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“That was amazing, Angelo. Thank you and have a good night.”

“Night,” he grunts. “See you tomorrow.”

It’s been barely five days of sharing this home as an employee with Angelo, and I would die for that man’s cooking, so, knowing he hates small talk more than anything, I leave him be and head up to my room to change into a pair of gym shorts and a light T-shirt.

My gym sneakers have seen more action in the past four days than in the last year combined, and I know I’m probably going to have to get a new pair soon since they were already pretty beat up a year ago, but I don’t really want to make another expensive purchase after today’s baby haul.

So I’ll use these until I physically can’t anymore and deal with buying new ones when I absolutely have to.

Even though I know that with Tucker’s recommendation—and Eli’s if I ever contact him—I have a great shot of getting the teaching job at Luxton Prep, there’s always the possibility that I won’t, and if that happens, then there’s no telling what my options will be.

I’d like to think I’ve made a good enough impression with Tucker that he’d be agreeable to keeping me on as a nanny, but there’s also the fact that this isn’t really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

There are other schools I could apply to . . . probably.

From my research, I know that in Manhattan alone there are two more I think I could be happy working at, more if I expand it to the five boroughs, but there are other states too.

The idea of living far away from Hannah isn’t super pleasant, but maybe I could head back home. I’d be closer to Mom and Dad, to Jace.

They still don’t know everything that led to me losing my job last year, or to running away from Miami, but I think Hannah and I have managed to keep their worrying to a minimum.

Mom arrived yesterday—I think—so I’m going to need to act like my old self when I see her.

I know I could tell her, but why should I?

She’s already suffered enough, with me going almost totally silent on them for years.

They don’t deserve to keep wondering, they deserve peace, and this weekend I’m going to show her—so she can tell Dad and Jace—that everything is absolutely fine.

I make my way downstairs, leaving my phone in my room since Monday taught me that Tucker isn’t a headphones-while-working-out kind of person, and that I’m actually okay with that.

I thought it was a great idea on Monday, to help him work through his emotions in the gym. The poor guy was a mess, so I thought it’d be fine.

I thought wrong.

After two hours up here in the state-of-the-art gym, I could barely walk since he pushed, pushed, and pushed me to my breaking point.

I should regret that it was all my idea, but I can’t.

I survived Tucker’s boot camp, even if he did go easy on me, but it was still an intense as hell workout for someone who’s done basically no exercise in years and has lost all muscle mass.

Tucker was smiling and slightly apologetic when I finally told him I was done. And barely winded—which is annoying and definitely not hot as fuck. Nope.

His muscles have muscles, and the raggedy tank top he was wearing was only making things unnecessarily hard—no, not hard, just challenging. I smirked when I first saw him wearing his Keys cap, but found out very quickly it was to my advantage, because that way I didn’t have a direct view of his sweet, warm eyes.

I’ve been grateful every day.

I could barely walk all of Tuesday, and even had to make a game out of the boys running in circles around me so I wouldn’t cry from the muscle pain. But every day we’ve come up here I’ve been able to do a bit more, every day I feel like I am actually on my way to getting better, to getting back to my true self.

On Tuesday, Tucker turned on the big-ass flat-screen TV he has mounted to the one wall not covered in mirrors, and proceeded to tell me we were going to watch game one of the Stanley Cup finals. When I looked blankly at him, he sighed and very dramatically hung his head, then declared he was going to teach me everything about hockey whether I liked it or not.

So, now I know there’s going to be a game every second day, which means today we’re watching game two, which I learned is still in Las Vegas, and I know Las Vegas should win because their home-ice advantage is supposed to be insane—though I still don’t know why.

We warm up on the treadmills, then I start the circuit Tucker drew up for me and we get to work side by side.

I’m on my second set on the leg press when the players skate out and start warming up too. “Wait, that guy in front of the little net is not the same as last time,” I shout. I hate myself just a little bit for noticing, but Tucker’s proud smile makes me forget about it very quickly.

Since I saw that same smile on Tuesday, I know a long-winded explanation is coming before I can brace myself for it.