Chapter 35 Evan
Amanda Webster is the person I’m currently sitting with in Mug it’s just sad.
“Why would I wait three and a half years to tell someone about you, Zara? I haven’t said a word. There’s no desire to.”
The hospital staff thought otherwise, though.
She releases a short breath of disbelief. “Well—”
“Well nothing. I think you’re actually the one in breach of your own contract, because you agreed to relinquish your guardianship of Leo, and forgot to remove yourself from his hospital files. So if anyone’s to blame here, it’s you.”
She huffs. “Okay, well, what am I supposed to do now? I’m being hounded. This could ruin me.”
“Do the same thing I have to do, Zara. Ignore them.” And with that, I cut the line.
I could have said more, could have told her that it’s not nice now that the shoe is on the other foot, but I have no need to berate that woman.
She has her life, and I have mine. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know anyone under the name Zara Scott, because she’s not Leo’s mother. Never was.
With my bag over my shoulder, I hop in my car.
I'm cutting it close, so need to get a move on. However, as I’m pulling out of the lot and peeking through the wipers that thump on the windshield as they wipe, the flickering streetlights barely doing anything to light the road in front of me, my eyebrows furrow because I spot an old red Honda turning in, the bumper slightly dented and scratched, one door handle missing.
Is that…?
There’s no denying whose it is—unless she sold the car, which was something Flo said she wouldn’t do. She loves that rusty hunk of metal.
My feet slam on the brakes, and I lurch out of my car and step out in front of the Honda.
They stop, then honk, and wait. More waiting.
It’s deathly silent. But after a few moments, a long-legged, wild-eyed woman steps out, and suddenly everything makes sense again. Because she’s standing in front of me.
“Evan Fucking West!” Flo yells over the pounding rain. “I almost hit you with my car!”
“You’re driving in the dark, trouble,” I say with a smile of disbelief.
She steps closer, her yellow knitted cardigan soaked, water droplets dribbling down her slender jaw and neck. She’s chuckling as she says, “You were worth the freak out.”
I never thought much about love before Flo came along.
It wasn’t something I craved, because I’d accepted I would never have it, not authentically, at least. But somewhere in the two months my nanny was here, I fell for her.
Fell so hard I know I’ll never be able to get back up.
It’s effortless with this woman. I don’t have to pretend or try to be something I’m not.
And now she’s in my arms, I’m never letting her go.
“You came back,” I mutter.
“You can’t fire me that easily.”
“I don’t want you as a nanny, Flo. I want you as more.
” Pulling back and bending my knees a little so we’re eye level, my palms hold her face captive.
“I love you. I’m so in love with you.” Shit, I had a whole speech planned and it’s all gone out the window.
My brain has turned to mush. “You have no idea how fucking happy I am that you’re here. ”
“I got your voicemail.”
“My voicemail?”
She titters, natural eyelashes clumped together from the rainwater. “You and Bennett talking. I had a feeling you didn’t know about it.”
I think back to that day, and how weird my friend had been acting. I shake my head as I laugh. He’d called her on my phone without my knowledge. Bennett fucking Quinn.
“I love you, Evan. I don’t want to be away from you, trying to discover where I think I belong,” her lips tilt, “because I belong right here, beside you and Leo.”
“I was about to catch a flight to Georgia.”
She pulls back in shock. “You were?"
“Someone once told me it’s not selfish to follow your heart, even if you have someone relying on you, and you, Flo McKenna, have my heart.”
After a beat, her eyes find my shallow slashes, and they harden. “We’re going inside, and I’m patching you up.”
“Okay, fine, but first, kiss me, trouble.”
Flo cranes her neck with a smile and presses her lips to mine, wrapping her arms around my neck as we kiss passionately in the rain. She moulds herself to me, and my fingers shape her waist and pull her impossibly closer, until a loud honk startles both of us.
“Hey, you’re blocking the entrance! Move your car!” a grumpy man yells with his head poked out of his car window, and Flo giggles, apologising.
“I’ll just park up, and then I need to see my little man. I’ve missed him like crazy.”
And when we enter the stadium and I watch Leo leap into Flo's arms, the both of them grinning like they've just won the fucking lottery, it’s then that I realise that at one point, I thought that Flo was always meant to come into our lives and be Leo’s nanny, but I was wrong.
Dead wrong. She was always meant to come into our lives and be Leo’s mom.