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“My aunt and uncle are Julia and Robert Scott.”
Stan smiled. “Oh. I know them. We attend the same church.”
Blake wasn’t really surprised to hear that. Serenity wasn’t a super small town, but as soon as Stan had said he was a Christian, Blake figured he might know his aunt and uncle.
As he pulled out of the parking lot a couple of minutes later, Blake smiled, happy with how things had turned out that morning. When he’d called the garage the previous day to see if he could talk to someone about a position there, he hadn’t dared hope that he’d walk away from the conversation with a job.
But he had, and it reinforced the feeling that he’d made the right decision in coming back to Serenity. Now he just had to hope that Amelia would find her place there as well.
What he really wanted with regards to Amelia was to talk to Charli to see how she was doing in school. Whenever he asked Amelia how her day had been, she would just say fine.
He wanted details.
If she was really struggling, he assumed Charli would let him know. Or at least he hoped she would.
By the time he got back to the apartment, Blake had decided to send Charli an email. There had been one on the papers that Amelia had brought home the first day. A work email address.
He still had her personal one, although it was possible that she didn’t use it anymore. Plus, he felt that she wouldn’t appreciate him contacting her that way. She’d interacted with him in a very professional way on Monday, so he didn’t think it would be right to contact her using her personal email.
Finding the file where he’d put the papers earlier that week, Blake sat down at the table and opened the email program on his laptop. He added Charli’s work address to his contacts, then brought up a blank email.
Right off the bat, how to address her stumped him. Had Amelia’s teacher been anyone else, he would have used a formal style of address. However, it was hard to consider doing that with Charli, someone he’d known intimately.
Blake hated feeling so uncertain, though he knew he had no one but himself to blame. Finally, he figured he’d just start the email with hi and go from there.
Part of him wanted to share all the details of his and Amelia’s life to give Charli an idea of what Amelia was dealing with. In the end, though, he just told her what she likely already knew, that they’d just moved there, so everything was new to Amelia.
He then asked her to please contact him if she had any concerns about how Amelia was doing in her class. After reading through it a couple of times, he finally hit send.
Sitting back in his chair, he stared blankly at his laptop. In the quiet of the apartment, with Amelia gone, Blake could let his doubts rise to the surface. He’d never imagined that he’d be solely responsible for a child.
Even with Lauren struggling with her addictions, he’d always assumed she’d be around, and during the times she’d been in rehab, her sister, Callie, had stepped up to help out. But Lauren’s death had changed everything.
And then, Callie had told him that she wouldn’t help him anymore. If he’d still had her help, he could’ve stayed in the area, even after leaving the army. But without her help, he’d known he needed to go somewhere he would have support.
He was certain now that he’d made the right decision, because already Julia and Robert had stepped up to help him, and he couldn’t be more thankful.
At the end of the day, however, he was responsible for Amelia’s physical and emotional well-being. He was her father, and even though he didn’t feel very confident in his ability to be what she needed, he was going to have to just do his best and hope it would be enough.
And weird though it might be, he hoped that having Charli as her teacher would help him and Amelia. He knew from the conversations he and Charli had had that she loved kids, and even though she hadn’t had any kids yet, she’d had lots of experience with them. Babysitting had been something she’d done plenty of, and he was sure that her experience had only grown since then.
Though Blake doubted she actually wanted to be a partner with him in raising his daughter, he trusted that she’d care for Amelia during the hours she was in her care, just like she would any other student in her class.
And Blake was certain that Amelia would be all the better for having Charli in her life.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charli set her plate of pizza down on the table, then settled into her seat beside Janessa. It was once again a full table, and there was plenty of conversation going on around her.
She’d survived the first week of classes, but she was tired. It was always a bit of an adjustment when she first went back to school after the summer. Though she appreciated being back on a schedule, at the same time, the lazy days of summer had been enjoyable.
“You should invite your cousin and his daughter to our next pizza night, Jackson,” Jay said. “I’m sure it’s a challenge being a single dad in a new place.”
Jay’s words grabbed Charli’s attention, and her stomach knotted. She couldn’t let Blake into her personal life again. She just couldn’t.
But how was she supposed to make sure that didn’t happen?
When Charli glanced over at Jackson to see how he was going to respond, she was surprised to find him looking at her. There was an uncharacteristic frown on his face, his brows drawn low over his eyes.
