All Chapters of Nanny To My highschool Nemesis : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Brooklyn's POVPatrick's voice carried clearly from the entrance hallway."It's a wonderful idea." He said it with the warm certainty of a man who had decided something and was now watching it happen. "You two could use the time. Get to know each other properly."I stopped moving in the kitchen and listened without meaning to."They'll be married someday." Patrick said it the way he said most things — not as a question, not as a suggestion. Just a fact he had already filed. "Better to start building something now."James Holloway agreed immediately, the enthusiasm of a father who has been hoping for this outcome for longer than he's admitted.Mrs. Holloway said something warm and approving.And Riley said, "I think that's a great idea."I started moving again. Plates to the cupboard. Glasses in the rack. Normal things.I was not listening.I was absolutely listening.---I came through to the entrance hallway to collect the last of the glasses just as the Holloways were leaving. Riley

Brooklyn's POVThe knock came just after one in the morning.I had been half asleep — that shallow kind where you're aware of the house around you but not fully in it. I heard the knock and came to properly and lay still for a moment thinking I had imagined it.It came again.I sat up and reached for the lamp on my nightstand."Just a second."I got up, pulled the door open, and blinked against the hallway light.Riley was standing outside my door.She was wearing Emerson's t-shirt. I recognised it immediately — dark grey, slightly too large on her, the same one I had seen hanging over his desk chair earlier this week. Her hair was down and her makeup had been carefully redone at some point in the last few hours, the kind of effort that says I was waiting and I wanted to look like I hadn't been.She looked at me. Then past me into my room."Have you seen Emerson?" she said.I kept my face completely still. "No.""He hasn't come to bed." She said it plainly, without making it a complai

Brooklyn's POVI came downstairs at the wrong moment.I had told myself to stay in my room. I had told myself to make my bed and brush my teeth and give whatever was happening on the ground floor enough time to finish happening before I inserted myself into it. I had been very clear with myself about this.Then I heard Patrick's voice, low and controlled, and I needed a glass of water from the kitchen and I made the mistake of taking the main stairs.They were in the entrance hallway.Patrick with his coffee, still. Riley with her bag and her dress over her arm and her spine very straight. They both looked up when I appeared at the bottom of the stairs.Patrick looked at me briefly and then back at Riley.Riley looked at me.She didn't say anything. She didn't gesture or move or make any obvious communication. She just looked at me with those steady, assessing eyes and held it for a second longer than a glance — long enough to be deliberate, long enough to send something without using

Brooklyn's POVI heard him before I reached the top of the stairs.Something hit a wall. Then something else. Then a sound that was lower and more animal than breaking things — the sound of someone who has run out of ways to hold it together and has stopped trying.I didn't knock.I pushed his door open and walked in.The room was halfway destroyed. A lamp on the floor. Books off the shelf. His desk chair on its side. He was standing in the middle of it with his back to me and his shoulders heaving and his hands at his sides, empty now, nothing left to throw."Emerson."He didn't turn around.I crossed the room.He heard me coming and turned then — fast, defensive, the way he turned when he expected something to be taken from him."Get out," he said."No.""Brooklyn — "I reached for him.He stepped back. "Don't.""Emerson." I kept moving forward until there was no more back for him to go and his shoulders were against the wall and I was standing in front of him with both hands out. "

Brooklyn's POVThe whole class was watching.I could feel every single pair of eyes and every single phone pointed in our direction and Jordan still on one knee looking up at me with an expression that was going to be very difficult to say no to in front of thirty people without it becoming the kind of story that follows a person through the rest of their time at Westfield Academy.I thought about Emerson's door closing this morning.I thought about get out.I stood up from my desk.Jordan tracked me as I moved around to his side. His expression shifted slightly — reading me, trying to figure out what was coming. I reached out my hand.He looked at it.Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box. He opened it and lifted out a delicate gold necklace — thin chain, small pendant, simple and careful and chosen by someone who had paid attention.He stood up.He held it out to me.I turned around and lifted my hair from my neck and he fastened it from behind. When I tu