Chapter Eleven
Ryleigh
When I finally get home, the first thing on my agenda is a long, hot shower to wash the grime off me. The body glitter alone takes three rounds of scrubbing, and I swear it multiplies in water.
Alexei gave me the code to the parking garage, and as I ride the elevator up, I catch myself smiling—this stupid, involuntary smile at the thought of seeing them. Both of them. The doors slide open, and I’m hit with two things at once.
Classical music. Soft, something with strings, drifting through the apartment.
And the smell of roasting chicken.
“Alexei?” I call out, not seeing them in the kitchen or living room.
“In the bedroom,” he calls back, and then he’s coming down the hall toward me, Ella nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Ella?”
He grins and presses a kiss to my forehead when he reaches me. Soft. Lingering. My eyes close on their own. “Sound asleep.” He chuckles. “I want to get her on a real schedule eventually—one that doesn’t include a nap right at dinnertime—but for now, it is what it is.”
I follow him into the kitchen, a little amazed he’s even thought about her schedule, let alone that he has opinions about improving it. “She’s been awake most of the afternoon, though,” he says, checking something in the oven. “As she grows, the awake windows should stretch out.”
I accept the wine glass he hands me like this all makes sense. Like this is just what happens—I come home from work and a professional linebacker serves me chilled white wine while classical music plays and a roast chicken cooks in the oven.
When did this happen? When did my life become this?
“Welcome home,” he says, and his smile is warm, but there’s something underneath it. Something I can’t quite place. A tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there this morning.
My insides twist. This isn’t my home. Ella isn’t our baby. None of this is real, and playing make-believe is dangerous.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“You want to take a shower before dinner? There’s time.”
“Sure.” I take another sip and set the glass on the counter. He remembered. He remembered that I like to shower when I get home from work, that I feel grimy and wrong until I’ve scrubbed the club off me.
My knees are trembling as I head down the hall, and it’s not from the wine.
What am I going to do when it’s time to leave this fairy tale and go back to the real world?
I don’t want to think about that tonight. If I’m being honest, I don’t want to think about it ever.
I take my time. Shower, moisturizer, a little makeup—just enough to look like I’m not trying, which of course means I’m trying. I dry my hair so it falls in soft waves, and I pull on leggings and a fitted top that hugs my curves in a way that I pretend is accidental.
I want to feel clean and pretty and worth something after six hours of men looking at me like I’m an item on a menu. I want to feel like the version of me that Alexei sees.
I check my reflection one last time, fluff my hair, and head to the kitchen.
Alexei is leaning against the counter where I left him. When I round the corner, his eyes find me immediately, and something shifts in his expression—dark, focused, intent. He tracks me across the room the way he probably tracks an opposing player on the field, and it sends a shiver through me.
“Hi,” he says. His voice is a little tight.
“Hey.” I’m going for casual. Breezy. Not remotely affected by the way he’s looking at me right now.
I’m failing.
He sets the table—pulls out my chair, which is new.
We’ve been eating at the breakfast bar or on the couch, so this feels different.
Intentional. There are two whole roasted chickens, baked potatoes loaded with fixings, and steamed broccoli.
It’s better than anything I’ve eaten in months.
Years, maybe. I don’t tell him that because I think it would make him angry or sad, and I can’t handle either of those from him tonight.
“This is incredible,” I say, sitting down.
He takes the seat across from me, and for a minute, we just eat.
“So,” I say, smirking over my potato. “How was the meeting? What did the guys say when you walked in with a baby?”
Something flickers across his face. Quick, barely there. If I weren’t watching him so closely, I’d have missed it.
“They had some questions.” He takes a bite of chicken, chews slowly. “Thought she was mine at first.”
I’m smiling. Why am I smiling at that? “Was she good?”
“Perfect. Slept through the whole film session. Better behaved than half the team.”
I laugh. “That’s my girl.”
He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and that tightness I noticed earlier is back—subtle, around the edges, like he’s holding something behind his teeth.
“What?” I ask.
He sets his fork down. Leans back in his chair. Takes a breath. “The guys had some thoughts. About . . . us. The situation.”
My stomach drops. “What kind of thoughts?”
“The concerned kind.” He rubs the back of his neck—his tell, the thing he does when he’s uncomfortable. “They pointed out that we haven’t known each other long. That I moved you in, that there’s no legal arrangement for Ella, that the timing with my contract is . . . complicated.”
He’s choosing his words carefully, and I can feel the ones he’s leaving out. The ones that are probably closer to: they think you’re using me.
“They think I’m running some kind of game on you.” I say it flatly so he doesn’t have to.
“No. That’s not—”
“It is, though. That’s what they were getting at.”
He doesn’t deny it. He holds my gaze, steady, and the fact that he doesn’t lie to me is both the best and worst thing about him.
The thing is, he’s right. We hardly know each other, and from the outside—from where his teammates are standing—this looks exactly like the kind of story that ends with someone getting hurt.
I put my fork down. My appetite is gone.
“They’re not wrong,” I say.
Alexei’s brow furrows. “What?”
“There’re not wrong, Alexei. You don’t know me. Not really. You know the version of me that showed up on your doorstep with a baby and no options. You don’t know who I was before that. You don’t know what I’m like when things are normal.” I swallow. “If things are ever normal.”
“Ryleigh—”
“And your teammates are right to worry. You’re in the middle of a huge contract, and you’ve got some random woman living in your apartment with someone else’s kid, and you’re bringing that kid to team meetings. That’s…” I gesture vaguely at the table, the apartment, us. “That’s a lot. For anyone.”
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t fully read—something between frustration and tenderness. “You’re not some random woman.”
“To them, I am.”
“I don’t care what they think.”
“Maybe you should.” My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. I press my lips together and look at my plate.
The silence stretches. Classical music plays softly from the living room. The chicken is getting cold.
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. “Look at me.”
I do. His blue eyes are dark in the low light, and his jaw has unclenched, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in this room that matters.
“I told them I know what I’m doing,” he says. “And I meant it.”
“But do you?”
“No.” A half-smile. “Not even a little. But I know I don’t want you to leave. And I know the way I feel isn’t going away. So I figure we just… keep going. One day at a time.”
I blink against the sting behind my eyes. “One day at a time.”
“Yeah. Can you do that?”
I nod. I don’t trust my voice.
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. His thumb traces a circle against my palm, slow and steady. We sit like that for a minute, not eating, not talking, just his hand around mine and the music playing and the city lights through the windows.
Eventually, I pull my hand back and pick up my fork because if I don’t create some distance right now, I’m going to cry into my baked potato, and there’s no dignified way to do that.
We finish dinner. Wash the dishes together—him washing, me drying, our elbows bumping. It’s quiet and easy, and the tension from the conversation has softened into something warmer, and every time his arm brushes mine I feel it all the way through.
Ella’s still asleep when we settle on the couch. He’s refilled my wine—I notice he’s not drinking. Practice tomorrow, probably. I curl into the corner of the couch, legs tucked under me, and he sits close. Not touching, but close enough that I can feel his warmth.
“How was work?” he asks, and his voice has that careful edge—the one that means he’s trying not to say what he really wants to say, which is I hate that you work there.
“Fine.” I sip my wine. “Nobody bothered me.” Not more than usual, anyway.
“Good.”
The quiet settles, and I’m thinking about last night—about his hands and his mouth and the sounds he made—and my cheeks go warm.
“What?” he asks, one eyebrow lifting.
“Nothing.”
“You’re turning pink.”
“I’m not.”
He’s grinning. “You are. What are you thinking about?”
I take a long sip of wine. “Last night.”
The grin fades into something darker, hotter. He takes the wine glass from my hand and sets it on the coffee table.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
And I go. Because when Alexei says come here in that voice—low, rough, like a request that’s barely holding itself back from being a command—there is no version of me that doesn’t go.
I shift toward him and he tilts my jaw up, his thumb against my chin, and kisses me. Slow at first. Tasting. His mouth is warm and patient and thorough, and my brain shuts off in stages, like lights going down a hallway one by one.
“Missed you,” he murmurs against my lips.
He shouldn’t say things like that to me. We’ve known each other a matter of days. His teammates think I’m a liability. My life is an active disaster zone.
But he says it, and I believe it, and that’s either the bravest or stupidest thing I’ve done this week.