The way he’s wrapped me up in his arms, the way he’s resting his chin on my shoulder is only making it worse. All this time, I rested easy in the knowledge that this was probably just a meaningless fling to him. But what if it’s more than that? What if Clayton not only doesn’t fire me, what if he keeps me around? What if he keeps on wanting to see me like this?
Can I do it? Could I? Could I do it when this looming lie is stifling every enjoyment I have, every feeling I feel?
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say slowly.
Clayton doesn’t sense the looming danger.
“Is it that you’re still a virgin?” he asks with a mischievous grin all the way out to his eyes.
Cracking up, I flick him in the chest.
“No, you goof.”
He only smiles at me. I wonder how long that smile will last when I say what I’m about to.
“I mean it though.”
I disengage myself, so I don’t have to feel him doing it when I tell him.
“About the ad…”
“I know. How lucky are we? 4 stars to nannies.com!”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
This shuts him up. His mouth draws together into an unforgiving line.
“I found the ad… I responded to it…” I trail off, exhaling in exasperation.
“Winston is my nephew. Helena is my sister.”
The most terrifying of silences spreads through the limo.
As if in some horror movie, Clayton’s head gradually twists my way.
“No.”
The single word is part request, part plea, part demand. Part indicating what I knew already: I’m completely and utterly screwed.
Chapter 7: Clayton
“I know she ran out,” she tries, more gently this time, “and that she was probably as crazy to you as she was to me and my parents. But I wanted to know Winston for myself, I wanted to…”
I’ve shrunken back into the seat. All my limbs are leaden. Even the frosty look she levels at me seems robotic somehow.
“She put you up to this, didn’t she?”
My voice is a low accusation, hers is a high shrill: “No, Clayton, just listen to me…”
I don’t catch the rest, I’m too busy flinging my clothes on me and thrusting out hers.
“Get out.”
I spit the words at her and she recoils, as if she’d been physically slapped.
I focus my glare on the leather seat ahead of me. Right now, I can’t even bear to look at Stevie.
Only once I hear the slam of the limo’s door does thought return to me.
Of fucking course. Am I really surprised that Helena is involved? This has her crazy ass written all over it. The first really great thing in my life since Winston and it’s all a lie. A big fat powerful pile of bullshit. Stevie probably isn’t even a real virgin, or wasn’t. Whatever.
And here I’d thought I’d finally gotten free of Helena. That the crazy midnight phone calls had finally petered down. That she even stopped showing up at the house, drunk and belligerent, demanding to see her son that she had accidentally forgotten at the zoo the last time I let her see him against my better judgement. No, Helena destroys everything she touches, so it should be no surprise that Stevie, whoever she is, has been destroyed by Helena too.
The rest of the day, I go through the motions in a kind of autopilot. I let my driver take me home. I tuck Winston into bed and dodge questions about Stevie. I say a quick goodnight to my mom without telling her just how horribly right she was.
And then I collapse into bed. It takes me a while to sleep, but I know it will come. Just how feeling better will. It won’t happen today, and it certainly won’t happen tomorrow. But one day, like the morning I woke up and didn’t curse that I’d ever known Helena, this will ebb away too. I will forget Stevie, with the crooked way she smiled, and how she looked just after she came, with those full, round, just grateful eyes. Yes. Right now, this hurts like hell, but it won’t always. Right?
Despite this, a small part of me wonders if Stevie was telling the truth back in the limo. A small part of me hopes with everything that she was. But a big part of me knows better by now.
—
I awake to ringing. Groaning, I slam my phone quiet before rolling onto the other side of my pillow. Guess this is the price I pay for having my own business. And leaving my phone on at night. A few seconds later the phone rings again. Shit, it might be something really important.
I pick up to hear high-pitched laughter.
“How fucking classic. I should’ve guessed,” Helena says.
My fingers instinctively clench around the phone. No fucking way. If it isn’t my ex-girlfriend herself.
“What do you want?” I snap.