68. Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-five
Leo
Brynn sobs in the pitch black of my bedroom. There are too many clouds in the sky tonight for the moon to be visible, so I can’t make out her shape in the bed beside me or see if she’s awake. I can only feel the space between us from where she’s rolled away and the gentle rise and fall of the bedcovers against my bare chest as she cries.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s either having another nightmare or choosing not to answer me. I roll onto her side of the bed until I feel the heat of her body against mine, then I band my arm around her waist and pull her into me.
Her breaths are short and trembling in the darkness, her body jolting with every sob that escapes her lips.
I fucking hate it when she cries.
“Brynn, baby?” Tucking my face into her neck, I whisper against her skin. “Are you dreaming?”
Silence once more, but she presses herself closer into my body and curls a cold hand around my arm, telling me she’s awake.
“Was it Indiana Jones again? Or another homicidal Celine with more deadly vegetables?” I keep my tone light in the hope that I can make her laugh enough to stop crying. It doesn’t work.
Her head shakes against me.
“No? The fish bowl, then?”
Another shake of her head.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Tears splash onto my arm, followed by yet another head shake.
“Come on, baby, you’re killing me here.”
Helplessness pierces through me as I hold her, my heart shattering a little more with every soft cry and sniffle. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help. It’s unusual that she doesn’t want to talk about her dream, unusual that she doesn’t want to talk at all, actually, considering she usually never stops, and it all adds to the growing wave of desperation I’m feeling to end whatever it is that is making her so sad.
I want to hit something.
Hell, I kind of want to kill something, which wouldn’t be at all productive right now, but the feeling is there all the same.
Something is hurting my girl, and whatever it is, dream or not, it deserves to die a slow and painful death.
Shifting away from her, I reach for my bedside table. “Just gonna turn on the light. I need to see you.”
“No.” Her hand strangles my arm until I move back in beside her. “No, please don’t.”
“Okay.” Whatever she wants, she can have it, even if it’s killing me not to see her face right now. “How can I make this better? Tell me what to do.”
She sighs, nuzzling her cheek against my arm. “Just hold me for a while.”
“I’ll hold you forever, if that’s what you need.”
More tears spill onto my skin, but I don’t care. I really will stay here forever if only she stops breaking my fucking heart.
“You can’t.” She sniffles. “But for now is enough.”
“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,” I whisper, tracing love hearts on the back of her hand with the pad of my index finger.
“I’ll be okay, Leo. Don’t worry about me.”
As if I would ever not worry about her. Somehow in the space of just a few months, she has become the second most important thing in my life. Second, of course, only to my daughter. But Brynn wouldn’t be offended by that. She would never demand to be my number one priority when Salem exists in the world. In fact, she’d be outraged if I even suggested it as a possibility.
And the thing that makes her perfect is that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Salem is, and always will be, her top priority too.
She loves my daughter possibly as much as I do.
For a long while, I hold her in silence, listening to the sound of her breathing as it begins to slow down then eventually even out, until I’m sure she’s fallen back to sleep.
Even then, I don’t allow myself to fall asleep too. I’m too scared she’ll have a nightmare again, and I won’t wake up in time to stop it from happening. I just stare into the darkness, cradling my girl in my arms, knowing she’s right where she belongs.
An hour must have passed when I hear her whisper into the thick sheath of darkness.
“I’ll miss you when I have to go.”
She must be dreaming again, because as far as I know, she’s not going fucking anywhere.
Brynn is quiet over the next few days. I try a thousand different ways to make her laugh, including—and I’m not proud of this—performing an extremely exaggerated and incredibly off-key impression of Dolly Parton singing "Islands in the Stream . "
It earned me a strained chuckle at most.
By the fourth night, I’m in full-blown panic mode.
Salem has been fast asleep in bed for an hour now, and I’m warming dinner on the stove. Across from me at the kitchen island, the reason for my stress picks at a bowl of blueberries as she stares at something invisible on the far wall.
“How are things going with Salem and Issy?” I ask for no reason other than I’m running out of conversation starters, and I’ve reached the point that I’m just desperate to hear the sound of her voice.
Issy isn’t someone I like talking about. In fact, I’d be happy if I never had to hear or speak her name again, but circumstances out of my control have meant that she is now, unfortunately, a seemingly permanent fixture in my life.
I don’t ask about her often. I trust that Brynn will tell me anything I need to know relating to the growing relationship between Issy and my daughter, and I leave the apartment for practice long before she arrives so I don’t have to see her.
If I had things my way, she’d be back in Bali already.
But Brynn can be persuasive when she wants to be, and she was right in her point that I need to do what’s best for Salem, regardless of my own feelings on the matter, so here we are.
“Good,” Brynn replies, her voice bereft of the melody that usually permeates it. Instead, it’s flat and as dead as the houseplant in my bathroom that I still need to throw out. “Salem seems to be coming around to her. She let Issy feed her yesterday, which is a good sign, I guess.”
“Great,” I choke. “That’s…great.”
“Yep.”
She’s looking right at me, her gaze locked on mine, but there’s something strange about it. Like she’s not seeing me. Not really. More like she’s looking through me to something that isn’t there.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like any of this.
I don’t understand what has happened to bring about this sudden change in her, and damn it all to hell, but I miss how things were before, when I could make her laugh without trying and kiss her without her flinching. She hasn’t stolen a single ball cap this week or even made fun of my accent—both clear indications that something is dreadfully wrong.
I miss it all.
I miss her.
“She wants to come to the game with us tomorrow,” she says, squeezing a blueberry between her thumb and forefinger until it pops and stains her skin indigo.
“I’d rather she didn’t.”
“She said she can look after Salem, so I can support you and Alex without being distracted by the baby.”
My forehead creases. “Is that how you feel?”
“No!” Her eyes turn wild, and I’m relieved to see some life back inside them. “No, I don’t feel like that at all.”
“Do you want her to come?”
She gnaws on her bottom lip, rubbing blueberry juice deeper into her skin with her fingers. “I don’t mind.”
She’s lying.
It’s funny that she thinks I can’t tell.
“As long as I don’t have to see her, I guess it doesn’t really matter to me. So, it’s up to you. If you don’t want her to come, just tell her there aren’t enough tickets.”
She’s silent as her gaze returns to the spot on the wall. Gnawing so hard on her lip that I’m sure she’s going to split it, she picks up another blueberry and squishes it between her fingers again.
I don’t know why she keeps doing that, but it’s making quite the mess.
Finally, she sighs and brings her eyes back to me. They’ve turned lifeless again, devoid of their usual golden sparkle. “I’ll tell her she can come.”
“Why? You obviously don’t want her to.”
“It isn’t about what I want.”
I don’t know why, but that statement makes me angry.
Shoving the saucepan of leftovers off the stove so it doesn’t burn, I march around the island toward her, stopping just short of her knees and looming over her with fire in my eyes. I grip her chin and tilt it up so she’s forced to look at me. Really look at me. Not just stare through me like I’m not even fucking here.
“Of course it’s about what you want.”
“No.” She bats my hand away from her face with a sharp scowl. “It’s about what’s best for you. For Salem and Issy too. It’s about what’s best for your family. ” She spits the last word like it burns her tongue to say it.
“How many fucking times do I have to tell you that you are part of this family?” I’m speaking too loudly—yelling, really, I know I am—but I can’t hold myself back. She needs to hear this. She needs to understand. “You are more a part of this family than Isabella will ever be.”
Her entire face collapses.
Her eyes fill with tears so instantly it’s as if she’s spent the last four days trying to hold them back, and my words have finally given them the go ahead to explode down her cheeks.
She shakes her head and speaks with a strangled voice, “No, Leo, I’m just the nanny.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and look to the heavens. What doesn’t she understand about what I’m saying? Why doesn’t she fucking believe me?“ Okay, fine. You’re fired.”
“What?”
“You’re fired.”
I don’t even blink. I just stare her down with the force of a million stars combusting simultaneously, willing her to realize how ridiculous she’s being, willing her to understand everything I’ve been trying to tell her for weeks.
That I’ve fallen fucking ass over tit in love with her.
That I want to keep her forever.
“From this moment on, you are hereby relieved of your duties. Your contract is terminated. You are no longer Salem’s nanny, effective immediately.”
If heartbreak had a face, it would be Brynn at this moment.
Her crestfallen, grief-stricken expression is one I will never be able to forget, no matter how hard I’ll try.
But it’s necessary.
It’s proof .
Proof that she isn’t—has never been—"just the nanny."
"Then who will look after Salem?" she asks through her sobs. “Issy?” The last word is hissed, like the possibility of Issy taking Brynn’s place is too much for her to bear.
“God no.” I shake my head vehemently.
“Then who?”
I shrug as if it doesn’t really matter. It does, of course, but we’ll get to that.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers.
Reaching back for her face, I cup her cheek in my hand, capturing her tears with my thumb and brushing them away. “How much of the money you've earned from being Salem’s nanny have you spent on yourself?”
She frowns like she doesn’t understand the question. “I don’t know.”
I thought she’d say that, so I answer for her. “Not a cent.”
All the packages of clothes she’s ordered for Salem, all the toys, the baby equipment that she’s bought because she’s either replacing old things or has found something else we might need, I’ve been keeping my eye on all of it.
From the very beginning, she has spent more money on my daughter than I’ve paid her for watching her.
Not a single penny of it has she spent on herself.
“What?”
“You’ve spent it all on Salem.”
“Okay…”
Fucking hell, the woman still doesn’t get it.
“Right, okay, let me ask you this, then. If I asked you to still look after Salem, to do everything you’ve already been doing, the same hours, the same responsibilities, but I wouldn’t pay you to do it, what would you say?”
Her eyes brighten with hope, her lips turning upward as if it’s Christmas Day and I’ve just gifted her a sibling for Gordon. “Yes. I’d say yes.”
“Why?” I demand.
“Because, b-because I…”
“Yes?”
Her chin lifts, her expression resolute, honest and rich with conviction. “Because I love her.” But then her lip trembles, and her face falls once more. “It doesn’t make us a family, though.”
“Jesus, woman, for someone so smart, you can be incredibly dense sometimes.”
She has the audacity to look affronted, as if I’m the infuriating one out of the two of us. “Excuse me?”
With a sigh, I slide my hands beneath her butt on the stool and scoop her up, setting her down on the island so I can stand between her legs. The position brings us nose to nose, so close that I can feel each of her shivering breaths against my lips. So close, that if I wanted to—which I do—I could kiss her before she’d even have a chance to blink.
But I don’t.
As excruciating as it is to hold myself back, especially when I haven’t tasted the sweetness of her mouth properly in over four days, it’s more important that she hears what I’m about to say.
“Apparently, I need to spell this out for you, so I hope you’re listening.” She grumbles something under her breath, but I keep going. “You haven’t been taking care of Salem out of obligation, or because it’s your job, or whatever other bullshit you like to tell yourself. You do it because you want to. Because you love her, and she loves you. Not as much as I do, because at this point, it’s frankly impossible. But the fact of the matter is, you love Salem, and Salem and I love you too, so if that isn’t what the definition of a family is, then I don’t know what is.” I suck in a breath and stare straight into her maddeningly beautiful eyes. “And if that still isn’t enough, then we’re a family because I fucking say we are. Do you understand me?”
She blinks. “You love me?”
I groan, though the sound is laced with amusement, because of course that’s the only thing she focused on out of all the highly important and unmissable points I was making. “What, like you don’t already know?”
Her mouth opens, then closes, as if she’s desperate to say something, but the words won’t come to her.
Capturing her other cheek in my hand, I bring our faces even closer together. “I love you, Brynn Wolfe, you kind, selfless, insufferably stubborn woman.”
Finally, for the first time in ninety-six long, unbearable hours, she smiles. And it’s real, and warm, and so goddamn mystifying that I’m afraid to blink for fear of missing even a millisecond of it.
“You know I love you too, right?”
I nod, because I do. “We’re a family.”
Her lips twitch. “A family,” she repeats, testing the taste of the word on her tongue.
“Uh-huh. And just because Salem’s birth mom is back in the picture doesn’t mean, for a single second, that we don’t want you anymore.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You won’t change your mind?”
“Never. Now, come here and let me make love to you until you never doubt your place in this family again.”