Page 30 of Single Dad Billionaire Boss

The next weekend, Zoe put her hands on her hips and asked, “Why are you mad at Ellie? She stopped eating with us at night, and you don’t even talk to each other!”

“I’m not mad at her at all. Ella and I decided she’s going to look for a job in her field.”

“In a field? Like with flowers and cows?”

“No, sweetheart. Ella’s real job is working as a counselor with kids who need extra help with their problems. She’ll go back to doing that someday. We talked about how it was gonna be hard on you and we thought it was better to stop having her spend extra time with us.”

“That’s mean!” Zoe cried.

If you only knew,kid, I wanted to say. If you only knew…

On Tuesday afternoon, Ella was waiting at the door for me when I arrived home from work. She asked if we could talk, and I knew right away that it wasn’t good news. Her expression was tight. We stood across the living room from Zoe, who sat on the floor painstakingly tracing the numbers and words for our address like some Ancient Egyptian scribe.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and Ella handed me a thick pile of paper that I recognized at once. I opened my mouth to protest, but Ella stopped me with her hand.

“I found these in your night table,” she said. “Zoe had an itchy bug bite and didn’t want calamine. She wanted whatever the cream was you keep in the drawer.”

“Cortisone,” I said meekly.

“Yeah, I figured that out,” Ella said. “But it was buried under these.”

“It’s mostly the ones you wrote,” I said defensively, and again, Ella gave me the hand.

“If things were different,” she said, “I’d think it was romantic, to be sentimental over every sticky note I left on the binder. But we agreed to try to coexist and put all that behind us for Zoe’s sake. It’s bad faith on your part to keep writing me notes, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t leave them for you,” I said. “Okay, yeah, I wrote a few, but bad faith? Are you kidding me? You think I can just turn this off and not feel anything when what I really want to do is make a fool of myself covering the house in notes for you and giving you flowers? This was private between me and… well,me. Who are you to judge me for that? The notes are mine and I won’t apologize for keeping them. If anything, I’m embarrassed you know how pathetic I am.”

“It’s not working,” Ella said. “You’re not letting go of this, and honestly, I can’t let go either— avoiding you, having to remember that we’re not friends, that we’re not anything. I thought I could do this, then I found the notes you wrote since Christmas. It’s too much, Jacob. I—I’ve turned down guys who asked me out because it feels wrong. Staying here and seeing you every day is making it harder to put this behind me and move on. This morning a perfectly nice guy at the coffee shop offered to buy me a muffin and sit down and get to know me. I couldn’t even imagine saying yes. I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’ll get rid of the notes,” I said roughly. “If it makes you uncomfortable, here, take them all. Do whatever you want with them. I told you I won’t be the reason Zoe loses you. I thought I could keep the notes but—”

“I don’t want them,” Ella said, swiveling her eyes at Zoe and motioning for me to keep my voice down. “I hate myself for writing them—how obvious I was, how much I wanted you to notice and like me. Talk about pathetic. I should never have started that. I’m sorry.”

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” I said quickly. “Even though this is how it ends, I’m glad it happened.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Ella said with tears in her eyes. “Maybe it cost me more than it cost you. To believe in something for a minute—” Ella’s voice choked off with emotion. She sounded every inch as bitter as I was, and it hurt me to hear it.

“Ella, please,” I said, reaching for her, but she shook her head and shrank away from me.

“I’m going,” she said. “I’ll finish out the week and then that’s it.”

“I told Zoe over the weekend that we talked about you finding a job in your field.”

“Yeah, and what did she say?”

I shrugged and smiled weakly. “She was surprised you wanted to work with flowers and cows.”

Ella gave a burst of half-laughter, half-crying, then dragged her wrist under her nose and looked away. “I’d like to get Zoe a day or two a week after school and spend time with her, if that’s okay.”

“Just let me know which day works for you,” I said. “I told her you’re a friend of the family, that you’re not going away. The idea is to give her stability and to let her know she can count on her grown-ups. I can’t thank you enough, Ella, for staying in her life.”

“I’d never walk out on Zoe,” she said, eyes narrow and lips tight as if I had accused her of treason.

No,I thought as I watched her go.You’d only walk out on me.

Chapter17

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