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My mouth was suddenly so dry I could barely speak. “How old is she?”
“She’s two. Just a couple months older than Brayden.” Adrian smiled. “She’s so beautiful, too, Harper. You should see her. She’s the sweetest, most wide-eyed little girl you’d ever want to meet.”
I shook my head, wondering how life could be so unnecessarily cruel at such a young age. All those people who went around saying ‘everything happens for a reason’ never seemed to have a reason for things like this.
“How does he do it?” she asked.
“One day at a time,” Adrian shrugged. “Same as I do it. For me, traveling is the toughest. We were sharing childcare for a while, but our nanny quit when he moved back to Florida. He was a good guy, too. Funny and sweet. The kids really loved him.”
Adrian and Jax: both of them, fathers. It still hadn’t fully hit me.
“You need to find someone who can be flexible to your crazy schedules,” I said. “That’s a tough one. But with so many people working from home these days, maybe you could find… I don’t know, a responsible college student? Someone trustworthy, looking to make some extra cash, but who also…”
Adrian was staring at me, smiling strangely. I tilted my head.
“What? Wait… no.”
“No, what?”
“Me?”
“Sure, why not you?” he said, leaning forward excitedly. “You were the one who just put the idea in my head!”
“No I didn’t.”
“Sure you did,” he continued to smile. “You said it yourself earlier; you’re having trouble making ends meet. You’re trying to develop this new technology, but until you do, you’re swimming in bills.”
“I know,” I conceded. “But—”
“Those were your exact words: swimming in bills. You said you’re taking all these odd jobs, and they pay virtually nothing. You have to stack them all up, just to scrape some cash together. It’s not sustainable. You’re losing time, keeping track of them all.”
I’d said these things, sure, but I hadn’t expected him to throw them back at me. But is that really what he was doing? And after all, wasn’t he right?
“Do you have any idea what we paid our old nanny to watch our kids?” he asked.
“None.”
He told me. My eyes went wide.
“Holy shit. Seriously?”
“Yeah seriously,” Adrian smiled. “And with that kind of money, you wouldn’t need to do all the Upwork gigs you told me about, right? You could stop chasing all that nonsense?”
“In a heartbeat,” I conceded.
“So then what’s the problem?” he asked. “I’d much rather leave Brayden with someone I love and trust, instead of a stranger. And if the money’s helping you out, wouldn’t that be a win-win?”
“But… but I don’t know anything about taking care of kids.”
“No one ever does,” Adrian shrugged. “Until you have one, that is. And then you learn hands-on. Like every other parent in the world.” He glanced back in the direction little Brayden had come earlier. “We were about to hire someone from a service, Jax and I.”
“Jax doesn’t want anything to do with me,” I smirked, “much less trust me with his kid.”
“Bah. That’s an act.”
“Is it? Besides, I don’t want anything to do with him, either.”
Adrian rolled his eyes dismissively. “You wouldn’t be dealing with him at all, really. Besides, Emma’s only here about half the time.”
