I close the laptop.
Stare at the wall.
I think about Marco sitting in his room refusing to let anyone see his face. About Ben going to school without me there to help her count breaths.
About Ethan’s bloody knuckles and the wordsit’s not my bloodechoingin my head.
I should have checked on Marco.
Should have at least texted to make sure he wasn’t dying after whatever happened between him and Ethan.
But I didn’t.
Because some part of me thought he would reach out first. Would call or text or show up at my door to apologize or explain or something.
He hasn’t.
Which means either he’s too broken to reach out or he doesn’t want to reach out or he’s literally still bleeding somewhere in that townhouse.
My therapist would say I’m catastrophizing. That I’m making assumptions without evidence. That I need to focus on my own healing instead of trying to fix someone else’s trauma.
She’s not wrong.
But sitting here in this apartment that smells like stale air conditioning and other people’s cooking, I can’t shake the feeling that I made the wrong choice.
That walking away was easier than staying.
Because facing the actual mess was too hard.
Former nanny discovers she’s really good at running away from things. More at eleven.
I open the file on my phone again.
My finger hovers on the delete button...
Instead I archive it. Set it aside for some hypothetical future where I have the emotional bandwidth to care about content creation again.
For now I need to focus on showing up to the diner. Pouring coffee. Wiping down table seven.
Living a life that doesn’t require metrics or algorithms or dealing with self-hating billionaires.
Even if it feels like I’m just going through the motions.
49
Marco
Five days since Jess walked out and I’m sitting at my desk staring at spreadsheets that might as well be written in fucking hieroglyphics for all the sense they make right now.
The numbers blur. Revenue projections. Labor costs. Food costs hovering at thirty-two percent when they should be twenty-eight.
My face has healed somewhat. Just a bunch of bruises and scabs over the bear scars. My shoulder, however, isn’t fairing as well. The torn tissue from my fight with Ethan still hasn’t healed. In fact it’s been throbbing all day. Neli keeps telling me I need to rest. Stop moving. Let the goddamn skin knit back together.
I ignore her.
Rest means thinking. Thinking means remembering. Remembering means seeing Jess climb into that Range Rover without looking back.
So I work instead.
