Chapter Two #3
I nod but continue making her bottle. Over the past few days, I’ve learned that Ella likes to eat about every four hours.
Everything has been trial and error. Andi left me exactly zero instructions—no pediatrician’s name, no allergy information, no preferred brand of anything.
Just a baby, a half-empty bag of diapers, and two words scrawled on the back of a gas station receipt.
“There’s bottled water in the pantry.” He nods to the door at the end of the kitchen.
I grab a bottle and begin mixing the formula, trying to remember the ratio from the side of the tub. Is it one scoop per two ounces or two scoops per four ounces? I’ve been winging it, and so far Ella hasn’t complained, but she also can’t talk, so maybe she has.
“Are you hungry?” Alexei asks. “You just got off work . . . I have pretzels, crackers, fruit, or I could make you a frozen pizza.”
My stomach rumbles so loudly that we both hear it, and my cheeks burn. “That would be great, actually. Just something simple. Pretzels would be fine.”
When the bottle is ready, Alexei reaches for it, clearly uninterested in putting Ella down.
I’m not sure why it surprises me that he’d like to feed her.
He settles against the counter with Ella cradled in the crook of his arm, the bottle tilted at the perfect angle, and she latches on immediately, making those tiny, desperate sucking sounds that mean she was hungrier than I realized.
He really is a natural with babies. And even though I probably shouldn’t, part of me just feels comfortable in his presence. It’s unexpected and a little alarming, but I’m not going to fight it tonight. I’m too tired to fight anything tonight.
“Would you mind if I took a shower? I actually feel kind of gross after I work.”
“Not at all. Second doorway on the right. The towels are in the cabinet. Help yourself.”
I nod, but then hesitate.
“I’ve got her, Ryleigh. You don’t have to worry.”
I haven’t had someone to help—someone to just be there for me—in so long that those words hit me harder than they should. I have to turn away quickly because the roller coaster I’ve been on since Andi left me with Ella is threatening to surface, and I’m not ready to fall apart in front of this man.
“Thanks,” I say, and duck out of the kitchen before he can see my eyes getting glassy.
The bathroom is ridiculous.
Like, absurdly, offensively nice. Heated tile floors. A glass shower the size of my bedroom with one of those rainfall showerheads and a separate handheld one. Fluffy white towels stacked in a built-in cabinet. A marble countertop with actual soap that doesn’t come from a dollar store.
I turn on the water and wait for it to heat up, which takes about four seconds. In my apartment, I wait three to five minutes for lukewarm water that becomes hot for exactly ten minutes before going cold again. Here, steam is already rising from the glass.
When I step under the spray, I almost groan out loud. The water pressure is incredible—strong and steady and hot, pounding against my shoulders like a massage. I just stand there for a minute with my eyes closed, letting it wash over me.
That’s when it hits me.
All of it. The weight of the past four days—the past two years, if I’m being honest—crashes into me with the force of something I’ve been holding back for too long. The water runs over my face, and I press both hands flat against the cool tile wall, and I cry.
Not the pretty kind. The ugly, body-shaking kind, with my mouth open and no sound coming out because I’ve gotten very good at crying silently. And now I’m doing it in a stranger’s shower, surrounded by more luxury than I’ve ever touched, and the contrast is so brutal that it makes me cry harder.
I cry about my parents. About the scholarship I lost. About Andi disappearing and reappearing and disappearing again, leaving me with a baby I don’t know how to care for.
About the eviction notice I know is coming, and the heat I can’t afford, and the fact that the most kindness I’ve received in two years came from a man I met on a street corner at midnight.
I let the water carry all of it away, until the tears stop and my breathing slows, and I’m just standing under the stream feeling empty and clean.
Then I wash my hair with the shampoo that’s in the shower—something that smells expensive and woodsy—and scrub my skin until the smoke and sweat from the club are gone.
When I finally turn off the water and wrap myself in one of those ridiculous towels—it’s so soft I want to steal it—I feel clean and somehow lighter. Like I left something under that water that I don’t have to carry anymore. At least not tonight.
I change into my purple boxer shorts and oversized T-shirt, wring out my wet hair over the sink, and take a breath.
Then I hear it.
Through the bathroom door, muffled but unmistakable—Alexei’s voice, low and deep and gentle, singing. Not in English. Russian, I think. The melody is slow, almost like a lullaby, and his voice has this warm, rolling quality to it that I didn’t expect from someone his size. He’s singing to Ella.
I press my hand flat against the door and just listen.
I don’t understand the words, but it doesn’t matter.
The melody is achingly tender—the kind of song that’s been passed down through generations, sung by mothers and grandmothers over cribs in countries I’ve never seen.
He’s singing it to a baby who isn’t his, a baby he met two hours ago, and the sincerity of it makes my eyes sting all over again.
I stand there longer than I should, my forehead almost resting against the door, letting the sound of his voice wash over me the way the water did.
There’s something about a man’s voice going soft for a baby.
Something about the deep baritone gentled to barely above a whisper.
It undoes something in me that I’ve kept locked up for a long time.
When the singing tapers off, I clear my throat and open the door.
He’s on the couch with Ella cradled in his arms, her eyes heavy and half-closed. Her tiny fingers are wrapped around his index finger, and the sight of it—her impossibly small hand gripping his impossibly large one—nearly takes me out at the knees.
“Hey,” he says, his lips turning up in a smirk. “Your shower okay?” His gaze wanders from mine down to my bare legs, and then back up. It’s quick, but I catch it.
My cheeks turn pink, and I tug at the hem of my T-shirt even though it already hits mid-thigh. I nod and join him on the couch, tucking my legs underneath me and keeping a cushion of space between us. “That showerhead is seven-ways-to-Sunday amazing.”
He chuckles. “Completely agree. That showerhead alone is worth double its price when you need to relax.”
He places Ella so she’s reclining on the couch between us, propped up by her new Boppy pillow and swaddled in her blanket like a little stuffed burrito. She looks content for the first time all night—pacifier moving slowly, eyes drifting.
“She took the whole bottle, and then I changed her. She should be ready for bed anytime.”
“You changed her?” He changed her diaper. While I was crying in his shower, this man fed a baby, burped her, changed her diaper, and sang her a Russian lullaby. “Thank you.”
I give Ella’s tiny pajama-covered foot a squeeze, and it’s only then that I notice the spread on the coffee table. A white platter with green grapes, sliced cheese, pretzels, and hummus. Everything is arranged on the plate neatly, like he actually put thought into it.
“You didn’t have to do all that.” My voice comes out softer than I intended. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t any trouble.”
I help myself, popping a grape into my mouth.
It’s cold and sweet, and I realize I haven’t eaten anything since a handful of fries I stole from a customer’s leftover plate during my shift.
That was over eight hours ago. I try to eat slowly, casually, like I’m not ravenous, but I’m pretty sure I’m failing because Alexei is watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“This place is amazing,” I say between bites, scanning the room again. The floor-to-ceiling windows. The art on the walls. The kitchen that probably has more square footage than my entire apartment. “How long have you lived here?”
He considers my question, still watching me. “I moved to the city about three years ago.”
“For work?”
He nods.
“What do you do?”
A beat of hesitation, so brief I almost miss it. “I play for the Chicago Hawks.”
It takes me a moment to process this. I’m not a sports person—not in the slightest. I don’t watch football.
I don’t follow basketball. I couldn’t name a single player on any team in any league if my life depended on it.
But even I know the Chicago Hawks are the pro football team, because their logo is plastered all over the city.
“What position?”
“Linebacker.”
I guess that explains why he’s so huge. He’s several inches over six feet tall and at least a couple hundred pounds of solid muscle. The couch dips noticeably on his side.
“Ah. It makes sense now.” I pop another pretzel in my mouth, chewing slowly.
“What does?” he asks, lifting one dark brow.
“That comment about getting a blow job whenever you want.”
His smirk fades, and something shifts in his expression. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. It was very out of line for me.”
I shrug. “What? I’m sure it’s true. Women generally line up and drop to their knees for athletes, right? Like they’re some special, secret aphrodisiac.”
I say this casually, like I’m not sitting across from a man whose jaw looks like it was carved specifically to ruin women’s lives. Like I haven’t been sneaking glances at the way his T-shirt stretches across his chest every time he reaches for a pretzel.
“But not you?” he asks, seeming amused by me.
I wrinkle my nose. “Sorry, no. Sports don’t really do it for me. I’m more impressed you knew what a Boppy pillow is for.”