Page 85 of Worst Nanny Ever
Some of my anger cools, leaving me frustrated and uncomfortable in my own skin. Anger, I can live with—it’s actionable—but sadness and confusion just plain suck.
“You already did ruin it,” I say.
He reaches for me, but I shake my head. “Like I said, I won’t be leaving him. But this thing we’ve been doing…we need to keep our distance from each other.”
“Hannah.”
“You know I’m right. By the way, I’m bringing my friends over with me tomorrow. My real friends.”
Hurt burns in his eyes, but he nods once. “Ollie told me.”
He doesn’t say anything else. He just walks me to the door. I don’t object when he follows me out, but I do take a little pleasure out of completely ignoring him.
I drive home with stinging eyes, but I take some pride in the fact that I don’t cry until I’m at home alone in my bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HANNAH
Babes of Brewing chat
Sophie: So I know you told us this was NEVER going to happen just two weeks ago, but let’s be honest, I knew it was going to happen. YOU probably knew it was going to happen. I think Briar did too.
Briar: Definitely. The lady doth protest too much.
Me: You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Did you somehow miss the part where he said sleeping with me was a huge mistake?
Me: And today he didn’t say a damn thing about any of it. He just told me to have fun, like he was some boring TV dad.
Me: And he had on a polo shirt for a freaking show.
Me: I’m grateful he didn’t pop the collar,but honestly…
Me: I don’t even know why I hooked up with him. He’s not at all my type.
Sophie: Do you want me to pretend I believe you?
Briar: Why are we texting? This is dumb.
Briar: Can someone pass the popcorn?
I pass Briar the bowl of popcorn, rolling my eyes.
We’re sitting on Travis’s couch—the very couch where he dry-humped me last night. Ollie and I are in the middle, with Briar to my left and Sophie to his right.
I should never have broken my vow to keep things platonic with him. But the pull between us was so hard to fight that even Travis, who’s way more self-controlled than I am, gave into it. If he couldn’t tight the riptide, how was I supposed to?
It had started at the toy store, when we’d nearly kissed over the piano, and then he’d been so sweet and gentle when he’d put Ollie to bed, only to come back and prowl the living room like a panther, his dark eyes undressing me.
I’d wanted him to do unspeakable things to me, and he haddelivered. Truthfully, I’d fantasized about him taking me exactly that way while I was at their concerts.
I’d been entirely lost in the moment, especially because he’d seemed so lost in it too…
But then he’d said the thing about me being a hurricane.
I’ve been told I’m too much by nearly every man I’ve had the misfortune of getting tangled up with. Most of the time I don’t care about the people who accuse me of that. I figure they only think I’m too much because they’re too little—like Jonah, whose ego was so fragile, he had to have at least four women around at any given time to stroke it. Or myfirst serious boyfriend, who said I was too “embarrassing” to introduce to his parents. They were jerks, but it hadn’t mattered, because I’d known they were jerks. We were using each other. I’d chosen them because I’d known they didn’t have the power to really hurt me. The most they could do was bruise.
But it had hurt like hell for Travis to treat me like that, because I respect him. Because Ilikehim.
