Chapter Sixteen
Ryleigh
Alexei’s sisters are trying to figure me out. I can feel it.
Tracey hands me a glass of red wine with a smile that’s warm but calculated—the kind where someone’s being friendly and also taking your measurements at the same time. Valerie leans against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, watching me like I’m a puzzle she hasn’t decided if she wants to solve.
“So,” Tracey says, pulling a cutting board from the cabinet. “How long have you and Alexei been…”
She lets the sentence hang, which is a power move. Make the other person fill in the blank so you can judge which word they choose.
“About a week and a half,” I say, because I’m not going to lie, and also because there’s no word that fits. Dating? Living together? Co-parenting a baby that belongs to neither of us while sleeping in the same bed and pretending we have any idea what we’re doing?
“A week and a half.” Tracey nods slowly, slicing a tomato.
“It’s been… fast,” I offer.
“Clearly.” Valerie’s voice isn’t unkind, but it isn’t warm either. She’s the youngest, I think, dark hair like Alexei’s, same sharp jaw. She’s the one who told their mother. I’m trying not to hold that against her, but I’m also keeping score.
“Val,” Tracey warns.
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
I take a sip of wine and decide I like them. They remind me of people I’d have been friends with in another life—direct, protective, a little mean in the way women are when they love someone and want to make sure you’re not going to wreck him.
“I know this is weird,” I say, setting my glass down. “Trust me, I’m aware of how this looks. Girl shows up out of nowhere with someone else’s baby and moves into your brother’s penthouse. If I were you, I’d have questions too. Probably a lot of them.”
They both look at me. Tracey’s knife pauses mid-slice.
“I’m not after his money,” I continue, because I’d rather say it myself than wait for someone to imply it. “I’m not after anything. He helped me when I was in a bad situation, and it just… kept going. I didn’t plan any of this.”
Valerie tilts her head. “What was the bad situation?”
I give her the short version. Andi. Ella. The apartment with no heat. Alexei showing up like some kind of stubborn, oversized guardian angel who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
When I finish, Tracey’s expression has shifted. Softer. Valerie’s arms have uncrossed.
“He paid your heating bill?” Tracey asks.
“Without telling me. I found out later and almost killed him.”
Something passes between the sisters—a look I can’t fully read but that feels like recognition. Like they’ve seen this version of their brother before, the one who fixes things for people whether they want him to or not.
“That sounds like Alexei,” Valerie says, and for the first time, her voice is warm.
From the living room, I hear Irina’s voice—rapid-fire Russian, followed by Alexei’s lower response, also in Russian. I can’t understand a word, but the rhythm of it is unmistakable. She’s grilling him. He’s deflecting.
Crap. This isn’t good.
“Should we rescue him?” I ask.
Tracey laughs. “Absolutely not. He brought this on himself.”
The kitchen smells incredible—something with garlic and herbs roasting in the oven, a pot of something simmering on the stove.
The counters are cluttered in the way that means someone actually cooks here, not the pristine magazine look of Alexei’s kitchen.
There are kids’ drawings taped to the fridge, a stack of mail on the counter, a mug that says “World’s Okayest Mom” next to the coffee maker.
It hits me so suddenly that I have to take a breath. This is what a family kitchen looks like. I used to have one of these.
“You okay?” Tracey asks.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Just, um… this is really nice. Your mom’s house. It reminds me of growing up.”
“Where did you grow up?” Valerie asks, and this time the question isn’t an interrogation. It’s just a question.
“Indiana. Small town. My parents had a house with a kitchen about this size, and my mom cooked every Sunday.” I run my finger along the edge of the counter, my throat suddenly tight. “She died two years ago. Both my parents, actually. Car accident.”
The kitchen goes quiet. Tracey sets down the knife.
“I’m sorry,” Valerie says. Her tone is sincere.
“Thanks.” I take another sip of wine. “Anyway. That’s the short version of why my life is a disaster and your brother found me at my lowest point and decided to adopt me like a stray cat.”
Valerie snorts. Actually snorts. And then Tracey laughs, and something in the room shifts—the invisible wall between us getting thinner.
“He’s always been like that,” Tracey says, going back to her tomatoes. “When we were kids, he brought home a dog he found in a parking lot. Didn’t ask. Just showed up with this mangy, half-starved pit bull and announced that his name was Boris and he lived here now.”
My eyes widen. “What happened to Boris?”
“He lived to be fourteen and slept in Alexei’s bed every night.” Tracey grins. “Mom pretended to hate him. She cried for a week when he died.”
I laugh, and it feels easy, and I realize the knot in my stomach is loosening. These women aren’t the enemy. They’re just two sisters who love their brother and want to make sure he’s not making a mistake.
I understand that. I’d do the same thing.
The front door bangs open, and a small voice screams, “WE GOT ICE CREAM,” followed by two tiny humans barreling into the kitchen like they’ve been launched from a cannon.
Tracey’s kids—a boy around three, a girl maybe two—crash into her legs and immediately start climbing her like she’s playground equipment.
A tall guy follows, holding grocery bags and looking mildly shell-shocked. “They had samples,” he says to Tracey, by way of explanation. “Multiple samples.”
“Jase, this is Ryleigh.” Tracey peels a toddler off her hip. “Ryleigh, my husband, Jase.”
“Hey, nice to meet you.” He gives me a friendly nod, then glances toward the living room. “Your brother looks like he’s being interrogated by the KGB in there.”
“He is,” Valerie says. “It’s beautiful.”
I excuse myself and head toward the living room, partly to check on Alexei and partly to check on Ella.
I find them on the couch—Irina holding Ella in her arms, swaying gently, humming something low and Russian.
Alexei is beside her, watching his mother with an expression I haven’t seen before.
Soft. Young. Like he’s someone’s kid again instead of a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound linebacker.
Ella is wide awake, staring up at Irina with those big eyes, completely mesmerized. One tiny hand has found a strand of Irina’s silver hair and is gripping it with determination.
“She likes you,” I say from the doorway.
Irina looks up, and her face does something complicated—guarded, then soft, then guarded again, like she can’t decide which one to land on. “She’s beautiful. Very good baby.”
“She really is.” I sit in the armchair across from them. “Except between eight and nine p.m., when she screams for no reason. We call it the witching hour.”
“Colic,” Irina says immediately. “My Alexei had it. Three months straight. I thought I would lose my mind.”
“You did lose your mind,” Alexei says. “Dad used to drive me around the block at midnight.”
“Your father was a saint.” She says it quietly, and the room goes still for a beat. Then she looks at me, really looks, and I hold her gaze.
“Alexei tells me about your situation,” she says carefully. “The baby’s mother is missing?”
“Yes. I filed a police report, but there’s nothing yet.”
“And you’re taking care of her? Even though she’s not yours?”
I lift one shoulder. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”
Irina studies me for a long moment. I don’t look away. Whatever she’s searching for, I want her to find it because I don’t have anything to hide. I’m exactly what I look like—a broke, scared, stubborn woman who is doing her best with a situation she didn’t choose and can’t walk away from.
“In my country,” Irina says finally, still swaying Ella, “we have a saying: The heart doesn’t ask permission before it loves.”
Alexei shifts beside her. “Ma—”
“I’m not talking to you.” She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “I’m talking to her.”
I swallow hard. My throat is tight.
Irina lifts Ella up and presses a kiss to her forehead, then extends her toward me. I take her, settling her against my chest, and Ella grabs a fistful of my shirt like she always does.
“You’ll stay for dinner,” Irina says. Not a question.
“We’d love to.”
She nods once, decisive, and pushes herself off the couch. As she passes Alexei, she squeezes his shoulder without looking at him, and something crosses his face—relief, maybe, or gratitude—before he covers it.
When his mother disappears into the kitchen, Alexei looks at me. “You survived.”
“Your sisters are scarier than your mom.”
“That’s accurate.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You okay? I know this is a lot.”
I look at Ella in my arms, then at the photos on the wall—young Alexei in a football uniform, gap-toothed, grinning. Alexei at prom, looking uncomfortable in a suit. A family photo with his dad, all of them crowded together on this same couch, smiling.
“I’m great,” I say, and I mean it. “Your family is really something.”
“They’re insane.”
“I know. But I like it.”
He holds my gaze for a second, and something passes between us that I don’t have a name for yet.
Then Tracey’s kid comes tearing through the living room, screaming about ice cream, and the moment breaks.
Alexei catches the kid mid-sprint and flips him upside down, and the screaming turns to hysterical laughter.
Ella startles in my arms and then settles, and I sit in the armchair in his mother’s house, surrounded by his loud, messy, loving family, and I think: oh.
This is what I’ve been missing.
This is what I lost.
Dinner is chaos. The good kind—plates being passed, Tracey’s kids throwing broccoli, Jase apologizing for the broccoli, Valerie telling a story about Alexei’s senior prom that makes him turn red and threaten to revoke her birthday present.
Irina presides over it all from the head of the table, correcting everyone’s posture and making sure plates stay full.
Alexei sits beside me, his hand finding my knee under the table every few minutes like he’s checking I’m still there.
Ella is in Irina’s arms more than mine—the woman basically claimed her the moment we sat down—and watching this enormous, gruff linebacker’s tiny Russian mother coo over a baby while simultaneously running a dinner table with military precision is something I’ll never forget.
At one point, Tracey leans over to me and says quietly, “She likes you.”
“Your mom?”
She nods once. “She’s letting you see the baby photos. She doesn’t do that unless she’s decided you’re staying.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just smile and eat another bite of the best roast chicken I’ve had since my mother’s.
On the drive home, Ella’s asleep in the back, and the city lights blur through the windshield. Alexei’s hand rests on my thigh, warm and heavy.
“Your family is amazing,” I say.
“They liked you.”
“Even Valerie?”
“Especially Valerie. She texted me from the kitchen. Said, and I quote, ‘Okay, she’s not terrible.’”
I laugh. “High praise.”
“From Valerie? Trust me, it is.”
We’re quiet for a block. Then I say, “Your mom’s saying about the heart not asking for permission.”
“Yeah. She’s, uh . . . not subtle.”
“I liked it.”
He glances at me, then back at the road. His thumb traces a circle on my thigh. “I liked watching you in there,” he says. “With my family. You just . . . fit.”
My chest goes tight, and I lean my head against the window and watch the city go by, letting myself feel it—all of it. The warmth and the fear and the wanting, tangled together so tightly I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“Alexei?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for bringing us tonight.”
His hand squeezes my thigh. “Thanks for coming.”
Ella sighs in her sleep from the back seat, and I close my eyes, and for the length of this drive, I let myself pretend that this is my life. That these are my people. That the heart really doesn’t ask for permission, and mine has already decided.