Chapter 9
M orning hit like a slap. Not the gentle, rise-and-shine kind—more like the get-up-or-lose-your-business variety.
I’d managed maybe forty-five minutes of real sleep before my alarm went off, thanks to the overnight birth that left me smelling like lavender water and … well, things you can’t bottle and sell.
I rolled into The Nesting Place on caffeine fumes and muscle memory, dumped my doula bag behind the counter, and went straight into my Newborn Care for First-Time Dads class.
And no, I hadn’t been exaggerating to Atticus—some of these men could fall asleep mid–diaper demonstration like it was an Olympic sport.
Pass out didn’t mean faint. It meant full-on, head-tilted-back, drooling-on-the-onesie-snugger nap.
My job was to keep them conscious long enough to learn the difference between a swaddle and a burrito wrap.
I slipped into the back room, peeled off my top, and reached for the clean blouse I kept in a garment bag. As I stepped out of my leggings, I noticed it—a tiny, round opening up high, where the drywall met the top of the storage shelves. No bigger than a quarter.
For a beat, I froze.
Ridiculous thought, right? But it still hit me like a jolt—what if there was a camera behind it? What if Atticus Carver, in all his silent, alpha glory, was watching me right now?
The air felt different suddenly, heavier. My mind raced back to last night, to the way his gaze locked onto mine across the crowd, like he’d been memorizing me.
I stood there, half-dressed, staring at that opening until my pulse started to kick.
Then I shook it off. Exhaustion makes you imagine things. There was no way—absolutely no way—that a man like him could have a camera in here without me knowing.
Right?
I tugged on the blouse, smoothed it over my hips, and told myself to forget it. But the image stuck—Atticus leaning back somewhere, watching. Not smiling. Just knowing.
Returning to the front of the store, I busied myself with folding a stack of muslin swaddles, pretending that the tiny hole in the drywall wasn’t still whispering to me from the back room.
The bell over the shop door chimed, and for a split second, my stomach dipped—reflex more than reason—but it was only a young mom with a stroller and a look of wide-eyed desperation.
She needed a baby wrap “like, yesterday,” and I was grateful for the distraction.
By the time she left, sunlight was slanting hard through the front windows, the kind that made the polished wood floor glow honey-gold. I moved to adjust a display when something caught at the edge of my vision.
Out on the sidewalk.
Leaning against the lamppost.
Atticus.
Black T-shirt stretched across his broad chest, sleeves hugging biceps that made the fabric strain. He wasn’t looking at his phone. Wasn’t pretending to check his watch. Just … watching my store. Watching me .
It was almost worse than if he’d come inside. At least, then I’d know what he wanted, why he was here. But this—this was calculated. A power play. He was giving me time to notice him, to feel him out there like a static charge pressing against the glass.
I bent to straighten a shelf, heart thudding in my ears. When I glanced up again, he was still there, his weight balanced on one leg, the other bent slightly as if he had nowhere in the world to be but right there.
My mouth was dry. My palms were damp. I told myself I was being dramatic, that people stood on sidewalks all the time. But deep down, I knew better.
He was waiting.
The next customer took her sweet time picking out a pacifier set. I rang her up without ever turning my head toward the window, but my awareness of him was like heat on the back of my neck.
When the door closed behind her, I let myself look.
Still there.
I crossed to the counter and pretended to check my appointment book. This was insane. I should just go out there and ask what he wanted.
But I didn’t.
I made another lap around the shop, fiddling with displays, moving a basket two inches to the left, flipping a burp cloth so the stitching faced forward. Each time I drifted near the front window, I felt the pull of him—steady, unblinking.
The minutes stretched. A delivery truck rolled past, blocking my view for a heartbeat. When it cleared, he was still there, hands in his pockets now, head tipped slightly like he could hear my pulse from where he stood.
The air in here was too warm. Or maybe that was me.
I caught my reflection in the glass of the front display and winced.
My blouse was clean enough, sure, but my skin looked sallow under the overhead lights, my eyes ringed with shadows from the birth that had stolen my night.
My hair—God, my hair—had been shoved into a knot hours ago, and no amount of smoothing it down was going to disguise the frizz haloing my head.
I looked like what I was: a woman who’d been up all night wiping sweat and tears and other things from someone else’s body, then rolling into her shop on caffeine and hope.
This was the truth of me. Not the polished version he’d first seen at the party, where the lighting was dim, the champagne fizzing, and my laugh had come easier because I wasn’t exhausted to the bone.
Then, I’d looked put together, maybe even desirable.
That girl in the dress—she was a facade, a version of me I could only hold onto for a few fleeting hours at a time.
Would he see the difference? Would he notice the circles under my eyes, the smudge of mascara I hadn’t bothered to fix, the way my posture sagged with fatigue? And if he did, would it matter?
The ugly truth pressed harder than I wanted to admit: I wanted him to like me like this, too.
I wanted him to want the real, messy, unfiltered me—the woman who smelled faintly of antiseptic and milk, who kept spare clothes in the back room because she never knew what she might get splattered with on a call, who survived on black coffee and granola bars half the time.
But I’d been burned before by men who liked the shiny version of me and recoiled when they realized the work, the grit, the exhaustion that came with it.
My chest tightened as the thought burrowed deeper. Maybe he’d stand there and stare all day, but once he saw me up close, once the sharpness of his gaze took in all the flaws I couldn’t hide, maybe he’d lose interest. Maybe I’d already lost whatever edge I’d had at that party.
I tugged at the hem of my blouse, trying to stretch it straighter, smoother. Pointless. There was no hiding the fact that I was worn out, and my pulse jumped at the thought of him seeing me this way.
Finally, I snapped.
Enough.
I slipped out from behind the counter, my sandals loud against the floor, and pushed open the door. The humid Charleston air hit me like a wall.
He didn’t move. Didn’t greet me. Just let his gaze travel slowly from my hair to my hips, like he was memorizing every inch.
“You planning to come in?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
“Not yet.”
The answer landed low in my belly. “You’ve been standing here forever.”
He gave a ghost of a smile. “I’ve been standing here long enough for you to notice. That’s all that matters.”
My throat tightened. “Why?”
He ignored the question. “You busy?”
I crossed my arms. “I have a shop to run.”
His eyes flicked to the door behind me, then back. “Close it.”
The nerve. “It’s the middle of the day.”
“Close it,” he repeated, not louder, but heavier.
I should have said no. Should have laughed and gone back inside. Instead, I hesitated just long enough for him to read it.
He stepped closer, closing the space between us until the scent of his skin was in my lungs.
“You’re going to come with me,” he said. Not a question. Not even a demand. Just fact.
My fingers tightened on my own elbows. “Where?”
“You’ll see.”
Every instinct screamed at me not to follow a man I barely knew. But another voice—the one that remembered the feel of his eyes on me at the party, the one that still pulsed with curiosity over that text—leaned forward, hungry.
“I can’t just?—”
He cut me off with the smallest tilt of his head. “You can.”
We stared at each other for a long beat, the heat between us stretching tight like a wire.
Finally, I said, “I need fifteen minutes.”
The smile that touched his mouth was gone before I could be sure it was there. “I’ll be here.”
I turned back toward the shop, my knees suddenly unsteady. Inside, I shut the door and pressed my hands flat against the counter.
Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes to decide whether I was the kind of woman who locked her shop in the middle of the day to follow a man who wouldn’t even tell her where they were going.
I already knew the answer.
I stared at the register, my reflection faint in the glossy surface, and tried to catch my breath.
My fingers tapped against the countertop like I could drum out a rhythm that would make sense of the mess in my chest. Fifteen minutes wasn’t enough—not for a shower, not for a mental reset, not for any version of me that might look presentable enough to stand next to Atticus Carver.
And yet, it was all the time I had.
I thought about calling someone—anyone—just to ground myself. To tell another human being what I was about to do. Safety check, accountability, all the sensible words people used in podcasts about surviving in a world where bad things happened to women who thought they could handle themselves.
For a second, my thumb hovered over Alana’s name in my phone.
She would’ve answered, no hesitation. She would’ve told me not to be an idiot, to lock the door, to remember who I was and what I had to lose.
But Alana wasn’t me, and her voice—though steady and smart—wouldn’t hold me when the loneliness pressed in after I hung up.
I scrolled further, stopped at Stephan.
My brother was the last person I wanted to involve in anything resembling my love life, but he was also the one person who knew me well enough to hear my tone and believe me if I said something wasn’t right. Plus, I’d told him about Alpha Mail.
My thoughts rambled as I oscillated between concerns.
What if I needed extra time away—more than fifteen minutes, more than an afternoon? What if this thing with Atticus grew into something larger, something I couldn’t step away from as easily as I stepped out of the shop to attend a birth?
I’d always handled everything by myself.
The Nesting Place, the doula work, the classes, the late-night calls.
All mine. I’d debated hiring an assistant more times than I could count—someone to watch the shop, to ring up pacifiers and swaddle blankets while I ran across town to catch a baby making its entrance.
Every time, I’d talked myself out of it.
Money was tight, sure, but deeper than that was my control.
My need to prove I could do it alone. That I didn’t need anyone.
But standing here now, feeling the weight of Atticus’s presence just beyond the glass, I finally wished I had someone on payroll to lock the door and mind the register so I could walk away without guilt.
I was getting ahead of myself.
I hit Stephan’s name.
He answered on the third ring, his voice rough with sleep. “Sim? It’s the middle of the day, why do you sound like it’s 3 a.m.?”
“Why do you?” I replied.
I chewed my lip. “I’m going out with someone.”
A pause, just long enough for my heart to trip. “With who?”
I hesitated. Atticus’s name pressed against the inside of my mouth, heavy and impossible. But no—I couldn’t give it to him. Not when they were friends. Not when I wasn’t sure if this man standing outside my shop window was my Alpha Mail fantasy or something else entirely.
“I think … it’s the Alpha Mail guy,” I said instead. “I’m not sure.”
The silence sharpened. “Simone, are you kidding me? You’re just going to walk out with a stranger you met on the internet?”
“It’ll probably be fine,” I rushed, hating the way my voice wobbled. “I’ll have my phone. I just didn’t want you to worry if I didn’t pick up for a few hours.”
“Probably fine? That’s not?—”
“I have to go,” I cut him off, too aware of the minutes ticking away. “I’ll call you later.”
“Sim—”
I hung up. My hand shook as I set the phone on the counter, my chest tight with the sound of his alarm still echoing in my ear.
I drew in a breath, straightened my blouse, and pushed the door open again.
Atticus was exactly where I’d left him, as if he hadn’t moved an inch. His eyes found me instantly, no wandering, no delay. It was unnerving, that single-minded focus. Like there was no one else in Charleston. Just me.
“I’ll need a shower before I go anywhere,” I told him, trying for casual.
His gaze flicked down my body, slow enough to make my skin prickle. “Then take one.”
The words landed like steel—no hesitation, no question, just certainty.