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“No!” Gracie held me so tight that she was making it hard for me to breathe. “Stop! I hate you, Uncle Zander! I hate you! You can’t take Aggie!”
“What the hell is going on? I could hear screaming from the barn!” Kyrin strode towards us, his boots leaving clouds of dust in their wake. “What happened?”
Zander turned away from us, leaving me to explain. I stroked Gracie’s hair in an attempt to calm her down and met Kyrin’s angry gaze. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to take her out. Zander wants me to leave. I… I don’t know what to do.”
Kyrin glared at the back of his brother’s head and rubbed his stubble covered jaw. “You’re not going anywhere. We make decisions by majority in this family, not by angry dictatorship.”
Zander swung around to face us. “She could’ve gotten Gracie hurt! You’re okay with that?”
Kyrin ignored his brother. “Gracie, you need to apologize to Uncle Zander. We don’t tell family that we hate them. If you’d said that to me, I’d be really sad.”
Gracie’s sobs turned to quiet sniffles and she loosened her grip marginally so she could look at Zander. “Sorry.”
“Now, go with Uncle Zander while I talk to Aggie. You two need to make up.” Kyrin saw me stiffen and sighed. “Relax, Aggie. I’m just trying to give you some breathing room. You look like you’re ready to break down.”
With that remark, I stiffened my jaw and straightened my back. No man was going to break me. I knelt down and cupped Gracie’s face in my hands. “Everything’s okay. I’ll be back soon.”
She looked up at Kyrin with large, tear-filled eyes. “Promise?”
Kyrin nodded. “I promise. Now, go on. I don’t want to come back to the house and find out that you and Uncle Zander are still fighting.”
Zander stood back with his hands on his hips, staring at me. His jaw worked as he thought, but instead of speaking, he just picked Gracie up and carried her inside.
I felt brittle as I turned to Kyrin. “I’m ready to breathe now.”
19
***Kyrin***
Iwalkedinsilencewith Aggie. She didn’t look like she was ready to talk and that was fine with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk, either. I just knew that she was either going to murder my brother or cry and I didn’t want either to happen. I studied her on the long trail back to the barn and frowned when I couldn’t make sense of her.
Normally, it was Knight who couldn’t leave a puzzle unsolved, but there was something about Aggie that made my brain feel itchy. I wanted to scratch that itch and figure out what went on behind her expressive eyes. The red flags that waved all around her didn’t stop me. I needed to understand.
She was wearing another T-shirt, a worn-out tie-dye one with a faded picture of a peace sign on the front. With her honey brown hair trailing down her back and her brown strappy sandals, she looked more like a child of the sixties than modern times. All she was missing was a big pair of glasses and a flower in her hair. Normally the women I went for were more…typical. I couldn’t remember a woman who hadn’t shown up in a sundress and boots on any of the dates I’d been on.
“You’re staring.” Aggie turned to face me and sighed. “I’m fine, Kyrin. You really don’t have to worry about me.”
Standing in the middle of a cluster of woods between the house and barn, the smell of honeysuckle filled the air around us. In the shade, her green eyes looked less like vibrant moss and more like the thick foliage around us.
“I beg to differ. You and Zander were going at each other in front of Gracie. He was wrong for trying to fire you and I understand you being pissed, but there was something more. I haven’t known you for long, but I got the impression that something was wrong. More than Zander’s attitude, I mean.”
She looked up at the trees and tucked her hair behind her ears before looking back at me. “I took Gracie to this amazing doll store downtown. She loved it, by the way. She was so excited, but even so, she didn’t demand a million dolls. There was a kid in there, screaming to get one more doll added to their growing stack and I was terrified I’d miscalculated in taking Gracie there. She’s great, though. Your sister and her husband must’ve been really amazing to raise to be the girl she is.”
A hard lump formed in my throat and I had to look away. It was always hard to talk about Zella, but being surprised by the mention of her was always like a punch in the chest those days.
“I’m sorry.” Aggie started walking again. “When we walked out of the store, we ran into Monroe. You know what they say about the best revenge being showing your ex how amazing you’re doing without them? Or whatever the saying is. I don’t know… What I do know is that no one says run into your ex while you’re at your lowest to give them more than enough ammunition to rip your ego to shreds.”
A chill ran down my spine at the idea of her meeting up with Blake. She’d proven to be good with Gracie, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still working for that piece of shit. “You justraninto him?”
Her shoulders stiffened and she stopped moving. “No, Kyrin, I made plans to meet up with him while out with your niece. I thought it would be amazing to be shouted at in front of her and the rest of Dallas. You want proof of the nature of my relationship with Monroe Blake? Go ask anyone in downtown Dallas today. I’m sure his laughter could be heard from blocks away.”
“What was he laughing about?”
“Maybe the fact that I was one of the top players at his company and now I’m a nanny. He’s funny that way.” She stomped towards the barn, but I had a feeling she didn’t have a clue where she was going, nor did she care.
“Being a nanny isn’t an embarrassing job. You know that, right?”
“Do you understand what I did just a few weeks ago, Kyrin? I worked as the top digital strategist in one of the top companies in Texas. I spent my days solving problems that could’ve cost the company millions of dollars. I was appreciated for my brain, for my skills, and for being a goddamn shark. In no time at all, less than a handful of men have taken me down to a place where my brain doesn’t matter at all. So, no, being a nanny isn’t an embarrassing job, but it’s not the job I want. It’s not the job I signed up for, worked my ass off for, or deserve.”
