Falling for the Babysitter

Chapter 1

1

Remy

The trash smells disgusting. “God, did something crawl in there and die?” my friend Clara says beside me as I wheel the trashcan out to the curb. She’s stayed over for horror movie night, a monthly tradition we’ve held since we were twelve.

I hold my breath, face scrunched up tight. “Yeah, whatever that thing was my mom tried to feed us last night.”

“What was that?” Clara says.

“Tofu.”

“Is that some kind of bird, because if it is, it should be hunted until it’s extinct.”

I laugh. Poor Clara. Her family is strictly meat and potatoes. She never even saw a Brussel sprout until we met. She thought it was the cutest little baby cabbage until she actually tried it. Now she calls them devil warts.

“It’s made from soy beans, I think.”

mist curling off the cement as the day warms up. The sky, with its layers

have to sprint across the lawn in bare feet to get to the newspaper before it’s ruined. No matter

truck. I watch as it pulls into Sam’s—my neighbor’s—driveway. But my neighbor drives a Toyota Prius, so I know it’s not him, unless he got a new car. With his office geek appearance, he doesn’t really

engine turns off and it takes a minute for the driver to exit the vehicle. Then Deacon steps out of the driver’s side and my heart explodes

my god,” I

neighbor’s house. “Holy shit,

is. Don’t stare!” I grab her by the shoulders and

talking,”

“We are talking.”

so I can stare without being obvious I’m staring,”

“Fine. But hurry up. It’s freezing out

brother. He used to own the house, then sold it to Sam after he married. I remember sitting in my old tree house, watching as he loaded his boxes into the U-Haul, half tempted to go next door and put each box

mature, maybe, and thicker with muscle than I remember. Clearly that confident swagger never went away. That’s easy to tell even at this distance as he goes to the

squint to see better. Is that the top of a car seat I see in the

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