Make a Wish (Spark House #3)(2)

“I just mean you deserve to have a life. I need to cut back my hours. I need to be here more.” His voice is low and gravelly. “I should be here for Peyton. It’s not fair for me to keep piling it all on you. You’re too young to be handling all of this.”

“I would tell you if it was too much. And you are here for Peyton. You’re always home for dinner, and you make sure you’re here for bedtime. Sure, you work extra hours once she’s in bed, but that’s not unusual. Especially since you’re helping run a family business. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s all anyone can ask for.”

“But is it enough?” He shakes his head. “I feel like I’m in purgatory, Harley. I feel like I’m stuck in the past, and all I want to do is move forward, but I can’t. I don’t know how to do this on my own.”

“But you don’t have to do it on your own, Gavin. You have your family and you have me.”

“I don’t know how to let go of this guilt.” His face crumples and he scrubs a hand over it.

“The guilt over what? What do you feel guilty about?” We don’t usually talk like this. Mostly he asks about Peyton, how her day was, and the milestones she’s reaching. At dinner he’ll sometimes ask about my courses, but he doesn’t open up about Marcie. I know it’s been a struggle for him to move past the loss of his wife. While she’s never a topic of conversation, she’s memorialized everywhere in this house.

He shakes his head. “I can’t … I just want it to stop hurting all the time.”

I settle my hand on top of his and squeeze. “I’m here. You can talk to me. I understand what it means to lose someone you love. I know the hurt doesn’t go away. We manage, we adapt, we develop armor, but we don’t stop missing them and we don’t stop loving them.”

“Is there no peace?” His expression breaks my heart.

I don’t know how to help him with anything other than the offer of comfort. So I do something I normally never would when it comes to one of my charges and their parents. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hug him.

He stiffens for a moment, and I’m about to release him and apologize for overstepping, but he folds his arms around me and pulls me tightly against him. The sound he makes holds so much torment.

“It’s okay, Gavin. I’m here. I know it’s hard.” We’ve always kept it professional between us. Sure, I may be living under the same roof, but my job is to care for the sweet little angel that is sleeping down the hall. But tonight is different.

In this moment, I feel like I’m more than the nanny. Right now, it’s as though I’ve become part of this family.

I understand what he’s going through. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to lose your partner before you’ve even had a chance to really and truly start your life together. But I know what it’s like to lose both of my parents. They died when I was twelve, leaving me and my older sisters, Avery and London, orphaned. Our grandmother stepped in to raise us, but those Mom-and-Dad-shaped holes in my heart can never be filled. There will always be two empty spaces in my chest where they used to be.

Slowly he loosens his hold on me. “I need to get a grip,” he mutters, voice thick with emotion.

Goose bumps rise along my skin when his fingertips skim my arm as he drops his hand.

“We all have difficult days. I’m always here. Whenever you need me.” My heart is beating so hard, it feels like it could crack my rib cage. I can’t seem to find it in me to step back, to break this connection. The longing to feel needed like this clouds my judgment. The intimacy of the moment makes it difficult to separate my desire to comfort from other, new feelings I don’t know what to do with.

I lean in until I can feel his sharp exhale against my lips. My stomach flips and my muscles clench in anticipation.

But whatever spell I’m under breaks before I connect.

Gavin’s hands wrap around my shoulders and he pushes me back, not forcefully but firmly. “Harley, no.”

Peyton’s shrill cry is a bucket of ice water over my head and a welcome distraction from my complete horror and mortification. I rush down the hall to Peyton’s room and scoop her up like a shield. Panic takes over, and fear and guilt swirl in my gut and make it tough to swallow. What did I do? How could I be so stupid?

“I’ve got it, Harley. You can go back to bed.” Gavin holds out his arms, his expression flat and remote.

I can’t say no. He’s my boss. He’s her father. I’m just the nanny.

And I almost kissed him. I would have, if he hadn’t stopped me. He’d been in need of comfort, and I’d taken advantage of that weak moment. Shame and disbelief make me want to disappear, to sink into the ground, to hide from my own mistake.

Uncomfortable, awkward silence follows as I pass Peyton over to Gavin, but her cries grow louder, maybe because she senses the disquiet between us.

“Go to bed, Harley.” Gavin’s voice is tight and clipped.

I move around him, unable to meet his gaze. I feel numb, as if my emotions have been dipped in liquid nitrogen. Frozen. And one flick will shatter me.

As I step into the hall, Peyton screams, arms stretched out to me. “Momma! Mummy!”

I pause, a sick feeling rolling through my stomach and creeping up my throat, and turn to see Gavin’s reaction. She’s said it before, at the park I sometimes take her to with a few other nannies in the area, but it’s never happened in front of Gavin before. I usually just shake my head and say, “No, not Momma, it’s Harley” to her because she doesn’t know the difference. To her, it’s just words she hears the other kids say.