Page 10 of Daddy Knows Best

I didn’t want to stand—I was desperate for more.

My legs shook as I pushed upright. He offered a hand—bare now, warm—and I took it without thinking. His fingers wrapped around mine, steady and sure, pulling me to my feet with effortless strength. The contact lasted maybe three seconds. It seared itself into my memory like a brand.

"Same time next Thursday." He moved back behind his desk, already reaching for his tablet. Professional distance restored as if the last five minutes hadn't happened. "Bring every receipt from this week. Every coffee, every impulse purchase, every penny spent. We'll review them together."

"Right. Okay. I'll—yes." Words. I had forgotten how to make them work properly.

He looked up then, and for just a moment, that controlled mask slipped. Something hungry flickered in his expression before disappearing behind professional calm. "You did very well today, Emily. Better than I expected."

The praise shouldn't have made me want to kneel again. It did anyway.

"Thank you," I managed, gathering my purse with hands that only trembled slightly. "I'll see you Thursday."

"Thursday," he confirmed, already turning back to his work. Dismissal clear.

I made it to the door on autopilot, muscle memory navigating what my scrambled brain couldn't. The waiting room materialized around me like stepping between dimensions—soft watercolors and that damned coloring nook with its fruit-scented markers. So normal. So utterly at odds with what had just happened behind that closed door.

"All set, honey?" Ms. Delgado glanced up from her computer, and I swear to God she winked. Like she knew. Like everyone who walked out of that office carried the same shell-shocked expression I was desperately trying to hide.

"All set," I lied, signing whatever payment form she slid across the counter without really seeing it. "Thursday at four?"

"Already in the book." Her smile held too much knowing warmth. "Dr. Whitlow seems very optimistic about your treatment plan."

Treatment plan. Right. That's what we were calling it.

As I walked home, my bottom burned and my heart pounded harder than it had for years.

Chapter 3

Threetwenties—crispenoughtocut glass—a ten and a five that looked like it had survived a bar fight. I spread them across my kitchen counter, smoothing the wrinkled Lincoln with my thumb while Sir Reginald supervised from his perch on the microwave. Seventy-five dollars. My entire financial universe for the next seven days, contained in an envelope I'd labeled with Sharpie precision: WEEK ONE – ALLOWANCE $75.

The cash felt foreign between my fingers. When was the last time I'd actually touched money? Everything had been tap-to-pay for so long that these bills might as well have been Monopoly money. Except Monopoly money didn't make my stomach clench with the specific anxiety of scarcity.

"This is good for us," I told Sir Reginald, my gorgeous ginger tabby, who responded by licking his left paw with aristocratic indifference. "Structure. Accountability. All those things functional adults have."

I tucked the envelope into my purse's inner pocket—not the easily accessible front section where my dead credit cards lived,but deep inside where I'd have to dig for it. Deliberate barriers, the information that Dr. Whitlow gave me said. Make spending harder than not spending.

The mini notebook that he’d also insisted on nestled beside the envelope. Pocket-sized, with a pen attached by elastic loop. "Real-time tracking," it was called. I was to log every purchase, the moment it happens.

No exceptions.

My phone buzzed with the morning alarm. Time to test this new system in the real world.

North Point PR occupied the third floor of a converted bank building, all exposed brick and industrial windows. My cubicle sat in the middle of the open floor plan, close enough to smell whatever anyone microwaved but far enough from the windows to forget sunlight existed.

"Morning, Em!" Jade from accounts receivable waved from the coffee station. "Starbucks run in twenty if you want in."

The old Emily would have rattled off a complicated order involving three pumps of this and extra foam that. New Emily—Week One Emily—had a thermos of home-brewed coffee warming in her bag.

"I'm good, thanks." The words felt like speaking a foreign language.

I powered up my ancient Dell, watching the loading screen inch along while the office filled with the usual Monday morning sounds. Keyboards clacking, the printer already jamming, someone definitely watching TikToks without headphones.

The morning blurred into client emails and social media scheduling. My coffee ran out by ten-thirty, which is when the vending machine in the break room started its siren call. It hummed with that particular frequency that bypassed rational thought and went straight to the part of my brain that equated caffeine with survival.

I stood in front of it, dollar bills limp in my hand. The machine's LED display cheerfully informed me that a bottle of cold brew cost $3.25. Highway robbery, but less than Starbucks. The old Emily would have swiped her card without thinking, maybe grabbed a bag of chips too because why not?

But New Emily had a notebook. A notebook designed to make me feel guilty.

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