The Guardian's Angel

James I’ve only had guardianship of my three-month-old nephew, Grayson, for four days, and I’m already failing miserably. I don’t know how to help him since he refuses to eat and sleep until sheer exhaustion pulls him under for an hour or two at a time. I pace by the front door, waiting for my neighbor from across the street with children of her own to come over after she offered to help when she saw how panicked I was. Except it’s not her who appears on my front porch at midnight—it’s her daughter, Shayla…the woman I’ve been obsessed with since I moved into the neighborhood a year ago. She smiles sleepily in her pajamas and fuzzy pink slippers, haloed by the porch lights like an angel—my angel. Shayla My mysterious, older neighbor—the one I can’t stop ogling—offers me an afternoon babysitting job on the spot after I get Grayson to settle. I agree so long as I can bring my daughter, Lainey. James has a momentary freakout when he finds out that I’m a senior in high school, though I’m not sure why, but the stricken look is wiped from his face when I tell him I’m eighteen. The more time Lainey and I spend with James and Grayson, the harder it is to leave them at the end of each night, especially when James starts calling me his angel. The closer we get, the more we feel like a family—four pieces of a puzzle. But I can’t let myself continue to get lost in James, no matter how right it feels to be with him, because what we’re doing is risky. We’re playing with fire, and if we’re not careful, our four-piece puzzle will soon become five.