Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Over the last several days, I’ve imagined Braxton as my protector of sorts.
Easily, he let me into his home, his life.
In return, I kept out of the way and tried to make myself useful.
I’ve been cleaning behind him. Whenever he leaves a room, I sneak in and scan for anything that looks out of place and needs righting.
I’ve attempted to not take up space in his life.
But he always watches. Even when I try to be invisible, he sees. I thought that meant he saw me. The real me. The woman that is kind and caring, and caters to others because she genuinely loves to, not because she’s seeking something in return.
I thought he saw me as someone, not something. Last night cleared my vision. It pushed away some of the dreamy haze I’ve been seeing through since first meeting him.
For as much as he watches me, I watch in return.
I clock all the things he does. His schedule is already imprinted in my brain.
Brax wakes late, showers before leaving his bedroom suite.
He grabs coffee, but doesn’t eat breakfast, before he shutters himself in his office space.
The one room I’ve not creeped in to clean up after him.
He doesn’t leave for hours. I imagine his fingers flying over the keyboard, creating gruesome scenes filled with evil spectral and terrifyingly dark scenarios.
While he’s locked away, I’ve been madly working myself. Frantically trying to find a way to stay in New York. I’ve reached out to other hiring agencies, and I’ve applied to everything and anything. So far, nothing has panned out.
I knew my time here was running out. I knew it before last night.
Before all Braxton’s friends arrived and made me feel so welcomed.
I’ve accomplished so little in life next to them all, yet they embraced me as one of their own.
Neither one looked down on me when I explained who I was, or why I was here.
It emboldened me. It fed that part of me that needed encouragement to open that door of lust a small bit.
When he stood there, eyes taking in my every move…
I thought, why not? Why not spend my short-lived time with him the way I know we both want to?
Why not have a fling that I could look back on in my old age?
That time I spent a weekend in Braxton Winterton’s bed.
When I propositioned him, I imagined this morning I’d wake up languid.
My body exhausted from a night of play. Instead, I’m exhausted from a night of fretful sleep.
The house wasn’t silent last night. He paced above me for hours, and I found a perverse pleasure in knowing that at least he found no peace as well.
It serves him right.
There was quiet chatter amongst his guests last night, hushed conversations about a woman from his past. Roseanna.
One man dared to name her and was immediately hushed.
As if speaking her name would conjure her to instantly appear in the middle of the room.
It was almost comical and I imagined some woman with snakes for hair striding into the room and killing everyone with a death glare.
I don’t know what she did to the enigmatic novelist, but it must have cut deep.
Regardless, it’s not an excuse to treat me like shit.
I’m not her. He’d know that if he cared to.
With my own baggage, I can’t take on someone else’s.
I’d offered a string-free fling, a night or two of pleasure.
A way to release some built-up sexual tension.
What he gave me was insult and disrespect.
I can’t stand for that. I won’t.
Zipping up my bag, I huff a heavy breath, not sure where life will take me next. Unsure of where today will take me. There’s an inexpensive hotel near Laguardia, I’ll take the subway there and wait for my new job. At least when I hear from the agency, I’ll be ready to fly out immediately.
With my bags in hand, I struggle to turn the glass knob on the bedroom door, and huff again. Then the door opens from the other side. A dark, brooding figure blocks my exit.
Braxton stares down at me with such intensity I freeze in place.
Even with red-stained eyes from a night of sleeplessness, he looks good.
Like, really fucking good. His hair is messier than usual, the tension around his mouth more pronounced.
In the few days I’ve been here, I’ve noticed how often he frowns.
It’s almost his default. Which means I’ve also noticed when his lips lift.
Nearly every time he speaks with me. I bring something to him, or out of him.
His comments last night only prove that I also bring up something else. A bitterness reserved for memories of her.
I’ve always been leery of the idea of insta-lust, and especially insta-love. My parents knew each other as children; their love story was cultivated over years and years. It’s something I always saw as so precious and beautiful.
Here, standing in front of Braxton, I’m doubting everything I thought I knew. There’s a thing between us. Unseen but undeniable. A pull toward one another.
I felt it first when he rowed my little rental boat to shore for me. It grew when he opened his home. It swelled that first night after his parents left and we had a casual, yet oddly intimate, dinner at his kitchen counter.
Again, we didn’t talk about things close to the heart. It was lighthearted, humorous, and comfortable. We share some of the same interests, such as a love for nature documentaries and wandering through secondhand shops. We also despise the color orange and campy comedies.
We’ve learned so much about each other, and yet nothing at all.
“Ida,” he says, the crease between his eyes deepening as he looks me over. When he steps inside the bedroom, it’s close enough for me to smell his subtle scent. Not cologne. Soap, clean and earthy.
Heady. How does his soap even turn me on?
These past days have been torture for my neglected vagina.
I’m used to going long periods between sex.
Being a nanny doesn’t offer a ton of opportunity to date, let alone be in a relationship.
I survive with my vibrator and the very rare one-night stand when I get a couple of consecutive days off.
With Braxton just above me every night, the vibrator has stayed safely packed away.
Okay, mostly. One day, he looked too good in the morning before he sequestered himself away in his office.
I took the opportunity to get myself off in the shower while conjuring dirty fantasies of him taking me on his desk.
And then I immediately felt weird about it. Here he was, opening his home to me in my time of need and I repaid it by reducing him to something like a pornographic video. I stopped feeling badly about it after his comments last night though.
“I have something to say,” he says, reaching to take my duffel from me. Simultaneously, my cell chimes with an incoming call. I free my hand to pull my phone from my pocket.
Helen, the human resource manager I’ve been dealing with from the agency.
“I have to take this,” I tell him before pressing accept. “Hello?”
“Hello, Ida. We’ve made the decision. I’m sorry to say, we will be severing you from any future opportunities,” she says, robotically.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it? After nine years with no issues, you’re going to take the word of one disgusting man over mine?”
“We will also be severing our contract with Mr. Folley; it’s the most fair we could be.”
“The most fair,” I repeat, incredulously. “Fair would be protecting the people you place in vulnerable positions, you unsufferable…” I don’t finish the sentence because Braxton pulls the phone from me and ends the call.
“That’s not worth it,” he tells me.
“It would have been,” I argue. “She’s fucking horrible. She sounds like a woman who drinks warm milk and sleeps without a pillow.”
Braxton laughs and it feels like I’m in a field of wildflowers dancing in the wind.
Fucker.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I say, trying to tamper down the effect he has on me.
“I’m not laughing at you,” he says. The adrenaline begins to recede, and the weight of the call starts to settle on me. “Where do you go from here?”
“I-I don’t know,” I say, a tear spilling out of my eye. “My family…”
“Your family what?”
“Home. From there, I don’t know.”
I grab my phone back, pulling up my banking app, logging on and checking my balance. It’s paltry, but enough for me to get a ticket home to Kansas. From there, I move to the airline app and start searching. Braxton moves around me, but I don’t pay him attention in my frantic state.
“To Kansas?”
“Yeah, at least I have a free couch to sleep there.”
“A couch?”
“Yes,” I say, a tear spilling out of my eye. “My family…”
“Your family what?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I dismiss his question as I try to find the least expensive flight. “It’s not your concern.”
“That’s a lie, considering I am concerned,” he says, tilting my face up to his with a finger under my chin.
He looks sad. It’s disarming and my shoulders drop in defeat before I get ahold of myself.
“I’m not your problem.” I swallow hard before I continue. “Thank you for taking me in; I appreciate it. But it’s time for me to go.”
He winces, his fingers pressing more firmly to my skin.
“I fucked up, Ida. But you don’t have to leave. “You have a bed here. A room.”
“I am not staying here,” I say, looking at him. How can he think that I would? Not after last night. “I can’t.”
“You can if you let me explain,” he says, swiping his thumb under my eye. “Please, Ida. Let me tell you my story.”