Nanny State
"Hired to care for his children. She ends up caring for him. His wife never suspects."
The interview is at three.
I arrive ten minutes early, as instructed. The house is exactly what I expected from the listing—Neo-Seattle money, all glass and steel and automated everything, the kind of place that costs more per month than I made in a year before everything fell apart.
The wife meets me at the door.
Crystalline Hayes. Thirty-two. Corporate VP at some biotech firm I've never heard of. She's exactly what the society feeds show—thin, polished, augmented to perfection. Her smile is precise. Her handshake is brief.
"Ms. Okonjo? I'm Crystalline. Thank you for coming."
"Of course."
"The children are with their father in the garden. Let me show you around."
The house is immaculate.
Everything in its place, nothing out of order, the kind of sterile perfection that makes you afraid to touch anything. Two children—twins, six years old, a boy and a girl—are playing outside while their father watches from a bench.
And their father—
Marcus Hayes is not what I expected.
Thirty-five, according to the file. But he looks older, wearier, like something has hollowed him out from the inside. He's handsome in a tired way—dark hair, kind eyes, the build of someone who used to exercise but stopped somewhere along the way.
He looks at his wife like he's waiting for her to leave.
"Marcus, this is Rosa Okonjo. The candidate I mentioned."
He stands. Shakes my hand. His grip is warm, lingers half a second too long.
"Nice to meet you, Rosa." His voice is different from his wife's—softer, genuine, like he actually means it. "The twins are Marcus Jr. and Lily. They're... enthusiastic."
"I can handle enthusiastic."
His smile is surprised. Real.
Crystalline checks her phone. "I have a call in ten. Rosa, I'll have HR send over the contract. Start date is Monday. Six to eight, live-in, with weekends flexible depending on our schedule."
She's gone before I can respond.
Marcus watches her go with an expression I recognize.
I've worn it myself.
I'm forty-seven years old.
Divorced twice. No children of my own—a medical issue that ended my first marriage and haunted my second. I've been a nanny for twenty years, caring for other people's families when I couldn't build one of my own.
I'm also two-twenty. Thick everywhere, soft and heavy and nothing like the women who usually orbit men like Marcus Hayes. My skin is dark and rich, my hair is cropped short and natural, my body is a landscape of curves that I stopped apologizing for sometime in my thirties.
I'm not what anyone hires for ornament.
But children love me.
And apparently, so does Marcus.
The first month is professional.
I care for the twins—brilliant, lonely children who attach to me like I'm the first adult who's ever really seen them. Their mother is a phantom, always working, always traveling, always somewhere more important. Their father is present but distant, watching them with a love he doesn't know how to express.
He watches me too.
I pretend not to notice.
I notice that he comes home early when his wife is traveling. That he lingers in the kitchen while I make the twins' dinner. That he asks me questions—about my life, my past, my opinions—like he's starving for conversation with someone who isn't trying to network.
"You're different from the other nannies," he says one evening.
The twins are in bed. His wife is in Tokyo. We're sharing a bottle of wine in his kitchen like two people who shouldn't be doing this.
"Different how?"
"You actually like them. The twins." He turns his glass, watching the light refract. "Most of the candidates Crystalline interviews... they see the house, the salary, the connections. They see an opportunity."
"And what do you see when you look at them?"
"I see my children." His voice is raw. "I see the only good thing to come out of my marriage."
I should stop this. Should remember my place, my profession, the lines that exist for good reason.
"You're not happy," I say instead.
"No." He looks at me, and there's something broken in his eyes. "I haven't been happy in years."
It starts slowly.
A touch on my shoulder when he passes. A look that lingers too long. His hand finding mine in the dark of the hallway, squeezing once, then releasing like it never happened.
He never says anything explicit. Never crosses the line that can't be uncrossed. But we both know what's building between us—this electricity that crackles every time we're in the same room.
I should leave.
Should find another position, protect my reputation, remember that affairs with employers end in disaster. I've seen it happen to other nannies. I know better.
But I don't leave.
Because when he looks at me, he doesn't see the help. He sees me—Rosa, the woman, with her curves and her kindness and her loneliness that mirrors his own.
And God help me, I want him to keep looking.
Three months in, it happens.
Crystalline is in Singapore. The twins are at a sleepover. And Marcus finds me in the kitchen at midnight, unable to sleep, wearing a robe over nothing because I wasn't expecting company.
"Rosa." His voice is rough. Desperate. "I can't do this anymore."
"Do what?"
"Pretend." He moves toward me, and I see the decision in his eyes—the line he's about to cross. "Pretend I don't think about you constantly. Pretend I don't imagine—"
"We can't."
"I know."
"Your wife—"
"Hasn't touched me in two years." He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel his heat. "Hasn't looked at me the way you do. Hasn't made me feel anything except invisible."
"I'm your nanny."
"You're the first person who's made me want to be alive in longer than I can remember." His hands find my shoulders, grip gently. "Tell me to stop, Rosa. Tell me this is wrong, that you don't feel it too, and I'll walk away. I'll never mention it again."
I should tell him to stop.
I should.
"I feel it too," I hear myself say. "Every goddamn day."
He kisses me.
His mouth is hungry.
Desperate. Starving. Like a man who's been denied for years and finally found sustenance. His hands push open my robe, find the curves beneath, and the sound he makes—
"God, Rosa—"
"Don't stop." I'm pulling at his shirt, his belt, everything between us. "Don't you dare stop—"
He lifts me onto the kitchen counter. I'm exposed now—robe gone, breasts heavy and bare, thighs spreading for him as he steps between them. He stares at my body like he's never seen anything so beautiful.
"You're incredible." His hands trace up my sides, cupping my breasts, thumbs circling my nipples. "I've been imagining this for months—"
"Then stop imagining." I reach for him, find him hard and straining. "And take what you want."
He takes.
He enters me on the kitchen counter of the house he shares with his wife.
It's wrong. It's fucked. It's the most alive I've felt in decades.
He fills me completely—thick and hard and desperate, thrusting into me with the force of years of denial. I wrap my thick thighs around his waist, pull him deeper, feel his mouth find my neck, my breasts, everywhere.
"You feel—fuck—Rosa—"
"Harder. I can take it."
He gives me harder. Pins me against the counter and pounds into me, one hand gripping my hip, the other wrapped around my breast. The sounds we make fill the empty kitchen—wet, obscene, impossible to explain.
"I've wanted this so long," he gasps. "Wanted you—"
"You have me." I pull his face to mine, kiss him while he fucks me. "You have me, Marcus. For as long as you want me."
He comes with a groan that sounds like relief.
I come with a scream I muffle against his shoulder.
And somewhere in the sterile perfection of his loveless home, two people find something they never should have touched.
It becomes our secret.
Every time Crystalline travels—which is often—Marcus finds me. In my room, in his bed, in every corner of the house that belongs to his wife. We fuck like we're making up for lost time, like every touch is precious, like the world outside these walls doesn't exist.
"I'm going to leave her," he says one night.
We're in my bed—the narrow nanny's bed in the quarters above the garage. His arms are around me, his face pressed against my breasts, breathing me in like he's memorizing my scent.
"Marcus—"
"I can't keep doing this. Living a lie. Sleeping next to someone who doesn't know I exist." He lifts his head, looks at me with those tired, beautiful eyes. "I want something real. I want you."
"It's not that simple. The children—"
"Will be fine. Better, even. Growing up in a house without love is worse than growing up between two homes." He cups my face. "I've already talked to a lawyer. Crystalline will fight for assets, but not custody. She doesn't want the inconvenience."
"You've already—"
"I've been planning this for weeks. I just needed to know—" He pauses. "—if you'd be there. On the other side. If this isn't just sex for you."
I stare at him. This man I never should have touched. This employer I should have kept at arm's length. This father whose children have become like my own.
"It's not just sex," I admit. "It hasn't been for months."
"Then let me leave her. Let me choose you. Openly, publicly, properly."
I should say no.
I say yes.
The divorce is brutal but brief.
Crystalline is furious—not about losing Marcus, but about losing face. The society feeds have a field day: Corporate VP's husband leaves her for the nanny. Plus-size childcare worker steals biotech heiress's family.
Let them talk.
Because the children are happy. Happier than they've ever been, spending their days between their father's new apartment and the woman who actually raised them. And Marcus—
Marcus is alive.
"I love you," he tells me on the day his divorce is finalized. "I should have said it months ago. Years ago. I should have never married her in the first place."
"You wouldn't have the twins."
"No." He pulls me close, and I feel his heart beating against mine. "I wouldn't. So maybe everything happened exactly as it needed to. Maybe I had to get lost to find you."
"That's very philosophical."
"I've had time to think." He kisses me—soft, tender, nothing like the desperate hunger of our early days. "About what I want. About who I want to be. And all of it—all of it—involves you."
We marry on a Tuesday.
Small ceremony. Just the twins, a few friends, a judge who doesn't care about the scandal. I wear cream. He wears a suit that makes him look ten years younger. And when we say our vows—
"I promise to see you," he says. "Every day. Forever."
I cry.
The society feeds update their story: Former nanny becomes Mrs. Hayes. Stepmother to twins. Living happily in the ruins of a corporate marriage.
They're wrong about the ruins.
We built something new. Something real. Something that started in betrayal but grew into the most honest relationship either of us has ever known.
The other woman. The empty husband. The children who needed love.
All of us, together, in a house that's finally a home.
Forever.