46. Riley
When I wakeup the next day, my head is pounding, and my eyes feel dry. I feel hungover on emotions, every bit as stressed and upset as I was last night when I drifted off.
The fight I just had with Cole was like nothing we’ve had before, and it rocked me to my core. I’m generally a non-confrontational person, preferring things to remain peaceful and simple, and conflicts like that almost always shake me.
But beyond that, it’s also the worst tension that has ever existed between me and Cole. Just when I was starting to think that everything was falling into place—that we might be able to do this thing, for real…
I force myself to climb out of bed and dress myself, as if this was any other day. As if I didn’t cry myself to sleep last night.
I still have a job to do, and contrary to Cole’s accusations, I intend to do it well.
I go downstairs, into the kitchen, earlier than I normally would. Secretly, I’m hoping that Cole will still be asleep, and I’ll have a little bit of time to whip up breakfast and coffee—a chance to get myself on solid footing before I see him.
Unfortunately, there’s no such luck. Cole is already up, sitting at the center island with his hands folded in front of him. When I walk into the kitchen, he gives me a cordial nod.
“Good morning.”
I nod back, uneasy. “Good morning. Is Archie up yet?”
He shakes his head. “No, not yet. Not for another half hour.”
His voice is monotone, his posture stiff. A wave of discomfort rolls through me; god, I hate how stilted this interaction is. I hate that any of this happened.
I hate it so much, in fact, that I decide to tell him so. I open my mouth to say something—maybe something like, I don’t like how we left things yesterday, or, can we talk about this? I want to fix things.
Before I can decide on a good way to start this conversation, Cole speaks.
“I think it would be best if we ended this.”
I blink, stunned, all of my carefully-organized thoughts scattering to the wind.
What?
“This thing between us needs to end. It’s over,” he adds, as if I didn’t hear the first part.
“What do you mean, over?”
He blinks at me, his face like a mask. “We both agreed that the extra dimension to our relationship would end when either of us said so. I never should have let it get this far, to be honest, but at least we can end it now, before anyone else gets hurt.”
Hurt? I shake my head slowly, trying to clear my mind and, simultaneously, deny what he’s saying. Before anyone else gets hurt?
“My focus right now needs to be on Archie,” Cole continues. “I love him, and I need to take care of him. I owe it to my sister. I can’t afford to be distracted like I have been lately.”
I’m too rattled to respond. There’s something horribly businesslike in his tone, a cool distance, as if he’s trying to rewind time back to the night we first made that agreement. As if he’s trying to dismiss everything that’s happened since, all of the feelings that have developed.
We’ve become close since then. We’ve been vulnerable in front of each other. Cole has seen sides of me that no one else has seen. I thought that feeling was mutual, and now, I don’t know what to think.
He’s reducing everything we were to nothing. Like this whole situation had nothing to do with our emotions at all. Like it was just a simple, cut-and-dry case of a wealthy single father fucking the nanny.
I feel sick to my stomach. I have to put out a hand to steady myself against the edge of the counter.
Part of me wants to beg him not to do this, but what the hell could I say? He’s clearly already made up his mind. There’s a finality in his tone, a line not to be crossed.
And besides—I’m not going to reduce myself to that.
I don’t want to beg someone to love me. It’s not who I am.
So instead, I nod, my teeth clenched tight. I blink rapidly to hold back the stinging tears. They’re not just tears of sadness; I’m angry, too, deep in my chest.
He’s handling this as poorly as he possibly could. There’s no honesty in his words, no trace of the open-hearted, sensitive man I’ve seen glimpses of. In order to shut me out, he’s shut himself off completely.
“If that’s how you feel,” I say slowly, “then you’re right. It’s best that we end this now. And I know you love Archie. He’s the best kid I know. But honestly, I feel sorry for you if your heart is so small that you only have room for one person in it.”
I try to read Cole’s face, searching for any trace of hurt or disappointment, any sign of the same emotions that are tearing a hole in my chest, but his expression is indecipherable.
“I can’t… I can’t work for you anymore,” I add, shaking my head. “It would be too hard, and too awkward.”
Cole’s jaw clenches, a hint of emotion breaking through his veneer of indifference. For a moment, I expect him to argue, but he merely inclines his head. “I know. You can consider your resignation accepted immediately.”
My chest aches, and I press my palm to my sternum despite knowing that it’s useless; my broken heart isn’t a physical pain. I swallow, trying to keep myself together. I want to be strong in front of him.
If he gets to be this composed, then so do I. He hasn’t earned the right to see me break down.
“Can I say goodbye to Archie?” I ask.
A shadow passes over his face, a flash of unmistakable anguish. Then he marshals his expression back into order, nodding. “Yes. Of course.”
I turn away from Cole, heading for the stairs. If I get the chance to say goodbye to my favorite child, I want to do it away from Cole, where I’m less likely to lose my cool.
I enter Archie’s bedroom. He’s still asleep as I open the door a crack, but he wakes up as soon as I step into his room, blinking sleep from his eyes.
“Riley?”
“Hey, bud,” I say, kneeling down next to his bed. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” he mumbles.
“How’s the arm?”
In answer, he pulls his arm, in its bulky cast, out from under the blanket and sets it on top of the sheets. He frowns down at it. “I forgot about it until now.”
“Sorry for the reminder,” I say with a quiet chuckle. “Does it feel okay?”
“It hurts a little,” he says. The pain must be much less than yesterday, because he doesn’t cry.
“Well, I’m glad it’s starting to feel better. And it’s a really cool cast. You’re going to have a great story to tell your friends.”
I hesitate. This is hard. How do you tell a child that he won’t see you anymore?
Eventually, I take a deep breath, steeling myself.
“Listen, Archie—”
He can hear the seriousness in my tone. He sits up straighter, the sleepiness gone from his eyes.
“I’m really sorry, but I have to leave,” I tell him. The hollow feeling in my chest is worse than ever as I continue, “I won’t be able to be your nanny anymore.”
For a few seconds, he stares at me, not reacting. Then the words start to sink in, and tears gather at the edges of his eyes. “What do you mean, you have to leave?” He shakes his head, trying to deny it. “Where are you going?”
“I have to move on to somewhere else,” I say, being deliberately vague. It’s a last little piece of professionalism: I don’t want to drag Archie into this fight between me and Cole, though that’s mostly for Archie’s sake rather than Cole’s.
“But… but I’m going to miss you,” Archie says, starting to sniffle.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” I say, placing a hand on his good arm and giving it a squeeze. “But I had a lot of fun on all of our adventures together. Didn’t you?”
Archie wipes at his tears even as he nods.
“I need you to do me a huge favor after I leave, okay?”
Archie mumbles out an unintelligible reply that might be an “okay.”
“I need you to keep an eye on Dino,” I say seriously. “He’s a really good friend of mine, and I’ve known him for a long time, and he has a bad habit of getting himself into trouble. Can you make sure to watch out for him?”
He’s silent for a few seconds, but then he nods, even though tears are streaming down his face.
“Thank you, Archie,” I say, giving him a hug. He leans into me, and when I stand up, he starts crying again, harder than ever.
“Don’t leave,” he pleads.
“I have something for you,” I say, trying to stop the flood of tears. “Here, look—” I pull out my phone, swiping through my pictures until I get to the snapshot I took of my betta fish painting. I show him the screen, and he blinks rapidly, wiping his eyes.
“What is it?”
“This is downstairs,” I tell him. “A little piece of art, from me to you. It’s Swimmy. What do you think?”
Archie sniffles, then says, “It looks just like Swimmy.”
“Glad you like it.” I ruffle his hair. “That’ll always be there, for you to remember me by. Okay?”
I straighten, and Archie burrows his head into the blankets, still crying. Before the pang in my chest can get any worse, I leave the room in a hurry.
Saying goodbye to Archie was harder than I thought it would be, and the worst part is that I don’t even think I did a good job.
In fact, it might have been impossible to do a good job. What could I say to him that would make this okay? He’s just a little kid. He’ll never understand why this happened.
I stop in my bedroom, throwing enough supplies for a few days into a backpack and slinging it over my shoulder. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be packing up the entire room, but I figure that Cole will tell me when I go back downstairs.
If I go back downstairs. I hesitate at the top step, wondering if I’m strong enough to face him again.
Unfortunately, I have no choice. I descend, and Cole is waiting for me in the foyer when I appear. His gaze scans me, taking in the red-rimmed eyes and the backpack over my shoulder. His jaw is tight, his expression impossible to read.
He gives me a short nod. “I’ll have your belongings brought back to your apartment.”
I can’t bring myself to speak to him, or even look him in the eye. For the first time, I let myself be a little bit unprofessional—a little bit petty.
Without acknowledging him further, I leave the house.
* * *
“I don’t knowwhy you’re being so reasonable about this. If it was me, I’d have gone back over there and keyed his fucking car by now—my god!”
Olivia and I sit on the floor in the center of my mostly-empty apartment. All of my belongings have been returned, as Cole promised they would be, but we haven’t unpacked anything yet.
As soon as she was free from the confines of her work day, Olivia rushed over here to comfort me with a bottle of wine. She offered to help me unpack, but I haven’t been able to stomach the task yet. It’s all I can do just to keep myself together.
I don’t touch the wine, either. The last thing I need is to get drunk and, god forbid, text him. I need to heal a little bit before I let myself relax, because right now, I’m on the precipice of making a mistake.
I sniff, shaking my head. “That was our agreement,” I explain thickly. “We agreed it wouldn’t interfere with my work, and…”
“And it didn’t,” Olivia interrupts, scandalized. “Are you kidding me? We both know it didn’t. He’s overreacting to a regular situation and being a complete dick.”
“Maybe.” I swallow hard. “Or maybe I was too distracted.”
“No way,” Olivia insists. “Accidents happen, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that Archie fell. It’s wrong of him to blame it entirely on you.” She folds her arms with a huff. “If you ask me, he’s just using it as an excuse.”
I bite my lip, staring at the bare floor. We’ve been allegedly unpacking these boxes for hours, and we’ve just barely broken the tape seal on one of them. This is going to take ages at this rate.
“The thing is, it doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “This was what we agreed to. We said it wouldn’t be anything serious, and that either of us could end it at any time. So… he ended it.” I shrug listlessly, as if I can’t muster the energy to care.
Olivia’s eyes widen. “Okay, well, that’s bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was more than that, and both of you know it,” she says, exasperated. “Come on, admit it. That was not just some casual fling.”
I hesitate. I know that she’s right, but I don’t know if I’m willing—or able—to say that out loud.
At the same time, though, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to move on without admitting the truth. That I thought there was something more between us. Something special.
I take a deep, shuddering breath and nod. “You’re right,” I confess. “It was.”
Olivia doesn’t respond. She lays a hand on my shoulder, giving me the space to say more, if I decide to.
I push past the final barrier in my mind and look at her, my gaze blurred by tears. “I fell in love with him,” I blurt out.
“Oh, honey,” Olivia murmurs. Her arms wrap around me as I dissolve back into sobs.