Chapter 6
Ivy
My first week of working for Wes is going well—at least, I think it is.
Delilah is genuinely the best kid I’ve ever met.
She has a great sense of humor, she’s smart, she’s kind, and she’s an absolute blast to hang out with.
Her and I get along great, but from the way Wes has been acting, I have a sinking feeling her dad hates that fact.
When I arrive at the start of the day, Wes gives me the rundown of how their morning went and tells me anything I need to know for the day. Then Delilah and I hangout for eight blissful hours before her dad comes home and frosts over my good mood like the damn abominable snowman.
He barely says two words to me when he walks through the door. I’ll prattle on about the day we’ve had—rambling about every little detail I think he might want to know—and he’ll only nod or make noncommittal grunting noises in return. It’s infuriating.
Delilah begs me to stay for dinner, Wes tells her I need to get home, so I do.
Rinse and repeat.
Wes has been kind of a mystery to read. Aside from the stiff and cold pleasantries, he has given me absolutely nothing to go on.
I have no idea what’s going on in that disgustingly hot head of his.
I’ve tried to break the ice, wondering if he's just standoffish because we don’t know each other well, but he has not received any of my conversation starters well.
Talking to him is like pulling teeth with his mono-syllabic answers.
The shittiest part of all? His frigid demeanor makes me worry he’ll decide not to keep me on as Delilah’s nanny when the trial basis ends next week.
Admittedly, I did make a few inappropriate jokes.
They were meant to be light-hearted and break the obvious tension, but I think they may have rubbed him the wrong way.
It was my second day on the job. I had just arrived that morning, and Delilah was in her room getting dressed for the day, so I was hanging out in the living room waiting for her. Wes was by the front door gathering his things to leave, and I waved an awkward goodbye to him.
Then he completely surprised me.
“Hey, quick question,” he said, looking right at me.
I didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, they’re real.”
My joke backfired spectacularly, making him take the quickest of glances down at my chest, before snapping his eyes right back to my face. He frowned, and I felt my face immediately flame bright red.
“I’m sorry…that was a joke, obviously,” I sputtered out, holding both hands palm up at my chest, gesturing toward the B cups in question.
That was also a terrible move, because all it did was bring more attention to the area I desperately wanted him not to focus on.
I didn’t miss the muscle tick in his jaw. He wouldn’t break eye contact, refusing to look down at my hands that were still lingering midair, showcasing my tits I had shoved into an unflattering sports bra that morning.
“Bye,” he gritted out, then spun around, stomped down the porch steps, got into his truck and drove off. He didn’t even close the front door.
The man finally spoke more than two words to me, and I got so flustered and nervous that I made a boob joke.
Nice, Ivy.
He also didn’t appreciate my That’s what she said joke a couple days later.
His mom was dropping off homemade banana bread she had just made that afternoon right as I was leaving.
She handed it over to Wes, raving about how moist it was.
To which I had absolutely no choice but to whisper, “That’s what she said. ”
Thankfully, Wes was the only one who heard me, but he absolutely did not appreciate the joke.
Since then, I’ve just been trying not to say stupid shit, hoping he’ll warm up to me eventually.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m headed for a swift kick in the ass, right out the door come next week.
Today is Friday, and Wes mentioned he doesn’t have any appointments this weekend, which means I’m not due back here until Monday. For some reason, that bums me out a little, but I shake it off because Delilah and I are having another fantastic day.
Yes, I like calling her by her full name. It's a beautiful name, and she doesn’t seem to mind. Plus it makes me feel a little closer to her.
“Hey girly, you want to eat lunch outside again?” I call out as I grab the tote bag hanging on the pantry door handle, and start loading up the food I just prepared for us.
“Yes!” she shouts, and I watch her gather up whatever she was playing with and stuff it in her mini backpack—fully equipped with wings and a spiked tail.
I stand ready and waiting for her by the front door as she collects one toy car, a couple of miniature horses, a book, a random business card she calls her phone, and a pink squishy ball.
You know the ones that attract any and all kinds of debris?
So naturally it’s smudged with dirt and covered in crumbs, but she loves it.
She zips up her bag, grabs her stuffed dragon, who I learned on day one is named Burrito. Delilah seems to have an obsession with dragons, and it’s incredibly endearing. I’m not sure how it started, but out of all the things for a toddler to be obsessed with, I’d say dragons are a good one.
I know a few things about dragons, due to the amount of romantasy I’ve consumed. Yet it didn’t stop me from doing my own homework.
“Did you know that a group of dragon eggs is called a clutch?” I ask Delilah as we stroll hand in hand toward the pond.
We’ve had lunch out here a few times already this week, and it’s been really nice with the warmer weather.
“Really? That’s so cool!” She smiles up at me, mouth wide open, dimples deep.
It’s infectious.
Her freckles remind me of mine, sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, but those dimples? They’re what’s really to die for. I find myself absently wondering if she got them from her dad, and what he’d look like, that happy and smiling.
I’ve been thinking about Wes a lot more than I probably should. Every time I see him it feels like I’m going to crawl out of my skin, but in a very good way if you know what I mean. Which is bad.
Like, really bad.
I’ve been replaying our first meeting in my head over and over all week—how he looked like he’d rather be literally anywhere else, with his broody eyes and annoyingly handsome scowl.
It was honestly kind of adorable. He was grumpy, sure, but in that hot, silent, mysterious kind of way.
I should not be into my boss, especially one who can barely stand to look at me, but here we are.
He is my employer, and the last thing I need is to get fired from another job, all because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.
Maybe I just need to get laid. It’s been awhile.
There was that one guy shortly after I moved to town, but it was so underwhelming I’m not sure if it even counts. Does it count if you don’t come?
I’ll ask Sophie.
I left Daniel just over two years ago, but we hadn’t even slept together for a long while before that.
I knew in my bones he was being unfaithful, and I just couldn’t bring myself to be intimate with him once I suspected.
I knew. In retrospect, I absolutely knew.
Still, I chose to look the other way and live in blissful ignorance for so long because it felt like he was all I had.
We’d been together for five years, and I was terrified of change.
Losing both my parents in a tragic car accident at twenty-one shattered my world.
I’m an only child, and never had any real extended family.
My entire universe was taken away from me in a single night.
Nothing could’ve prepared me to navigate that kind of loss.
I was utterly lost—hurting and consumed with grief.
So when I met Daniel in college just a few months after the tragedy that changed my life forever, I clung to him like a lifeline.
He was kind in the beginning, and I know I loved him back then. But after we graduated, everything changed, fast. He landed a job at his very wealthy father’s marketing firm, and that’s when things went downhill. He didn’t want me to work—always preaching his caveman mantra “Me provide for woman.”
I wanted to work. I wanted to teach. But my need to keep him happy outweighed everything else.
He was the last person I had left in the entire world, and I couldn’t risk doing anything to mess that up.
So I let him pay for the fancy apartment in L.A.
, let him buy me the clothes he liked best, and let him mold me into the perfect, compliant accessory for his curated life.
I’m not proud to say it, but I let him control essentially every part of me.
Then came the late nights. The “client dinners.” The silence that swallowed that hollow, empty apartment. The gaslighting—claiming I was paranoid, that I had no right to question him. And I believed him. Until I didn’t.
The final straw? A thong in the backseat of his BMW. The one he knew I was using to run errands. It was just there, lying on the seat, with no attempts of discretion. It was like a slap in the face.
That was the shift. The moment the fog lifted and I couldn’t unsee it anymore. It felt like I had come out of a dream I didn’t know I was in, and everything came into focus. I could suddenly hear my mom yelling at me to wake up. And I listened.
I didn’t tell him I found the underwear.
I kept them, waiting for the right moment.
Everything was in Daniel's name, including my car, so I used the cash I had quietly hidden away over time and bought an old car I found on craigslist in Santa Monica. I paid the guy an extra few hundred dollars to keep it parked at his house until I needed it. In hindsight, the fact that I’d hidden cash at all should’ve made me question things.