CHAPTER 43 Ainsely Bradley
The Ring
I stare at the ring on the counter. I slid onto one of the stools there at the kitchen counter once he left, and I haven’t stopped staring at it since.
I’m trying to piece together what just happened.
We’re over. Really and truly. I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did. I don’t want to end things with Dex. But I can’t live like this, either.
When I pictured life with my husband, I never pictured him lying to me—for protection or otherwise. I always assumed I’d end up with someone who’d come to me with his problems so we could work them out together. I pictured a true partnership.
But that’s not what we have, and it hasn’t been since the start. It’s why we never could’ve really made it out of the contract with a solid foundation for the rest of our lives. It’s always been a power struggle since I was just the hired help.
We didn’t expect to fall the way we did.
We didn’t expect this to be anything more than what we both signed up for.
It all started with that one little kiss at the altar after we said “I do,” and it snowballed from there.
If I could go back in time and warn myself about what was going to happen, I would.
I’m a smart girl. I knew better than to get involved with someone like Dex Bradley.
He’s a bad boy. A player. He doesn’t do relationships.
We’re not just from two different decades.
We’re from two completely different lifestyles.
There’s too much that sets us apart, gaps too wide to navigate our way across.
Not to mention he’s my best friend’s brother.
Speaking of which, I still haven’t admitted any of this to Ivy. It’s not like I can call up my best friend and cry over the fact that I just ended things with the only man I’ve ever truly loved. The only man who’s ever loved me. My first in so many ways. My only in so many ways, too.
I get up and make myself a drink—vodka and Sprite, heavy on the Sprite, with three cherries. I slip back onto my stool to continue my staring contest with the ring.
The vodka isn’t helping. I take three sips, eat the cherries, and push the glass away.
I don’t have a solid solution for us. I can’t seem to find a path forward out of this other than finding some way to start over completely. Tear up the contract. Figure out how to get him out of this illegal casino thing with his father. Start a life of our own.
But he won’t do that.
He’s loyal, and I guess I can understand that. It’s hard for him being in the public eye and knowing who to trust. But when it’s your own father using you, that makes it a little harder to see the truth.
Like when my parents used me as their babysitter. I was a teenager, and I didn’t really want to do it, but I did it out of obligation.
This is different, and I realize that. For one thing, what he’s doing is illegal.
Still, I’m sure Dex had his reasons for doing it.
But it doesn’t really matter.
We were never destined to find our happily ever after together. I may have the rags-to-riches Cinderella story with my new life in a Vegas penthouse, but Dex is no prince, and the happily ever after that I thought was within my reach just slipped away.
So now what? I continue to nanny for Jack, continue to love that baby more and more every day, and continue to live with Dex and pretend I’m not head over heels for him until the term of our contract runs out?
I can’t live in this penthouse with the man I’m in love with for two more years and not get to play the part of his wife, not get to lie in bed beside him each night, not get to jump off the couch and greet him at the door with a kiss every time he walks through it.
How do I go back now that I’ve experienced a taste of that life?
I want to convince myself this is temporary, that we’ll find our way back.
But taking that ring off somehow felt pretty damn permanent. It was the symbolic end of what we shared, even if the contract is still in place for a while longer.
I have this sudden, intense feeling of homesickness.
It’s just a side effect of what went down tonight, I’m sure.
But I want to go home. I want to see my brothers and sisters.
I need to get away from this penthouse and Dex, and maybe I even need a break from Jack, too, since he represents the whole reason I’m here to begin with.
That poor baby.
It’s not his fault his parents can’t get their shit together.
And ultimately, that’s what’s going to keep me here. Jack Dexter Bradley.
I start to cry as I feel suddenly very stuck. I stare at that damn ring as despair fills me.
Maybe I’m homesick and want to go back to Chicago for a while, and maybe I will.
But I can’t find it in me to abandon Jack when he’s already been abandoned by the only mother he ever knew.
I can’t just walk out of his life and hope Dex finds a suitable nanny to replace me when I’ve somehow moved into the role of his stepmother over the last couple of months.
And as I continue to stare at the ring, lost in thought about Jack and Dex and our situation, I can’t help but start to wonder…
Where the hell did Dex go when he stormed out that door, and when will he be home?