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In Jess’s eyes, I am an insect. A plague on her household. She doesn’t even have to say the words aloud for me to get the message loud and clear.
Reluctantly, I stand, stepping back from the children.
“Liam,” barks Jess, “take Sophie up to your room. Go… play, or something.” She waves the children off.
Her dismissiveness is nothing new, but it still rankles me. At least when I was working here, the children were getting some kind of warmth. Jess is not a motherly type, and her husband is far too busy to be a father in any capacity that isn’t showering them money when he should be showering them with love.
But in just a couple minutes, I’ll be gone.
And then there will be nothing to protect those angels from the monsters who created them.
Liam takes Sophie’s hand and leads her up the stairs. It breaks my heart that he holds her elbow like a gentleman to make sure she doesn’t fall, just how I taught him.
Then I’m alone with Jess.
Maybe she’s going to murder me. I have a feeling that she’d be ruthlessly efficient about it.
“Outside.” It’s a command, like one you’d give a dog. Downtrodden as I am, I pathetically obey.
Once we’re outside the house, she snaps the door closed behind us. It has a click of finality that makes my skin crawl.
“Your last check.” She hands it to me, dangling between two perfectly manicured nails. It’s like the paper is diseased, or maybe she just doesn’t want to touch the hands of the homewrecker that she thinks I am.
I take it, but I don’t leave. “Mrs. Harrison,” I say, “I swear, I never tried to sleep with your husband. I never wanted to come between the two of you?—”
“I suppose that’s why I found the two of you tangled up together in my music room?” Her eyes are pure poison.
“It’s—it’s not like that. I was just trying to find a book of sheet music for Liam to practice piano on. That’s all. And then Mr. Harrison came in behind me?—”
“I have not one iota of desire to listen to the ways in which you seduced my husband into disgusting acts in my private spaces,” she snaps. She inches so close to me, I think she’s going to hit me. Her breath is hot and minty in my face. “You have no idea what it’s like to be married to a man like Eric. Always at work. Always going to charity functions and giving speeches and accepting awards from the hospital. There’s so little space in the schedule left for the two of us that it’s a miracle he had the time to fuck me twice to give us kids. And then here you come along, stealing away what little time I have with him, in my own goddamn home. The home I helped him build!”
Jess steps back. There’s a terrifying shine in her eyes I haven’t seen before—the gloss of a woman about to lose her shit.
“Jess—”
“Get off my property.” She draws herself up straight, her jaw clenched tight. I can tell she’s like me: she hates crying. “Get the fuck of my property, you slut.”
Slut. She might as well have clawed my face open with those French-tipped nails. I’ve been called that before. It always hurts as bad as the first time.
There’s nothing more that I can say to her. She’s going to believe what she saw. Eric sure as shit isn’t going to vouch for me, that lying bastard.
So, with a sigh that hurts like swallowing glass, I turn away from Jess and the house that I’ve damn near lived in for the last four years and take the long walk of shame to my car.
I’m glad that I already packed my bags up. I don’t think that I’d have it in me to try and do it now.
I don’t think I even have it in me to drive, actually. My body and my heart are heavy as I slide behind the wheel. I just sit there, the minutes ticking by.
Okay, Olivia. Get your shit together. Stay here any longer and Jess is gonna have you cuffed. Or maybe drawn and quartered.
The one solace is my final paycheck. With that in hand, I can at least take care of this month's bills and maybe a cake I can eat all by myself to soothe the?—
"What the hell?"
She shorted me by over a thousand dollars. The angry slash of her signature—almost enough to rip right through the paper check—is all the proof I need that it wasn’t a mistake.
Remember: you've the slut who tried to fuck her husband in her own house.
I rest my forehead against my steering wheel. My temples are pounding, and the tears I’ve been holding back since the minute this horrible day started are threatening to burst loose.
