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“Okay, enough is enough,” I say to her as she is crouched over the toilet retching after having just finished her morning coffee. “You need to go and see a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” she moans, right before she throws up again.
“You’renotfine,” I growl at her with irritation. This has gone on long enough. “You’re seeing a doctor.”
“I’m not,” she protests stubbornly.
“Okay then, you’re not getting paid until you see a doctor.” I know it’s the only card of control that I can actually pull on her that will work. She’s too stubborn for her own good.
“Fine,” she hisses. “But my brother can take me,not you.”
I don’t care who takes her as long as she gets seen by someone so that she can get back to being at full capacity and feeling better. But somehow, everything backfires.
“What do you mean youquit?” I holler into the phone. “You can’t just quit, Tabitha. What the hell is going on?”
“I just can’t work for you anymore,” she says the next morning over the phone.
I knew that something was wrong when she decided to spend the night at her brother’s house after her doctor appointment. She and Jax both said that everything was fine, and that the doctor just said it was some sort of stomach virus that was taking a while to clear out of her system, and that she and her brother just wanted to hang out together for a night. But something didn’t feel right about any of it.
“Is something wrong? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No, not at all,” she says. Her voice sounds strained. “I just need to do something else.”
“What is it that you need to do?” I can feel myself starting to panic. Everything had been going so well up until Tabitha got sick. “You can’t just quit, what about Teddie?”
“He will be fine with you. And I don’t need to explain myself to you,” she says, getting upset as well. “I’m sorry to leave you hanging on short notice, but I’m sure you can find a suitable nanny to hire.”
“No,” I say adamantly. “This isn’t right. Teddie is going to be so upset, and I thought you cared about him.”
“I do care about him, but Hunter, he isn’t my kid. This was a job, and I need to move on to something else now.”
“What are you even talking about?” My head is spinning because I didn’t see this coming. How could she so abruptly decide to justleave?
“You won’t get paid,” I use as a last resort. “Our deal was six months and if you quit early then I won’t pay you.”
“That’s fine,” she says. “You can keep the money. I’ll send Jax over to pick up my things.”
None of this is making any sense. She seemed happy here, Teddie was happy with her,Iwas happy.
“You can’t justwalk out on me.” As soon as I say the words, I regret them. I wish that I could shove them back inside my mouth because “walking out” is the exact thing that I did to her years ago. Maybe that’s what this is all about. Maybe she was just trying to do all of this just so that she could get to the point with things all going so well that it would really hurt me to have her leave. I am shocked and upset, and there’s nothing left for me to say.
When Jax comes to collect her things, I try to press him for answers but as usual, he is an iron lockbox when it comes to protecting his sister. We might be best friends, but that guy is an overprotective big brother first and foremost.
“Sorry, man, I just can’t talk about my sister’s personal business. You know that,” Jax says when I try to ask him what isreallygoing on.
“But I am not trying to pry, Jax. I’m confused and worried that something is seriously wrong with Tabitha. It just doesn’t seem right that she would do this.”
Jax shakes his head at me as he grabs the rest of Tabitha’s stuff and heads out of my house. Teddie is watching from the hallway, equally as confused about all of this as I am.
“I’m trying to stay out of the middle of it,” Jax says as he gives me a brotherly pat on the shoulder. “You should talk to Tabitha yourself.”
“I’vetried. She isn’t telling me anything, and now she’s all but refusing to talk to me at all.”
“Maybe give her some time then?” he says with a shrug.
Time? Time for what? I don’t have the first clue what is going on with her. All I know is that now I don’t have a nanny for Teddie, and I need to find one asap or risk it affecting my company work.
After tryingrepeatedlyto reach out to Tabitha with no success, I once again decide that the only person I can truly count on is myself. I go right back to being a brooding billionaire because it ismucheasier for me to be angry and moody and to do what needs to be done in order to keep my company and this parenting thing afloat, than it is to accept how hurt I feel that Tabitha left. Because if I let myself admit to that and allowed myself to feel how painful it is here in my big house without her, then I would need to come to terms with the fact that I have allowed myself to fall in love with Tabitha all over again.
