“I’m ready to come back to work,” Willa announces, setting Berlin in her Pack ‘n Play in the living room.
The moment she’s out of her mother’s arms, Berlin stretches out, chubby-baby arms up over her head. She gets cuter every time I see her and I didn’t think that was possible. The baby. Not Willa. Though she’s pretty, too.
I’m distracted with baby adorableness. Did you hear what Willa said? She’s ready to come back to work. And I’m not ready for her to because you and I both know what that means.
Me going back to Seattle.
How can I do that now after everything that’s happened between Shade and me? These guys are like my family now. I don’t want to leave them.
Do you remember when Shade asked me if I’d go back to Seattle? I do. And he said he’s here. I can’t forget that, and I can’t forget the place he’s made for himself in my heart.
I chew on my thumb, sitting down on the same couch Shade and I watched a movie on last night. The same couch I braided Tiller’s Mohawk on the night before that and also the same couch Roan spilled his heart out to me two nights before that and told me he loves Ophelia, but he fucked up and slept with another girl.
These guys, this house, it’s my home now.
“Really? You’re ready to come back?”
“Yep.” Willa sits next to me, looking mother-exhausted and sweating. It’s October and guess what? California is still fucking hot. “This being with the baby all day long is too much. I need more to my day than breastfeeding and naps. I’ve gained more weight not working than I have when I was pregnant. It’s bullshit.”
Now is not the time to mention to her she smells a little like baby vomit.
I laugh, nervously fidgeting with the hem of my flowing black tank top and then the hole in the thigh of my jeans. “When are you coming back?”
“I’ll take over when they get back from Sacramento and the Aftershock event. Then we have all the promotional and product launch advertising to do for S3 and the Gnarly Life Street Tour. They waited for Shade to recover so that will be the first event. It’ll be crazy for a while.”
My face falls. I don’t mean for it to, but it does along with my heart. “Sounds like you have it all under control.”
“You mean us.” Her smile pulls at the corners of her lips. “We have everything under control.”
You heard her, right? She said us as in plural? Me and her. Together. Two people.
“Excuse me?”
“You and me. We have this under control. I can’t do this alone anymore. It’s exhausting trying to take care of Shade, Tiller, and Roan and now with S3, I can’t do it by myself. Not with a baby.”
While this excites me to know she’s once again giving me a job, I’m withholding the excitement a little. “I uh. . . Berlin is cute an all, but I can’t be a nanny.”
She laughs. “I know. She’ll be with us, but I mean together. You help with all the promotional aspects of S3 and scheduling their flight arrangements like you’ve been doing.”
“So if I’m going to continue working for Shade. . . .”
Willa knows me pretty darn well by now. “That contract is no longer in effect as of today. If you sign this one.” She pushes a new one toward me on the coffee table. “This one will outline your three-year contract with me, your salary, and the fact that you will be working for me, not Sawyer Enterprises.”
I chew on my thumbnail, and I bite down on my bottom lip, trying to ease my rapidly overactive “I’m about to have sex again” heart. I swallow, and it feels something similar to sand going into my lungs. “So that means. . . .”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Yes, Scarlet, you can have sex with him. Though I know you two have already been messing around.”
I hold a hand up. “No penetration occurred.”
She’s straight-faced, unblinking. “You do realize I’ve known him since he was four? I do not want to think about this. It’s bad enough I’ve walked in on all three of them, on separate occasions I might add, having sex.”
“And you know, I don’t want to think about that.” Though I have. A few times.
My hands shake when I pick up the contract, thick white paper clipped together. I flip through the first few pages. It’s fairly straight forward. As of now, before the Aftershock event, Willa is my boss when I sign the contract. I work for her.
I can continue to live in the guest house if I want to. “Will they be okay with that? Who lived there before me?”
Willa nods and stands up when she hears Berlin fussing. “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. No one has actually lived there for a while. Last person was me for about three months, and I realized I had to separate myself from their everyday life.”
I understand what she’s saying. It’s hard being here, especially when you’re not allowed to date the one you want. But. . . it all goes back to this couch and the memories I have of them.
I wonder if the reason Willa moved out was Ricky. I knew about her being hired to help Ricky when he was granted custody of the boys. And while I didn’t know about it when I was hired, after Shade told me, it made perfect sense why she had me sign the contract. It was more than just sleeping with him.
“How are you and Ricky doing?”
Stepping lightly, she backs up from where Berlin is still sound asleep and returns to the couch. “We’re officially dating.” She pauses and laughs lightly rolling her eyes. “Don’t be like us. We fucked around for years, and then one day I wanted a baby, and he was all for giving me one. It’s all crazy when I think about how it happened, and I never thought I’d be in a relationship with him.”
“Wait. . . so like you didn’t just hook up one night and get pregnant?” I had no idea how Willa and Ricky hooked up; Shade didn’t tell me that part. Probably because he said he didn’t know, and partly because the guy is the best damn secret keeper I know.
“Well, no, not exactly.” She gives me a knowing look, one I should and do know. “I was placed in Ricky’s life much like you were with Shade. He had three little boys to take care of and no real idea how to do that, but I knew I couldn’t let him down. He had a career to think about. He raced Supercross for another couple of years and then decided it wasn’t for him anymore. That’s about the time Shade had started to race with kids twice his age and Ricky just sort of took to becoming their mentor. And I was there in the background making sure it all worked smoothly.”
Though I hear what Willa’s saying, my stupid brain focuses more on the fact that I’m not employed by Shade Sawyer.
I can, for all intents and purposes, have sex with him, the penetration kind. . . should I decide to.
Part of me wants to run out to the race shop and tell him, “hey, boy, we can have sex now” and see what he does.
But I don’t. Nervously going over everything in my head, I attempt to process what Willa told me and what this means for Shade and me.