Riley laughed from behind me. “Don’t be such a whiner. I’m working out the tight muscles.”
A high-pitched moan escaped from me. She was trying to rip my shoulders off. “Ow. This isn’t helping.”
“It will help; you just have to relax. Take a deep breath.”
I tried to take a deep breath, but halfway into pulling in fresh air, she started poking at my shoulders with renewed fervor.
“No more!” I wheezed.
She laughed and started rubbing my shoulders fast enough to burn the skin. “I just feel so terrible for tricking you onto that lawn mower. I’ll make it all better.”
I stood up abruptly and stepped out of reach of those treacherous hands. “I think it’s all better now, no thanks to you.”
She came around the back of the chair. “Now, I can see how sore your back is. You need to let me help you. You might need help.”
I turned around and jogged toward my house. “I’d love to stay and hang out, but I’d better go home and rest.”
She followed after me, an evil sparkle in her eyes. This was not good. “I’ll help you get comfortable. You might need someone to help stretch your back.”
“Oh, no! I’ve got it just fine!” I assured her as I ran up my steps. She followed right behind me.
Under any other circumstances, I would have been thrilled—ecstatic, even—to have Riley chasing after me. But when it was under threat of a back rub, it was a different thing entirely. I opened the door and slipped inside, hurrying to shut the door.
She managed to get a leg inside. I grabbed her knee and pushed it back outside. “You’re so sweet to want to help me, but I’ve got to run!”
“How are you going to run with a hurt back?”
“With great difficulty, I’m sure!” I planted my hand on her face and gently pushed her out of my house. I shut and locked the door. Barely.
I stretched my shoulder and tried to gently massage them myself. Riley had done more damage than the lawn mower had.
“Should I come check on you in the morning?”
“Are you going to try to rub my back?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Okay, you can come check on me. I’ll make you my special Spam-and-powdered-egg breakfast burrito! Bring Wren; she won’t want to miss out on that deliciousness.”
Chapter EightRiley
I didn’t go eat breakfast with Nate the next morning. I didn’t want him thinking I was enjoying his company—even if I was. It was more important than ever that he leave. He was settling in too much.
I stopped pacing my small bedroom. The two-foot-wide space between the bed and the wall didn’t give me much room to work with. I was practically turning in circles.
He knew. Nate knew what I did. I’m not sure how he figured it out, but last night, while Wren and I watched a BBC movie, I’d checked my notifications. I had a couple hundred from Nate.
He’d commented with things like, ‘Nice,’ ‘Pretty,’ ‘Look at that sunset.’
Unfortunately, the sunset he’d mention had been photoshopped into the picture. Maybe he knew it was. Maybe he didn’t.
No matter what, I needed to work. That would help me get my mind off my problems.
I grabbed my camera from the shelf above my bed. I slung it around my neck. Next, I grabbed my small hand shovel and pink gardening gloves from the basket beneath the bed. Time to take some pictures of my new succulent planter.
I opened the front door with my free hand and hurried down the steps.
Nate was leaning against the side of my Jeep, peering through the windows.
“What are you doing?”
He spun around to face me. A pair of aviators hid his eyes. The sunlight played tricks on his brown hair, giving it an auburn tint. I knew if I were to peel those sunglasses off, his green eyes would be sparkling. The sun always made those unearthly green eyes sparkle. It was a Mercier trait. Nola had them, too. They’d inherited them from their father, Sebastian Mercier.
“Just wondering if you were as much of a slob now as you were in high school. Your house was clean. I was wondering if you were faking it.” He smiled. Now, his smile he had inherited from his mother. But that teasing lilt in his voice came from his father.
I owed Sebastian a favor of mammoth proportions. He had spoken with me the day I ran. He knew he couldn’t stop me, but he made me take some money to start a life for Wren and me. He had told me, “Come home when you can.”
I promised him I would. Someday, I would go see a therapist and work through my fear of being left, but right now, I didn’t have the time. Having someone understand my need to leave and have some space had been soothing to my soul.
If Nate’s questions had shown me anything, it was that Sebastian had kept my secret. I was long overdue to call him. The money he’d given me had been enough to give me a jumpstart on life with Wren. I’d bought us a nice travel trailer, picked up a job at the market, and built my Instagram following.
From there, I’d worked on creating enough of a following that I was able to quit work at the Quik Mart. Now I was a lifestyle influencer. Fashion, design, anything people bought, I tried to influence.
This from the girl who lived in overalls and baseball caps in middle school.
The design, the plants...that part I really loved. The fashion, not so much. But it made up a large portion of my income. If my followers saw a selfie of me wearing a cute blouse, a lot of them would buy it through my links, giving me a nice affiliate commission.
People wondered how you made a living as an influencer. Easy. You convince someone they need to buy something. What most people didn’t know, was that I made money off of everything they
