10. Sebastian

Chapter 10

Sebastian

N ot only was just Nelly plaguing my thoughts, but now the goddamn gigantic manta ray stuffed animal they’d gotten me from the aquarium yesterday was, too.

I leaned back on the sofa in front of an early 2000s episode of Survivor on the TV, my body aching from practice. I’d taken a brutal fall this morning, and although I’d been able to shake it off and get right back into drills, I was severely paying for it now.

Matty played quietly on the floor beside me, sticking together Legos brick by brick and building some kind of tower for a princess, apparently. He had on a set of over-ear headphones I’d bought him, and in front of his tower, Aladdin played on his tablet. But it was the padding of footsteps that came from the hall behind me that had me suddenly becoming less comfortable in my seat, and the moment her voice filtered through the air around me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to regain any sense of comfort.

“Oh my God, is this the season with Rupert in it?” Nelly asked, plonking down on the opposite end of the couch from me. She’d changed out of her dark jeans and white shirt, opting instead for a loose, oversized band shirt and a pair of leggings. Her long brown hair was braided along both sides of her head, showing off more of the blonde highlights that ran through it, and in her hands was a mug of… whipped cream? “It is! There he is,” she exclaimed.

“What is that?” I pointed toward the mug in her hand, my right arm practically screaming at me from the motion of lifting it.

She lifted a single finger to her lips. Hot chocolate , she mouthed. I could only assume she didn’t want Matty to hear and beg her for one. She pointed toward the cup with the same finger that she’d held against her mouth. “With peanut butter,” she added aloud.

Well, shit. Now I wanted one.

Thankfully, Matty’s allergy wasn’t severe enough to be set off by airborne triggers, so we could still keep it in the house and I could eat it to my heart’s content. I just had to be careful with what he ingested.

It had been truly wild to see how easily Nelly was picking up on things like this, how easily she was slotting in with Matty. He’d never been overly quick to open up whenever someone new walked into his life, and especially after the spectacular shitshow that ensued when I had to fire the last nanny, I worried he’d struggle to get used to another one. But when I’d warned him that Nelly would be staying the night tonight for the first time, he’d done nothing other than squeal in excitement.

And part of that, I think, was because he was growing and learning and getting better with these things and was struggling with it less and less — but part of it was Nelly.

“So… the game tomorrow,” Nelly said, taking a sip of her hot chocolate and coating her upper lip in wh ipped cream. Her tongue darted out, gliding across her lip, licking every bit of it away before slipping back into her mouth. Oh my God. “I know you said Matty doesn’t go to games on school nights?—”

“He’s not coming to the game.” The words came out a little too harsh, a little too rushed.

Her eyes met mine as I turned my head toward her, wide and so angeringly blue. “I think it would be good if you let him.”

“He has school the next day. Out of the question.”

“Maybe he can play hooky,” she offered, lowering the mug down to rest it on her knee. “Look, I’m not trying to push the things you think are bad for him, honestly.”

“Really?” I scoffed. “Because that’s two things you’ve now suggested that I’m not exactly open to when you barely know him.”

Her eyes narrowed in my direction, determination already glinting in her gaze. “This adjustment period is going to be weird for him. I’m trying to give him moments of joy and excitement to counteract that. He wants to go to the game. So what if he’s up a little late?”

“He’ll be exhausted in the morning if he goes to school. And he’ll miss a whole day of learning if he skips it.”

“One missed day of school won’t make that much of a difference,” she insisted. “I can call them, ask what they’re covering that day, and go over it with him at home. He just wants to see you play, Seb.”

Something about that, the way she spoke, the way she said the shortened version of my name, hit my ears like a fucking knife. Has she called me that before?

“No,” I snapped, but I lowered my voice, eyeing Matty’s tablet and feeling a sense of relief when I realized they were mid-song. He couldn’t hear us. “He’s not coming to the game, and that’s final. He can come to the next one that isn’t on a school night.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” she scoffed. “Look, I’ve nannied for plenty of kids, and rewarding them during the early stages makes the transition period easier. But fine. I won’t tell you how to parent him.”

“I said it’s final, Nelly.”

————

It wasn’t final.

After taking a couple of ibuprofen, I’d calmed down significantly, the pain in my right arm dulling to a mild annoyance. And I’d relented about the game.

She’d taken her leave nearly an hour ago after I’d told her, reluctantly, to bring Matty on Sunday night. She’d stared at me as if I’d told her that the sun had exploded and held her tongue. Whether she thought it was best to stay quiet out of a desire not to argue with me or if it was due to a worry about me changing my mind if she spoke, I wasn’t sure. But all she’d done was nod once before saying, I’ll be in the guest house if you need anything.

Those words played over and over and over again in my head as I stood in front of the agonizingly hot blast of water from one of the three shower heads. It was aimed directly at my right shoulder, the mode swapped to the jet function. The water beat against my muscles, loosening them and distracting me enough from the pain that I could find relief in more ways than one.

I’ll be in the guest house if you need anything. Fuck, how literal was she being?

This was getting out of hand far too quickly.

And annoyingly, the pull I felt toward her wasn’t just physical. I knew myself well enough to pick it apart in my mind and separate that out, but it was there, clear as day — she was great with Matty, she wasn’t a pushover by any stretch of the word, and goddammit, she just had to like Survivor . I wished there were parts of her that genuinely angered me, parts that made me want to walk away from her, but they just weren’t there or hadn’t shown themselves yet.

And I was swimming in her.

I hadn’t felt this trapped in my own house with the last nanny, or the one before that, or the one before that. And maybe it was because I was actively trying to beat down the fact that I was stupidly, annoyingly into her that made it feel far more intense than things had been with the other nannies. She just felt so… present .

I’ll be in the guest house if you need anything.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t enjoyed myself that night I’d met her at Smokey’s. I had. Probably far too much, despite not letting her touch me where I’d been aching for it. The way she’d come apart in my hands haunted me so thoroughly that I worried I’d never get those images out of my mind. Had I never seen her face again, I’d have bet money on being able to wipe her from my mind after a bit of time had passed, but she was here. She was on my goddamn property, being “protected” by Carl the House Goalie, as Matty had put it. She was in my phone, in my home, in my head.

And I’d be the worst liar on earth if I tried to say that I’d felt like that about every woman I’d touched since Taryn.

But I had more than enough self-control to deal with this. I had to. I wouldn’t get out of the shower, wrap myself in a towel, and storm down the stairs at eleven at night, just so I could cross the yard and catch a glimpse of her. I was better than that.

And I didn’t need to anyway. I could see the guesthouse’s living room from my bedroom window.

————

“It’s Nelly!”

I tried to contain the creeping laughter bubbling up my throat as I stared down at the image Matty had drawn on printer paper. There were two houses, one much larger than the other, and four stick figures in front of them. The one to the far left, tall and wearing what looked somewhat like my jersey, was colored in with a peach crayon for my skin and a brown one for my hair. The smaller one beside me, wearing the same jersey and much, much shorter, was colored exactly the same. The far right was what I could only assume was Carl the House Goalie with his arms out wide and a helmet on, and then smack dab in the center, in front of the smaller house, was… Nelly, from what Matty had said.

Except he’d colored her in with a deep brown crayon.

“Matty, this is great ,” Nelly snickered, pointing out the yellow marks in her stick figure’s hair. She sat on the floor beside him in the middle of the kitchen, her pajamas still on, the brown waves of her hair falling around the sides of her face from where they’d come out of her braids in the night. “You even got my highlights! ”

Part of me wanted to applaud my son and encourage him, but another part was screaming at me to correct him. “He colored you in with?—”

“I know!” Nelly grinned. “It’s cute. I love it, I look like I’ve got a tan.”

I nearly choked on my coffee as I squatted down beside them, my body still flaring with pain from the night before. “Yes, but?—”

Nelly shot me a glare over Matty’s head that said, without a doubt, don’t push me on this.

Matty’s brows creased just barely in the center as he looked from Nelly to the paper in front of him. “I didn’t have a light brown,” he said.

I’d never opened the Amazon app so quickly in my life.

“That’s okay,” Nelly chimed, that smile breaking across her cheeks the moment she looked away from me and back at Matty. “I still love it. If you want more crayons, though, I’m sure we can talk your dad into buying you a better variety pack?—”

“I’m already on it,” I grumbled.

I added the largest pack of crayons to my basket, along with a pack helpfully labeled Colors of the World , and tried not to balk at the price before hitting the quick checkout button and shoving my phone back in the pocket of my joggers.

“How about we hang this one on the fridge, hmm?” I offered, extending my hand to Matty. I glanced over his head at Nelly, catching her gaze briefly as I added, “We can call it a truce gesture.”

After spending half the night imagining the ways I wanted to take her, I told myself that I needed to make the current situation work and decided I’d plow on and put up with the temptation. I needed this to work, needed a reliable nanny with the playoffs coming up and the hectic schedule that would inevitably follow, and I couldn’t risk losing another one or getting involved in any way, shape, or form with Nelly. I could do my best to be kind to her without throwing her over the counter and burying myself inside of her.

Matty squealed as he ran over to the fridge, one hand going flat against the front of it as he pointed up toward an empty space between the calendar and the collection of mismatched magnets. “Can we put it there?”

I nodded at him and picked out a couple of magnets to hold it in place, then secured it to the front.

“Truce gesture?” Nelly chuckled, leaning back against the cabinets with her rear still firmly placed on the wood floor. She looked up at me, her blue eyes practically twinkling in the morning rays of sun that poured through the kitchen window and spilled across her, painting her in an almost ethereal way. I couldn’t stop myself from wishing she was on her knees, instead. “So, you’re not going to be sour with me anymore?”

I sent a glare in her direction. “I didn’t say that.”

“Matty, why don’t you go finish your breakfast so your Dad and I can clean up?” Nelly offered. Her gaze flicked between me and my son, and the moment Matty chirped in agreement and ran back to the living room, a weight settled heavily on me and me alone. “Do you have a problem with me?”

Her unwavering confidence in those seven words felt like whiplash. “What?”

Heavy lashes blinked once. “Do you have a problem with me?” she repeated.

I struggled to think of something decent to say. What wanted to come from my mouth was a yes, I can’t stop thinking about fucking you and you get under my skin, care to fix that? But I couldn’t say that, no matter how much I wanted to let those words slip past my teeth. “I literally just hung a drawing of you on my fridge as a truce gesture. Why would you think I have a problem with you?”

“Precisely because you called it a truce gesture.” She crossed her arms over her chest and folded her legs in, sitting forward just enough so her face was out of the direct sunlight. “I was under the hopeful impression you were just having a few bad days. Is that not the case?”

I gulped down a mouthful of coffee to give myself time to think. Has she not considered that my irritation with her is permanent? “Does it matter, Nelly? I’m offering a truce.”

She rolled her lip together between her teeth, her gaze not averting once. “I need this job, so no, I guess it doesn’t,” she said, her voice a little smaller, a little softer. It shouldn’t have felt like a knife to the chest, but it did. “I guess I’ll just put up with your attitude.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose and said nothing but the truth. “I’m working on it.”