanted to, he would be here.

My daughter deserves the best I can give her. One day I know she’ll ask about him, and I’ll have to explain how he chose his career over us. Until then, I’ll spend all my time making sure she knows just how loved and wanted by me she is.

“And done,” I tell my daughter after securing the hair tie at the bottom of the French braid. While her hair color closely resembles her father’s, genetics blessed her with the same curly hair I got from my mother. Harper shakes her head back and forth, making the braid hit both her shoulders before she dips her head backward to smile upside down at me.

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