Chapter 26 #2
He hasn’t asked you to give anything up for him. And he might never ask, since it sounds like he doesn’t want to get married again.
The panic I felt last night before texting Sam returns with a vengeance. I was wrong to listen to her. If my head had kept a tight rein on my heart, it wouldn’t feel like it’s breaking in my chest right now.
My knees are jiggling under the table and my hands have formed fists when the door bursts open.
Ella, looking every bit like the child she should be, darts in carrying a brown and white baby goat in her arms. Norah is just behind her with a bottle in hand and a giant smile plastered on her face.
Patty and Nancy trail in behind her so that the kitchen is full of sound and laughter and warmth.
Yet I’m still cold where I sit.
“It’s a baby,” Ella gushes, her voice high with excitement. She glances at me, but then she stops just before Gavin, who’s closer to the door. “Look, Daddy. A baby goat and I get to feed it.”
Ella doesn’t seem to notice that she called Gavin Daddy . It clearly just slipped out. But she’s the only one unaffected.
Norah presses the fingertips of her free hand to one eye, then the other, like that’s going to hold back the flood of tears escaping.
Thayden busies himself with the papers on the table, organizing them back into folders, but I see his nose twitching.
I have employed the strongest poker face I have because I cannot allow anyone in this room to see how invested I am in Gavin and this girl.
Especially when I don’t know what place I even have in their future.
I can’t see Gavin’s expression, but slowly, he opens his arms, and for the first time, Ella crawls into his lap. I can only see the view from the side, but that’s more than enough. It’s almost too much.
Norah hands Ella the bottle. The baby goat shuffles and squirms, eager to get its lips around the bottle.
“The mama’s dry,” Norah says. “Sometimes it just happens. They don’t have what they need to take care of their babies.”
I see her words for what they are. She’s trying to make the room lighter somehow, trying to keep Ella from taking note of how the air in the room has shifted with the one word.
But it’s had the opposite effect on me. Maybe they shouldn’t, but the words strike a weird chord in my chest, a melancholy one.
The low note reverberates, a growing whisper of panic rising into a shout in my mind as Gavin brushes Ella’s hair away from her face in the most tender of moves.
I don’t have what I need to take care of this child.
I don’t have what Gavin needs in a partner.
Not that it sounds like he wants one. But if he did, I’m ill-equipped, unprepared, and unqualified for the role of mother figure, and therefore for relationship material.
Way too young for all this. It’s way too early in my career to give it up.
Fear tightens its grip around my chest and I’m stiff with it, afraid that if I move, I’ll break into a million tiny pieces.
Conversation continues to flow around me like water, and I realize that Thayden has packed up his briefcase, hugged Norah, and taken a plastic container with what looks to be homemade cookies.
“Great to see you again, Zoey,” he says, and I swear, it’s like he’s the only one in the room who still sees me because everyone is so focused on Gavin and Ella.
“Gavin, I’ll be in touch soon. Thank you, as always, for your hospitality, Norah.”
As Thayden makes his way out the back door, I see my chance for escape.
Calm down, Zoey. Just chill. This is stupid. Childish.
But I can’t convince myself. I can’t quell the panic.
I remember my own mother at eight, brushing my hair at night, singing me to sleep, helping me with homework.
In my memory, she is beautiful and otherworldly, so much older than I am now.
Wise, with crinkles around her eyes when she smiles, and a few gray hairs starting at her temples.
I leave the room, and thankfully, no one notices. Sprinting upstairs, I shove things in my bag, glancing out the window to watch where Thayden is going, toward one of the back fields, where there must be a landing strip. He pauses to talk to Gavin’s father, giving me the time I need to finish up.
As quietly as I can in the creaking old house, I speed down the stairs, out the front door where no one sees, and sprint to catch up with Thayden.
When I call out his name, he turns, shocked. A laugh bubbles out of him. “Zoey? What are you—”
“I need to hitch a ride back to Austin. And I need help with the contract I made to be Ella’s nanny. I can’t finish the weekend. I’ll give the money back. I just … need to go.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to protest. Or perhaps pull out that dimple and try to charm me into staying. But he must recognize the desperation and determination in my eyes, because a moment later, he nods.
“If that’s what you want.”
It’s not what I want. But it’s what I need. What Gavin needs, what Ella needs. Maybe it’s just the fear talking, and I suspect it is, but right now, I can only see one way out, and it’s this. Cutting my losses before I can lose any more of myself.
“Take me home.”