Bad Nanny (The Bad Nanny Trilogy #1)(20)

So I pulled over on the side of the road and I just sat there in my ugly panties and my top with the buttons all screwed up, and I put my face in my hands and cried. For an hour. An hour that made me late to my new job.

When I got there, my new boss screamed at me and then fired me right on the spot.

So apparently I was freaking out for nothing. I'm not going to be a stripper.

But what I am going to be is homeless and hungry and praying that my nieces don't get dragged into foster care, or maybe that when my parents come home, they'll be able to take them—even though my dad has early onset Alzheimer's.

Because it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to handle this.

I stay out for most of the night, as long as I would've worked, just sitting in the parking lot with the cheap, cheesy glow of the club's lights bathing my car in neon pink and blue. I don't do anything but sit there and watch men go into the club, laughing and joking and hanging on one another. When they come out, they look like they're even more drunk than they were before.

After a while, I admit defeat and head home, unlocking the door and letting myself into the living room to find Zay asleep on my sister's couch. The baby's with him, sleeping quietly on his chest, her tiny body wrapped in strong, tattooed arms.

I suck in a deep breath and wrap my own arms around myself. I don't see any of the other kids, but I guess that they're parceled out upstairs. Without saying anything, I slip my heels off and move inside, plopping down on the small couch and turning on my side.

The cushions smell like dog piss. In fact, as I'm thinking that, I see Dodger run up to the coffee table and lift his leg.

Great.

I can't wait to start cleaning this place up for the inevitable move. Can't stay in a house if you can't pay the rent.

I stare across the moonlit room at Zay with the baby on his chest and try not to smile. I don't want to smile, not after the shitty day I've had. But I can't help it. What is it about tattooed guys and babies that make girls crazy? Is it that juxtaposition of hard and soft? I have no clue. Clearly, I'm no good at psychoanalyzing myself or else I would've known I was incapable of making a sacrifice for my family.

I'm such a selfish bitch.

I close my eyes and breathe deep, almost falling asleep before I hear a rustle from across the living room. It's Zayden, laying the baby gently in the folding crib he brought over. She fusses, but he coos at her, singing some soft song under his breath. I think it's … Africa by Toto? What the hell? But anyway, it's cute as hell when she settles with a little smack of her lips and falls back asleep.

“How was work?” he asks, voice guarded against the weird virgin-stripper girl that tried to jump his bones this afternoon. No wonder he thinks I'm nuts. I feel nuts right now. And I can't believe I did what I did earlier.

“I got fired,” I whisper, lips brushing against the gross pilling gray fabric of the couch. Zay makes a sound under his breath and comes over to sit next to me, crossing his legs as he settles on the floor between the couch and the coffee table.

“Before or after?” he asks, his voice weird and tinny.

“Before,” I admit and there's a long pause before he sighs.

“I mean, that's kind of good, right?”

“If you like cold houses with no food and cars with no gas. If you like kissing your master's degree good-bye because you can't find a job that'll work around those hours. If you like having to move your sister's kids into a new city, a new town, just so you can have some hope of actually landing some work with a bachelor's in statistics.”

Zay smiles a little, his silver lip piercings catching the wan moonlight.

“When you put it like that,” he starts, but then he just shakes his head a little, reaching up to run his fingers through the thick hair on the left side of his head. I can still feel a tingle in my fingertips from when I touched it. “Do you know what I think?” he asks and I shake my head, cheek rubbing against the dog pee cushion.

Zay reaches out and pokes me in the center of my forehead with a tattooed finger.

“I think you got off lucky. Don't do something if it's going to break you like that. You've got a right to your own body, you know?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” I ask, trying not to cry again. The last thing this poor guy needs is to see me cry. Haven't I done that enough already? I mean, seriously. We really don't know each other at all. Honestly, if I was being straight with myself, I should wonder how I ever thought to leave him with the kids. Or how I'm totally cool with laying in a dark living room next to him.

He could be crazy. He could be a murderer. He could be … all sorts of things.

I should kick him out of my sister's house.

“I have no clue,” he says with a loose, exaggerated shrug, lifting up his palms for emphasis. “I've always been pretty shitty when it comes to adulting.”