CHAPTER ELEVEN
First official teaching job.
Okay, official might be a stretch. I’m covering for someone on maternity leave, but for eight weeks I get to mold the minds of twenty-five fourth graders.
After shooting off the same I got the job text to my mom and Griffin, I haul ass across town to make it to my other job—if I still have one. The way Nate dismissed me last night felt final. As close as I feel to him for whatever unexplainable reason, I can’t forget he’s my boss and he wasn’t the one who wanted to hire me.
“Hello?” I call just above a whisper as I slip off my shoes and set down my backpack.
Rachael usually greets me with a fed Morgan, clean diaper, and a smile of gratitude. Not today.
“Hell-ooo?” I peek around the corner down the hallway.
“In the bedroom.”
I cringe at the sound of Nate’s voice. Why is he here? Let me guess … I’m fired and he’s home early until they find a replacement for Crazy Swayze.
“Hey.” I drag my feet into his bedroom. I’ve never been in here before. This will be a first and last, all-in-one big “you’re fired.”
Morgan’s swing ticks softly in the corner by the window as she kicks and coos, hands and feet jerking in every direction. The master bedroom is … wow. Curiosity tugged at my conscience many times, but he always has the door shut and those pesky cameras spying on my every move.
A modern king-sized bed engulfs the middle of the room—not next to a wall, just … in the middle like the centerpiece. Everything is gray and white with accents of yellow, not what I expected. Then again, I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe dark blues or black—something more manly. Crazy. This was their bedroom, not just his. Light slants in through the white shutters. I think Morgan is trying to kick and punch the sun’s rays.
I grin. “She’s in a good mood.”
“And without you. That’s rare, huh?” Nate emerges from the closet with a box. He drops it on the bed.
Without me. I think that says a lot, as in they don’t need me.
“Did I miss a message?” I go for the innocent approach. “Did you tell me you were going to be home and I forgot or missed a text or something?”
He disappears into the closet again. “Nope. I’m working from home today.”
Am I fired?
“So … you don’t need me?”
With another box hugged to his broad T-shirt clad chest, he glances at me while repositioning it next to the other box. “I’m about done here. I still need to work on my paper I’m writing for a journal.”
“Okay.” We’re good. That’s good. Well, I’m still not good, but that might be a lost cause by now. “What’s in the boxes?”
“Clothes.” Nate plants his hands on his hips and watches Morgan.
Her clothes. He’s clearing out Jenna’s clothes. That’s good, I suppose. My mom still hasn’t done a damn thing with my dad’s stuff, but that’s between her and Doctor B for Bunz.
“I had an interview for a teaching job, just temporary, but … I got it.”
Nate’s gaze shifts to me, a wrinkle of concern creasing his brow. “Well, that’s bad timing.”
“I think I can still be here by four.”
His chin dips as his teeth drag over his bottom lip again and again.
It’s not familiar. It’s not familiar.
Gah!
It’s so familiar. He has something to tell me, but he can’t find the words. That bottom lip of his takes the brunt of his worry. It has for years. Fuck my stupid brain for knowing that or reading his mind. Whatever the hell this is.
Keeping his chin low, he glances up at me. I smile. Nothing to see here. I’m not thinking weird shit at all.
“Rachael wants to go to grad school, but she insisted on taking a year off to help with Morgan.”
I nod. “Yes, she told me that.”
“It’s not fair to her. I told her to go.”
I nod again, even though I’m not following where he’s going with this, especially since his words are so pensive.
“I want you to watch Morgan for me. Full time.”
My eyes widen as he chews more on his lip. This is the opposite of firing me. I don’t know what to say.
“But … you’ve taken a job now and I knew this could happen, so … it’s my loss.” He slips his fingers in the pockets of his cargo shorts and they slide down exposing the gray waistband to his briefs. Nate’s all boy right now with his casual attire, turned in shoulders, and nervous grin. Not a hint of Professor Hunt anywhere to be found.
“You’re offering me a full-time job?”
“Yes, but I understand it might be too late.”
“Yeah. I’d have to turn down the job I just accepted.”
“You would.” He says it like he’s not trying to sway me in either direction, but I think that means he wants me to turn down the job I just accepted, otherwise he’d tell me to forget about it and insist I keep the teaching job. Right?
“I thought …”
Morgan’s coos escalate to grunts that we both know will lead into cries of frustration. When Nate makes no move to get her, I stop the swing and lift her to my chest, nuzzling my nose in her hair that’s growing in thick with ginger highlights like her daddy’s.
“You thought?” He grabs her sock that fell off when I lifted her out of the swing.
Why does Nate’s hockey player hands slipping Morgan’s sock onto her tiny foot make my ovaries hurt? I’ve said it a million times, she’s a Morgan fix, not a baby fix. I’m twenty-one. My biological clock hasn’t even started to tick. I may have a knack for taking care of babies, but it doesn’t mean I’m ready for my own.
“I thought…” my mind shakes off the aching-ovaries internal monologue “…you were going to fire me today.”
He blinks a few times, twisting his lips, but I don’t get the impression my confession shocks him. That would have elicited a head jerk. No head jerk. Just a contemplative expression.
“Because …”
Well played. He’s going to make me introduce him to the gigantic elephant sitting in the corner of the room.
“I know things about you. That’s why you asked me to leave last night.”
As he busies his hands with folding in the flaps to the boxes of Jenna’s clothes, he gives a tiny shrug. “It was late. You looked tired. I just said you could go home. That’s all.”
“You’ve never told me to ‘go home,’ until last night. There have been many, ‘thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow’ or ‘I appreciate all you do’ or even ‘have a good night,’ but not the cold ‘go home’ you gave me after I said I know you have a birthmark in a place we both know I haven’t seen.”
Keeping his gaze on the boxes, he grunts. “It just surprised me a little that you thought you knew it with such certainty. I was worried about you, but clearly my concern came across as anger.” He glances up. “It wasn’t my intention. I’m sorry.”
“So…” my eyes flit side to side before locking to his again “…you’re saying you don’t have that birthmark?”
Nate stacks one box on top of the other and lifts them. “Nope. Maybe one of your old boyfriends had that mark.” He carries the boxes down the hall.
I sit on the edge of the bed and bounce Morgan a bit until he returns. “I think you should show me your stomach.”
“What?” He scoffs, avoiding eye contact as he shuts the closet door.
“Your shirt. Take it off.”
“It’s inappropriate.” Nate leaves the room again. “I have about two hours of work to do. We can order in dinner if you’d like.”
“You’re a man.” I cradle Morgan and chase after him, not interested in dinner. “Taking off your shirt would not be inappropriate.”
“Ask my boss if taking off my shirt in front of a student would be considered inappropriate.”
“I’m not your student.” I stop at the entrance to his office as he plops down on his desk chair and opens his laptop.
“You’re my nanny—my twenty-one-year-old nanny. I’m one hundred percent certain taking off my clothes in front of you would be inappropriate.”
“Shirt. I didn’t say ‘clothes.’”
He chuckles and it’s condescending. “Chinese?”
“I’m not hungry.” I’m starving, but my curiosity has a bigger appetite.
“There’s a takeout menu in the top drawer by the fridge. Order me something with chicken. Rice, no noodles.”
I frown, bouncing Morgan as her eyes roll back in her head, eyelids too tired to stay open. “That menu in your drawer is a Thai menu not a Chinese menu.”
He shifts his attention from the screen to me for a brief moment. “What’s the difference?”
“Thai is spicier and made with less oil and curry. Fresher ingredients. Healthier.”
Nate blinks a few times. “I like spicy.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He leans back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head.
What has happened? He’s gone from spooked to actually challenging my knowledge of him.
“Yes. You eat pineapple with jalapeños on your pizza. You have to like spicy food to eat that shit.”
“She can hear you.” He shifts his attention to his sleeping baby in my arms.
“She’s asleep.”
“She can hear you.” He grins, something between a smirk and a grimace.
“Sorry, Professor Anatomy. I’ll go order you a Thai dinner with chicken.”
“Swayze?”
I stop before I get two feet past his office door. “Yes?”
“What have you decided?”
“About?” I take a step backwards so I can see him.
“My offer.”
I have a degree in education. I want to teach. That’s the goal. I need to jump at any chance to build my résumé.
“She’s attached to you,” he says.
He’s not playing fair.
“How long?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how long will this job last? Until she starts school? Until you find a good replacement?”
“Until you no longer want to watch her.”
So. Damn. Unfair.
I adore Morgan, and I can’t foresee a day in the future where I don’t want to be with her. But … she’s not my daughter, and being a nanny isn’t my goal in life. A drop-dead sexy guy with a motorcycle could decide he wants to marry me. And … eventually my ovaries could ache for a child of my own—of our own. Then what? What if Morgan is not in school yet? If she’s attached to me now, what will it be like in another year or two?
The job I worried about keeping has turned into the job I can’t shake.
“I’ll call them tomorrow and tell them I have to regretfully decline the job offer.”
Nate’s lips curl into a small grin. “Thank you. Rachael will be thrilled to know she can go to grad school without feeling guilty about Morgan.”
I’m not doing this for Rachael. It’s not that I don’t like her, but it’s a little unfair and ridiculous to choose her future over mine. I’m doing this for Morgan. I think I’m doing this for Nate too. But what scares me the most is that I’m doing it for myself because Nate has my every thought held hostage in this vortex of the unexplainable. It’s dizzying. I can’t make sense of it or even see straight when I’m with him.
I have to figure this out. That’s why I’m agreeing to this.
After our dinner arrives and Morgan is fed and asleep in her crib, I edge the conversation toward my newest addiction—his past.
“Have you always liked ‘Chinese-Thai’ food?” I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but I want to see where it takes this conversation.
He grins over a mouthful then covers his mouth with the corner of a napkin. “No. Daisy loved crab rangoon and fried rice. Asian food made me—” He swallows.
“Thirsty.” It’s not a question. I’m just finishing his sentence before he does.
Lifting a questioning eyebrow, he takes a drink of water, studying me with an intensity that would have left me squirming in my seat a few weeks ago. Not now. Now I want to push him into acknowledging what’s going on between us. This familiarity can no longer be ignored or I’ll have a breakdown that will dwarf anything that’s happened to my mom since my dad died.
I’m not going to push him. There’s no need to start a fight, but I’m not going to censor every memory I have of him—or every thought I read from his mind. I’m still not sure which it is.
“Yeah.” His eyes narrow.
I return a tightlipped grin, a small challenge of sorts.
“I’d be up half the night running to the kitchen for a drink and then to the bathroom because of all the dang water.”
“And now?”
Nate chuckles, adjusting the barstool beneath him. His knee brushes mine, and we both share an awkward glance and look away.
Wow.
An innocent brush of skin. Knee skin. Not lips. Not caressing hands. Why did this happen again?
His touch.
It shouldn’t be familiar, and it shouldn’t spook me because it’s already happened once. But it does because the first time I felt it—Crazy Swayze. This time we both felt it. There’s no denying what just happened. And each contact feels stronger and more familiar.
“Um…” he clears his throat “…now it still keeps me up at night, gulping down gallons of water and running to the bathroom, but occasionally it’s worth it. Jenna loved this restaurant.”
We let a few moments of silence fill the room. It’s a weird thing humans do after mentioning the name of someone who recently died—an unspoken moment of reflection and respect. I see many flashes of reflection cross Nate’s face when he doesn’t realize I’m watching him. There’s such sadness in his eyes. Sometimes it’s when the photo of him and Jenna on the mantle snags his drifting gaze, and sometimes it’s when he watches Morgan sleep.
“I like when you tell me about Daisy.”
A glint of something resembling life breaks through the grief that just stole his handsome facial features. “You’re snoopy.” He winks.
“If I’m Snoopy then you’re Charlie Brown.” I poke at my lo mein with my chopsticks.
“Jesus …” he whispers.
“What?”
Nate’s lips part like he’s silently gasping. So many of his expressions are eerily familiar, but not this one. Shock? Fear? I can’t decipher the meaning behind the look he’s giving me, but it sends an icy tingle along my spine.
“Tell me.” I can barely get the words out.
His jaw muscles clench a few times then his Adam’s apple bounces with a hard swallow. “I have some …”
Where’d he go? His gaze is locked to mine, but I don’t think he’s really seeing me. And his words are jumbled and broken.
“I need to … uh …”
“Just say it.”
Nate squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head while pinching the bridge of his nose. “Say what?”
“What we both know is true.”
He grunts a laugh. “And what’s that?”
“I can read your mind.”
The pregnant moment lasts longer than I anticipated. If he doesn’t open his eyes and say something, I might die because I’m holding my breath. I can’t—I won’t—breathe until he looks at me.
In the tiniest of increments, he opens them and they trail up just as slowly until we connect. “What am I thinking?”
“Not those thoughts.”
“Then what thoughts?”
“Your past.”
Blink.
Blink.
His moves are robotic. He tips his chin up and drops it into a slow nod with as much ease as he lays his sleeping daughter in her crib. “I … see. Why do you think this?”
“It’s the only logical explanation for how I know so much about your past.”
“Elaborate.” He leans in a fraction like I’m going to whisper it to him.
“I lied. That day at Dr. Greyson’s office, I knew you. I knew about your scar. Later I told you it was because I heard the story from my older cousin who dated your friend Toby Friedman.”
Another slow nod accompanied by a tightly-knitted brow.
“I don’t have an older cousin who dated Toby. I wanted the job, so I tried to set your mind at ease by making up a story that you might consider believable.”
Blink.
Blink.
“How do you know Toby?”
“I don’t think I do know him. I think I can read your memories of him. He lived four houses down from you. You teased him about his buckteeth, then he lost the two front ones after taking a nosedive off his bike. His parents didn’t have dental insurance, so their church took up a special offering to get him a retainer thingy that had two flipper teeth. It was cheaper than implants or a bridge. He called it a retainer. You called it a denture just to be mean.”
Another pregnant pause.
“What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now. What am I thinking?”
“I told you I can only read the past—”
“I’m thinking about my past. So tell me what I’m thinking.”
I frown. “I don’t know.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I just said.” Stabbing my fingers through my hair, I glance down the hall toward the nursery to listen for Morgan, hoping my outburst didn’t wake her. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something like an active and passive memory. Like … maybe next week I’ll be able to tell you what you’re thinking right now. I don’t know.”
“Then tell me more. Tell me what you do know.”
“It’s …” I shake my head. “It’s too much.”
“Like what?” He digs, and I hate the irritation in his edgy tone, like it’s my fault I know what I know. I thought I wanted to have this conversation, but now I’m not so sure.
“You kept nudie girl magazines under your mattress.”
“Twenty, twenty-five years ago every boy kept nudie magazines under his mattress. Now you’re just sounding like a fortune teller making broad and rather obvious assumptions.”
I huff out a sigh. “You liked chess more than video games.”
“You’ve seen the chess board in my office.”
“You’re a Chicago Bears fan and it pisses off your Packer-fan father.”
“I have Bears beer mugs in the kitchen cabinet. Statistically my father would be a Packers fan.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Why are you doing this? What reason do I have to make this shit up? I’m not a fortune teller. I have nothing to gain. I …” I shake my head. “What do you want to know?”
He stands, gathering the takeout boxes and shoving them in the white plastic takeout bag. “Forget about it. If I have to tell you what I want to know, then that just proves you don’t actually know it.”
I follow him to the garage where he tosses the trash in the large bin. The door closes behind me leaving us trapped in the late summer heat and humidity. It’s so thick in here I think I need to chew and swallow instead of inhale.
“You cheated to pass your final in Spanish. You had straight A’s and one D going into finals.”
He stops like an invisible wall appeared in front of him. “H-how do you know that?” he whispers, continuing toward me like I could bite him.
This hurts. I hurt for him because moments like this feel personal. But I can’t give him an explanation. I can’t make this better for either one of us. He climbs two of the three garage steps, putting us at eye level. Everything about him invades my space—his woodsy scent, his familiar gaze, the essence of his touch, the curve of his nose, even the way his ginger hair curls around his ears.
“How. Do. You. Know. That?”
I pinch my lips together to keep them from quivering. These memories scare me. They come with this vulnerability that reaches my bones.
“You wrote notes just above your knee because teachers paid attention to arms and hands. So you wrote answers on your leg and wore a pair of jeans with holes in the knees so you could slide the leg up just enough to see the notes.”
The pain in his blue eyes sends a wave of nausea through my stomach. I thought sharing this burden would help, but it’s just compounding my own pain and bringing him down with me.
“I’m sorry.” Unshed tears burn my eyes.
Nate has lost so much. He doesn’t need this. What am I doing?
I flinch as his hand reaches for my face. He pauses a second before wiping his thumb along my cheek. It’s wet. I don’t remember blinking, but I must have because I’m now aware of the wet trails of tears on my cheeks.
“Something’s wrong with me,” I whisper while choking back a sob.
There’s a lifetime of concern etched into his forehead as he slowly shakes his head. “No. Nothing’s wrong with you.”
It’s too much to hold in. I cover my face with my hands as a cry rips from my throat. Nate pulls me into his chest.
It’s warm.
It’s comforting.
It’s familiar.
But mostly … it’s terrifying.
