Page 37 of This Broken Heart

With a strange little frown on her face, she pushes past me and slips out the door.

23.

Erin

The thing about awkward work experiences as a live-in nanny is that when you go home, your troubles follow you.

We take Maven and Trace back to Josh’s house a few hours after dinner. I offer to take them back by myself so Josh can hang out with his family, but he just shrugs off my suggestion.

I’ve got Maven in my arms and he has Trace sleeping on his shoulder. He settles Trace into the truck, buckling his car seat, before turning to take Maven from me. “Got to love having kids. They’re an easy excuse to leave.”

I watch him gently settle Maven in her seat. Her little chin is drooping towards her chest. “You didn’t want to stick around?”

He shakes his head. “God, no.” Glancing up at the house, he closes the truck door. “Parker and Charlie are up in arms because mom and dad are moving.”

“They’re moving?”

He tilts his head, giving me a strange look. “Yeah. We didn’t tell you that? It’s what precipitated the whole nanny thing. Mom looked after the kids before, but then they decided it was time for retirement.”

“Were you upset about them moving too?”

He leans against the truck, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ve had to learn perspective over the last few years. I don’t like it, but in the grand scheme of things, this is not something to lose your shit over.” He glances up at the house. I wonder what he’s looking at, which memories are playing through his mind.

He shrugs, looking away. “Anyway. My sisters won’t be very good company tonight. And Uncle Kyle and Aunt Kim are bad company on a good night.” He thumps the hood of the truck. “Hop in. We can get your car in the morning.”

“Or I can just drive it back tonight.” I say, not quite filtering the snarky tone from my voice.

He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

Without another word, he circles the truck and climbs in.

I stand there for a few heartbeats, looking and feeling like an idiot. What did I expect? Was he supposed to beg me to ride with him?

My boots crunch through the frozen slush as I make my way back to my car. It’s freezing cold inside, and the car is almost reluctant to start up. By some small mercy, the engine grumbles to a start and I bounce and careen down the icy drive.

His taillights glow ahead of me. He’s so close and yet completely cut off. I should have ridden with him. We’re going to need to talk about that kiss.

My lips tingle at the memory and I slide my fingers across them.

We have to talk about it, right?

It’s not like we can just carry on like nothing happened.

Except, that’s what we were just doing. The healthiest thing to do would be to sit down and hash it out. We need to discuss boundaries.

Feelings.

Ugh. Feelings.

But I’m not really sure how I feel about it and I don’t think talking it over with Dreamboat up there is going to clear anything up for me.

It’s obvious that he’s not over his wife and maybe never will be.

He’s permanently out of reach.

Whatever feelings I have for him, whatever that damn kiss meant, none of it can be long term.

Maybe he wants to use me to scratch an itch.