Chapter 7 Wakie Wakie
Lily's POV
I was up by six am and the house was still and cool and I moved through it quietly, learning its layout the way you learn any new space, carefully, paying attention. I found the cleaning supplies without much trouble, worked through the downstairs rooms, and had breakfast on the table before anyone else stirred.
Wade came down first, he sat and ate without a word or a glance in my direction, and went straight back upstairs.
I watched him go and said nothing.
Mia appeared twenty minutes later, hair unbrushed and eyes still soft with sleep, shuffling into the kitchen in her socks. She looked at the breakfast spread, then at me, and her face did the thing I was already beginning to love, that slow, full brightness, like a lamp warming up.
We ate together, then she took her bath and came back to the sitting room where I spread her books across the coffee table and we settled into her assignments side by side. She worked carefully, chewing the end of her pencil when a question gave her trouble, glancing at me occasionally for reassurance. I gave it every time she asked.
It was a peaceful morning.
Then I noticed how quiet the rest of the house was.
I glanced at the stairs, then at the clock on the wall, then back at the stairs.
It was past noon and Wade's still sleeping.
I excused myself from Mia with a finger held up and climbed the stairs to Wade's room. I pushed the door open without knocking, the way he had walked into mine last night, and looked inside.
He was flat on his back, one arm thrown over his face, completely and peacefully unconscious. The curtains were drawn and his phone was face down on the nightstand. His shoes were still on.
I stood in the doorway for a moment.
It was past noon, on a Saturday, With a pile of schoolwork waiting downstairs and a father who expected results and a nanny whose supervision was apparently supposed to mean something.
I turned around and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall. I filled a bucket to the top with cold water. I carried it back carefully, not spilling a drop, and stood beside his bed.
I took one breath and did the act.
"Wakie, Wakie, sleepyhead"
Then I poured the entire bucket directly over him.
The sound he made was not a word. It was something between a gasp and a shout that brought him bolt upright in the middle of his soaked bed, hair plastered flat, eyes wild, sheets drenched.
"Good afternoon," I said pleasantly.
"What the actual fuck?" He yelled
"Language," I said, holding up one finger.
He stared at me as water dripped from his chin. His chest rose and fell rapidly and then he grabbed the hem of his wet singlet and pulled it over his head in one smooth motion and I was abruptly presented with the kind of information I was not prepared for at noon on a Saturday.
I kept my face completely neutral, but this required more effort than I will ever admit to anyone.
He reached for the towel at the foot of his bed. Then he stopped and looked at me with an expression that shifted from fury into something slower and more deliberate, and he closed his hand around my wrist instead, pressing it lightly against his chest.
"If you wanted me wet," he said, voice low, "there are easier ways to ask."
I felt his heartbeat under my palm and removed my hand with a calm I did not entirely feel.
"Dry off," I said, placing the towel firmly into his hands. "You have homework."
"I am going to the beach" He tossed the towel back at me and turned away.
"I do not think so."
I caught his arm and turned him back around and we ended up closer than either of us had planned, his height filling the space between us, close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to look at him properly. I could feel the warmth coming off him and hear the steadiness of his breathing and for a moment neither of us said anything at all.
I took a step back and switched back to my formal tone.
"Beach after homework," I said. "That is how today works."
He looked at me for another second with an expression I could not fully decode. Then something shifted and he looked away first.
I went back downstairs.
Mia had finished two more questions by the time I settled back beside her. I checked her work, marked two answers that needed fixing and handed the book back with a thumbs up. She studied the corrections with a small focused frown that I found completely endearing.
Fifteen minutes later Wade came downstairs.
He had changed into dry clothes and was carrying his textbooks with the energy of someone doing the world a significant favour by existing. He dropped into the armchair across from us, opened a book to a random page, and stared at it.
I slid a sheet of questions across the table toward him without comment.
He picked it up. He looked at it, then looked at me.
Then he actually began working, which surprised me enough that I had to look at my own book to hide it.
The sitting room was quiet for a while. Mia worked steadily beside me. Wade worked across from us and I was aware, without looking up, that he kept glancing in my direction. Not the hostile, measuring looks from yesterday. Something different that I chose not to think about too carefully.
"Mia is done," I announced, checking her final answers. I gave her a firm thumbs up. She sat up straighter with visible pride.
I found two small errors and tapped them gently. She looked at them, nodded seriously, and got back to work.
Then Wade's book landed on the table in front of me.
"Done," he said.
I picked it up. Read through it carefully. He was not wrong that he was intelligent , the thinking was there, the understanding was there, but the execution was lazy. Skipped steps, rushed conclusions, the work of someone who knew the answer and could not be bothered to show how he got there.
I took my red pen and graded it accordingly.
I handed it back.
He looked at the grade and something moved across his face.
"You cannot be serious," he said.
"Your father expects improvement under my supervision. That means no lazy work. Do it again properly."
The book hit the table hard. Then his hands found the edges of the pages and before I could say anything he tore it straight down the middle and dropped the pieces in front of me.
"I do not take instruction from a slag," he said.
The word landed like a slap. I felt it. I knew he felt me feel it because something flickered briefly in his expression before he locked it down.
I looked at the torn pieces on the table for one moment. Then I looked up at him.
"You are very immature," I said.
He stood slowly, the way people stand when they want to take up as much space as possible, and walked around the table toward me.
"Does my nanny need to punish me?" he asked, his voice carrying that particular mockery I was beginning to know too well. "Go ahead then. Ground me. Spank me?" He leaned slightly closer. "I would love to see you try."
He was twirling his pen between his fingers as he said it, casual and unbothered, like this was all deeply amusing to him.
I reached out, took the pen from his hand mid-spin, and snapped it cleanly in two.
"I have just the right punishment in mind," I said.
And I walked out of the sitting room and left him standing there.