Page 54 of Stuck with my Boss Daddies

I had known I was stuck there.

Who wanted a fourteen-year-old?

No one would want me. I was neverenough. I was just in the way. Even at Willow Creek.

Until Hayley, of course.

But I could never settle, always worried she’d have had enough of me.

I was never secure.

I had promised myself that one day, I would go back. That I would do something. Fix it. Help the kids who felt just as lost as I once had.

But what could I do now?

I was barely keeping myself together. I had no money, no stability, no real plan beyond surviving the next few weeks.

Maybe I wasn’t meant to be the person who helped. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough.

Tears burned at the back of my eyes, but I blinked them away.

I exhaled sharply and shut the laptop. Right now, I needed to focus on staying afloat.

Even if, deep down, I wished I could do more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Adam

The Foundry was alreadyin full swing when I walked in, the smell of sizzling meat and fresh bread in the air. Saturday shifts always had a certain buzz to them, a kind of controlled chaos I thrived in.

But today?

Today, all my attention was on the woman behind the counter.

Sadie.

Although was that different?

It had been that way for weeks, really, ever since she got here.

She was wiping down the bar well, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. Her brows were drawn in the tiniest furrow, lips pressed together like she was overthinking something.

Again.

I leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “You know, if you scrub any harder, you’re gonna rub a hole straight through the wood.”

Sadie startled, blinking up at me like she hadn’t even noticed I was there.

“Oh,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

I smirked. “Damn, not even a ‘good morning, Adam, you look devastatingly handsome today’?”

That got a snort out of her. “I don’t think I’ve ever said those words in my life.”

“Maybe not, but you were definitely thinking them.” I winked.

She rolled her eyes but didn’t hide her smile, and hell if that didn’t do something to me.

---