Chapter 2

Jayden

A low roaring fills my ears when Lucy turns, letting me see her stunning grey gaze, see the specks of blue within it at this distance. I thought I'd lost it when I spotted her earlier this week. She disappeared just as fast as she'd appeared, but something about that split second had me going back to the restaurant, hoping to find her there again.

Hell, I knew it was a longshot to find her that way, but I hadn't had any luck finding her on campus in the last month since I got here and was willing to take any lead possible to track her down. The bartender gave me nothing the next night and I figured she was just there for a meal like I was. One of the other workers was moving past as I asked him about her and recognized Lucy's picture, letting it slip that she worked there.

That was all I got though, the man was determined to not reveal her schedule, so I've been stopping by as much as possible hoping to run into her. Last thing I expected was to see her standing outside an apartment building, but it does explain why I couldn't find her in the dorms.

Her golden hair is bundled up on top of her head, showing off the curve of her neck, and I can't help but remember running my lips down it, kissing her as the most incredible pleasure flooded me. I haven't seen her since she left town, only for a few minutes here and there between that night and when she left. She was always with Jessa when I did see her, which meant being unable to talk to her about what happened between us.

Now that she's here in front of me, everything I've imagined saying, rehearsed, has evaded me, and all I want to do is kiss her again. Hell, even after three years that's all I want.

A sharp, childish shout breaks the hold her eyes have on me, and my head turns looking for the source.

The stroller in front of Lucy, her free hand on it is the last thing I expected and the dull roaring returns. This time it's not from shock but anger which is insane. She wasn't mine when she left, despite the two incredible nights. She was free to see whoever else she wanted but damn, the thought of another man with her, giving her a baby infuriates me.

"Jayden…" she begins pulling my attention back up to her. There's a new hint of something in her eyes that I can't read, and it keeps me from walking away. She's not wearing a ring showing she's taken. If I'd had a kid with someone, was still with them in any capacity, I'd damn well have a ring on her finger to show she was off limits.

"Hey Luce, you look good." The stupid words fall, and I can't believe after all this time, that's what I finally lead with. How much of a fucking idiot can I be? I don't have trouble talking to any other girl, just her.

It's always been this way. Jessa used to torment me about my crush on her friend, thankfully not in front of Lucy, but from the moment that I started noticing girls in a romantic capacity, it's always been Lucy that's left me tongue-tied and stammering. At least until I drank enough to get the courage to go talk to her alone at that party.

Even then, I couldn't really talk. I stumbled and stared at her until I'd said the hell with it and kissed her. Doing my best to put everything I felt for her into it since my brain couldn't string together two coherent words. I was floored when she kissed me back, and then even more so when I claimed her virginity in the near dark of the bedroom we snuck off to.

I savored that for days, hoping that when she came over we could talk, see what was happening between us, but she deftly avoided me, and I ended up going to her house to talk it out. Which resulted in me kissing her when I couldn't get her to listen to me, and that led us to her bedroom and the absolute most incredible night of my life. It was better than the party because I wasn't drunk on anything except her.

I thought it would be the start for us, even with her heading to the city for college. I was dreaming of visits and winter vacations cuddling together. Hours spent on the phone with her, teasing her until she admitted she missed me as much as I knew I was going to miss her.

What I got was an awkward statement about it being a mistake, me being too young for anything that'd happened, and that it couldn't happen again. It was bullshit though. Okay, technically she's like a year and a half older than I am, and technically I was just over two months shy of being sixteen, but she was barely seventeen. If the situation was reversed, no one would say shit about it. About the older person going off to college and coming home to see the younger one.

It's not like I was fourteen, which some of the kids in my grade were even as we finished freshman year, and she was eighteen about to turn nineteen. I turned fifteen at the start of the school year and while Lucy might have been three grades ahead of me, she was sixteen until February.

She avoided me even more after the night at her house, and before I could figure out how to get her to talk to me, work up the nerve to talk to her, she was gone. It didn't help that our parents drug us out of town on our annual vacation that June. I normally loved it, especially the years that Lucy would come on it with us, having her so close for three or four weeks with no one else around except Jessa. She declined coming that year saying she had too much to do before she moved to away for college.

My parents were so proud of Lucy, mentioning how she finished high school early and won scholarships to so many places that Jessa stopped talking to her for a few weeks once we were home as well. Which meant she wasn't even around and every time I stopped by her place, she was mysteriously not there.

Then, she was gone. Left town earlier than anyone else that was headed to college had, and I didn't have a clue which school she'd chosen to attend. Even now, I hadn't been certain she'd be here. It was the one school she'd talked about most though, which had me busting my ass the rest of high school in order to get accepted to it, hoping to find her since she'd not once come home.

Hell, she hadn't talked to Jessa in years either, but my sister didn't seem to notice anything unusual about it. She was too busy with senior year stuff to notice that her best friend wasn't talking to her anymore. Even our parents said that Lucy was likely just swamped with work because college was different than high school, harder, and more demanding, with more damaging consequences if you slipped up.

For someone on a full scholarship, I understood that part, but not why she'd cut all of us off. Even if she didn't ever want to talk about what happened between us, that didn't mean she needed to cut Jessa and our parents off as well.

I've missed her more than anything, and even though I've had girls clinging to me, the only one I've ever wanted was Lucy. Who is now staring at me like I've lost my mind, her hand on a stroller, with a baby that I want to resent but can't seem to find the ability to. The man that gave her the baby, fuck yes, but not the baby. How could I hate something that came from Lucy—from the girl I love?

"Jayden," she starts to say, but the baby let out a full shout and her attention moved back to it before she slid around the front of the stroller, giving it a smile. "Hey, it's okay, sweetie. We'll be upstairs in a minute," she tells him, handing over a toy that must have fallen when I stopped them.

"Lucy," I start, stopping when the baby began talking, telling me he wasn't as little as I was anticipating.

"Mama, go. Liam hun-gee," he says, and Lucy leaned forward, beneath the canopy hiding them from view.

"Alright, let's get you fed," Lucy replies as she stands, grabbing hold of the handle and when the stroller began to move forward, my feet went right along with them. "Jayden…"

"You ran from me once, I'm not letting it happen again, Luce."

"Now is not a good time, I need to get my son his lunch," she counters, and I nod, not about to stop her from doing that, but I'm not letting her put anything between us.

"I can sit on your couch and wait until you're done, or help you make lunch," I add making her brow lift and I can't stop the soft laugh that hits. "Come on, you know Mom never let us shirk kitchen duties. She didn't want Joel or me to be as ignorant in the kitchen as our dad was."

"Right now really isn't a good time," she tries to argue as the elevator door opens. She pushes the stroller onto it, trying to block me, but I've grown in a lot of ways since she left, including in height and put on muscles, making it easy to simply lift her, moving her back next to the stroller to slip onto it with them.

"What floor, baby?" I ask, feeling a little smug when it puts a hint of color in her cheeks. "Luce?" I prompt when she just stares at me, letting my eyes slide over her body, making that flush deepen.

"Twenty," she finally states, and I nod, hitting the button and once the doors close behind us, something delicious fills the space. It's not her scent, which is something I'll never forget, and it makes my stomach rumble with hunger.

"Is that takeout?" I ask when she won't lift her face to look at me, her eyes on the stroller still.

"I didn't want to cook," she admits with a little shrug and my brow rises a hint more.

"So you got takeout, from the restaurant where you work?" I guess, and the color on her cheeks says I'm right. "So if I'd been a little earlier, I'd have seen you there instead of here."

"What do you want, Jayden?" Lucy asks, her face lifting, meeting my gaze and I can't stop the hunger that rushes through me seeing her beauty this close.

"What I've always wanted. You, baby," I answer with no pretext. I'm not playing games, especially not if there's another man anywhere in the vicinity that might think he has a claim on her because of the baby. She was mine first. I'm not letting anyone take her from me now that I know where she is, have her in front of me again. "I've always wanted you Luce. Other girls don't do a thing for me. They flirt and tease and offer themselves to me and all I want is for them to go away and leave me alone. One look at you and I turn into a stuttering fifteen-year-old boy all over again."

"No, you don't," she says softly as I step up into her space, lifting her chin so her eyes meet mine.

"I do," I counter, lifting her hand up to my chest, letting her feel the way my heart's racing wildly for her. "It's always been like this when I'm near you. I may not literally be stuttering anymore, but it's the same feeling. Jessa used to torment me on the fact that I had the world's biggest crush on her best friend. You can't tell me you didn't know," I add when her eyes widen in shock.

She shakes her head no, biting her bottom lip and it makes me hungry for a taste of it. My thumb pulls it from beneath her teeth and a little rush of breath falls from her, a shiver running through her body, and I can't help but smile at her response. My body's reacting the same way and I brush against her, letting her see she's not alone in this heady response.

"Jayden…" she whispers, her tone the same as that night in her house when I kissed her, and I can't stop. My head lowers, catching her lips with mine, tasting every bit of her as she gasps, giving me the opening to invade her sweet mouth with my tongue.

A moan slips from her lips and my cock responds in kind, wanting, needing to hear her moan like that while I'm deep inside her. Three years…three fucking years since I've gotten this hard unless I was dreaming of Lucy, of our nights together, or in the shower with her picture my head while getting myself off. I haven't touched another girl sexually. Hell, I haven't even kissed another girl and while it hurts that she slept with another guy, I don't care. It's not going to keep me away from her.

I lift her up against my body, feeling her all along me then let out a silent curse when something hits the back of my leg. I let out a groan sitting Lucy back down, then turn to see the culprit. There's a block on the floor by my feet and I fight against a grin. Apparently Lucy's little guy doesn't like men kissing his mother…or maybe he just doesn't like anyone but his father doing it, I muse trying to fight to stop the dark scowl that thought creates from showing on my face.

I lean down to pick up the block, moving to hand it to the little man, hoping it'll get me some points with him. My entire body freezes when his face turns to me, a smile on his lips revealing a single dimple in his left cheek just like mine, while his green eyes twinkle with a hint of mischief, just like mine. He's not nearly as little as I expected, which shouldn't be a surprise since I know he's mine, and the looks on Lucy's face, her disappearance and cutting all contact with us begins to make a hell of a lot more sense. She clearly never wanted me to find out she had a baby— my baby.

"Jayden," Lucy starts as I turn my face back towards her, not masking the pain that's rushing through me. I can't because god dammit, she had my baby and never said a single word about it.

"Not in front of him," I suggest as the elevator door opens, and before she can, I grab the stroller handle and back out of the elevator, following her to a door, my hunger for food vanishing. Fucking hell, I wish my hunger for her could as well. She lied to me…okay, maybe not lied but she hid this from me, kept me from knowing I had a son, and that pisses me off. How could she do this to me…to my son?