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He ignores this as he cuts the engine, exits the truck, and comes around to my side. “You say that a lot,” he says when he opens my door.
“Because you keep changing the plan on me!” I sound like an exasperated caricature of myself, but Wade has driven me to it.
With another one of those outrageous smirks, Wade reaches past my boobs and down toward my hip, where he dislodges my seatbelt. He doesn’t reply until he has me in his arms again. Am I going to keep letting him do this to me?
Hm. Yeah, I guess I am.
“I don’t keep changing the plan. I have the one and only plan. You just don’t ask the right questions.”
Why is he being so weird and cryptic?
And then I think back to how he spoke to my friend Grace. That’s right. That makes him still a bit of a tool, doesn’t it? Even if he is being outrageously, over-the-top nice to me.
I point back at the truck. “They gave me crutches, you know.”
“I know that,” he says, marching through the side gate and taking a flagstone path through an astonishingly pretty backyard.
I’d stop to marvel at the willow trees, koi pond, decorative grasses, flowers, and hammocks if I didn’t have other pressing matters concerning me at the moment.
“You seem like the type of girl who needs looking after,” Wade explains upon opening the back door and carrying me past the threshold into a spacious and modern kitchen. “I have a feeling you’re not going to stay put. So I’ll be keeping you here to look after you.”
I don’t know whether to be insulted or pleased.
I know what my inner feminist would say. How dare you take away my agency! On the other hand, haven’t I always had a littletoo muchagency? Haven’t I been concerned only with my survival since day one?
I’ve been buying my own clothes and groceries online since the age of 12. Some days in my tweens, I went for days without seeing another adult except for teachers at school. One time, I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad went on a cruise for two weeks and left me at home.
I harbored a fantasy that anyone, like a friend, boyfriend, or a friendly neighbor, would swoop in and take me away to a world where I didn’t have to be alone. Where I didn’t have to enroll myself alone in school or shop for school supplies at Target alone.
I never worried about money. It was always there. But my parents were just…too busy to pay attention to me. My school friends talked about various religious and family traditions and rituals, like lighting candles, having bar mitzvahs, exchanging names for Secret Santas, or readingT’was the Night Before Christmastogether. But I never had that. Birthday and Christmas packages arrived at the door unwrapped, but I often opened those boxes alone because Mom and Dad were usually sleeping off a bender.
Wade carries me through the kitchen, past an adjoining living room that looks like a combination of a man cave that some woman tried to put some feminine touches on. All the furniture is black leather, but the rug is super high-end, and there are cushy throws and pillows everywhere. Every corner has tall, large-leafed plants. The window treatments are impeccable. Over the fireplace is a gorgeous Audubon print, but next to it is a signed NBA jersey of someone I’ve never heard of.
A flash of jealousy hits me at the thought of another woman in Wade’s house.
But as he marches down the hallway, I remind myself that, for all I know, Wade could be married or dating someone else.
If that’s the case, he’s inappropriately flirty for someone who might be attached.
Still, even if he does like my banter and likes to boss me around, that doesn’t mean I have any claim on him.
He could see me as nothing more than a big brother.
As he should—didn’t he say he was 35? He’s so much older than me.
Yikes.
But also, yikes at how my body reacts to that little nugget of truth.
Am I secretly looking for a sugar daddy? Gross. Totally gross.
But…is it, though?
Wade carries me into a room decked out in pinks and grays. It’s pretty and feminine, unlike the rest of the house.
He sets me down on the bed and immediately grabs a stack of spare pillows from the closet to prop up my foot.
“Wade, imprisoning me in your bedroom is highly weird for a boss.”
