Broken Baby Daddy
Chapter 1
Bailey
The first time I caught Derek cheating, I held a steak knife in my hand and told him I’d cut his balls off if he ever did it again. I wasn’t actually going to do it—I cry when I step on snails—but I wanted him to understand how badly he’d broken me.
I should’ve followed through. Because then he wouldn’t have had anything to sink into Gabrielle tonight, and I wouldn’t be standing here, watching the sequel.
Derek’s eyes go wide the second he sees me in the doorway.
“Bailey—”
“Don’t.” My voice is eerily calm. “Don’t say my name. Don’t move. And don’t breathe too loud.”
He’s half-naked, pajama pants around his knees, and his dick—traitorous little decision-maker—finally goes soft.
Good.
Twenty minutes ago, I woke up in his bed, reached across cold sheets, and went looking for him. I thought he was in the kitchen. Instead, he was in the dining room, balls-deep inside his engaged next-door neighbor, her ass propped right where we’d eaten dinner three hours earlier.
Her moans are still ringing in my ears.
“It’s not what it looks like—”
“It looked like you were fucking your neighbor,” I say, stepping closer. “On the table. Doggy style. While your girlfriend was asleep upstairs.”
His hands lift in a placating gesture, like I’m a feral animal instead of his girlfriend of two years.
Ex-girlfriend.
“Baby, please, I can explain—”
“Oh, really?” Another step. He backs into the table. “Because I’d love to hear how your dick just found itself inside someone else. Must’ve been a shock. Isn’t gravity wild these days?”
“We were drunk—”
“You don’t drink.”
“She came over and we were talking—”
“Her panties were around her ankle, Derek. Did someone rearrange her holes?”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “You’re being crazy—”
The word detonates something inside my chest.
“Crazy?” I laugh, sharp and brittle. “I’m being reasonable, you son of a bitch. I haven’t even keyed your car.”
Yet, a voice in my head whispers.
“I’m simply informing you—” I eye the pathetic bulge in his bunched pants, “—that if you ever come near me again, I will cut off the part of you that clearly makes all your decisions. I mean it.”
He goes pale. “You’re insane—”
“I’m done. Lysol your fucking dining table.”
I turn on my heel and walk upstairs before he can say anything else.
My dress from last night hangs over his desk chair—the one I wore when we were out celebrating my interview just hours ago.
I pull it back on with stiff, angry fingers.
Phone. Purse. Keys.
Everything else can rot here with him.
I walk back downstairs without looking at him again.
The cool night air hits my face as I walk to my car. My hands stay steady long enough to start the engine, but by the time I pull into a CVS parking lot three blocks away, I’m sobbing so hard I can’t see. Mascara streaks down my face, snot dripping into my mouth.
Two years.
Two years of mediocre sex, half-hearted compliments, and constantly being compared to his ex.
I wasn’t the problem.
He was just an asshole.
My phone buzzes. Derek again. I decline, then text Gretchen with shaking hands:
Derek cheated again. Caught him mid-fuck. I’m getting drunk.
Before she can respond, I slam the car into gear and head toward the one place loud enough to drown out everything inside me.
***
The Velvet Room glows in warm amber light; rich, quiet, expensive. Everyone here probably wipes their asses with bales of money.
Derek always called it “pretentious,” which is exactly what cheap people say when they can’t afford to belong.
I slide onto a leather barstool. The bartender gives me a quick once-over, but doesn’t flinch.
“What can I get you?”
“Something that’ll make me forget the last two years of my life.”
His mouth quirks. “Whiskey sour?”
“Make it a double.”
The drink appears almost instantly. I take a sip, then another. It burns in the best way.
“Rough night?” comes a deep voice from my left.
I turn.
Maybe it’s the rebound haze, maybe it’s the lighting—but he’s gorgeous.
Tall. Broad. Clean jawline. Thick, sunlit hair.
Green eyes with a steady, unsettling focus.
He smells like cedar and something I can’t name—but would happily drown in.
He gestures to the empty stool beside me. “May I?”
“It’s a free country.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me, steady and unblinking.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Something about his old-school courtesy jolts me.
“Then yes. You may.”
He sits, and the air between us crackles. The bartender arrives.
“Macallan 18. Neat.”
Of course he drinks expensive scotch.
His vintage Rolex catches the light—one I’d once researched as a fantasy gift for Derek. A seventeen-million-dollar kind of fantasy. Pathetic.
“Let me guess,” I say, bold with alcohol. “CEO? Lawyer? Finance bro who’s ‘killing it’?”
His mouth curves. It’s not quite a smile, but close. “Venture capital.”
“Ah. You make money by having money.”
“I make money by knowing which ideas will change the world.” He turns slightly, giving me his full attention. “What do you do?”
“Graphic design.” I swallow. “I had an interview at a VC firm this morning. If I get it, I start Monday.”
“Congratulations.” He raises his glass. “To new beginnings.”
Our glasses clink. We drink.
“So,” I say, checking my phone, “what brings a venture capitalist to a bar at eleven-thirty on a Friday? Don’t you have galas to be bored at?”
“I left early.”
“Rebel.”
His mouth twitches. “Something like that. And you? Besides the obvious desire for alcohol poisoning?”
“I caught my boyfriend fucking our neighbor three hours ago.”
Flat. Empty. Almost funny in its horror.
He raises a brow. “And you’re here instead of setting his house on fire. Admirable restraint.”
“The night’s not over.”
I mean it as a joke. It scares me a little that a part of me isn’t kidding.
He smiles—dimple and all. God, he’s beautiful.
“What about you?” I ask. “What are you running from?”
“Who says I’m running?”
“Everyone in this bar is running from something. That’s what places like this are for. Beautiful people, expensive drinks, pretending they’re not broken.”
“You’re perceptive.”
“I’m drunk.”
“Not mutually exclusive.”
The bartender refills our drinks.
“So what’s your damage?” I press. “You don’t get eyes like that from a happy childhood.”
“Eyes like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He studies me quietly. “Maybe I know exactly how you feel.”
Something inside me stutters.
“What’s your name?” I whisper.
“Do you really want to know?”
I think about that. Names mean connection. Connection means consequences. I want none of that tonight.
“No,” I say softly. “I don’t.”
His pinky brushes mine. “Then we’re strangers.”
“Perfect strangers.”
“Is there any other kind?”
I laugh—real, unexpected. “God, you’re either the most pretentious man I’ve ever met or the most honest.”
“Maybe a bit of both.”
Our knees touch. Neither of us moves away.
“You’re the prettiest person in this room,” he says, quietly certain.
Heat shoots through me.
“That’s quite a line.”
“It’s not a line.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s the truth.”
Something in my belly drops like a stone in water.
I should go home. I should cry into my pillow. I should be responsible.
Instead, I lean in: “Want to know another truth?”
“Always.”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
His pupils flare. “Neither do I.”
“I’m not looking for anything.”
“Good,” he murmurs. “Neither am I.”
“Just tonight.”
“Just tonight.”
I stand. He rises a moment later—tall, composed, powerful.
“Your place or mine?” I ask.
“Strangers, remember?”
“Lead the way, stranger.”
***
A black Bugatti waits at the curb. He opens the door like it’s no big deal.
“Fancy,” I murmur, sliding into the best leather seats I’ve ever sat on.
“It gets me where I need to go.”
The city blurs by. I should be nervous, but all I feel is a wild, reckless kind of freedom. For the first time in years, I’m not Derek’s girlfriend. I’m not Trevor’s little sister. I’m just Bailey—a girl running toward something instead of away.
The hotel we pull up to gleams with glass. A doorman nods as we pass and I catch glimpses of us inside the mirrored elevator as we rise.
The penthouse suite. Of course it is.
“Drink?” he asks, shrugging out of his jacket.
“I think I’ve had enough.”
“Water, then.”
He hands me a glass. Watches me drink.
“Second thoughts?” he asks.
“Are you giving me an out?”
“Always.”
I set the glass down. “I don’t want an out.”
“What do you want?”
“To not think,” I whisper. “To not feel. Just for tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, I’ll go back to being me. But tonight… I want to forget he ever existed.”
“I can’t make you forget,” he says, brushing a finger along my jaw.
“No?”
“But I can make you not care.”
He kisses me.
The first brush of his mouth is gentle, careful—giving me space to change my mind. I don’t. I rise into him, fisting his shirt, letting the heat swallow me whole.
He pulls back, breath unsteady. “Are you sure?”
“So sure.”
I straddle his lap on the couch, and slide my hands under his shirt. The moment my fingertips touch his bare stomach, his whole body trembles.
I drag his shirt over his head. Lean muscle. Smooth skin. A faded scar across his ribs I’m not brave enough to ask about. His hands grip my hips, guiding me against the hard line of him. A sound breaks from his throat, low, rough, hungry.
I reach for my dress zipper and let it fall. My mismatched bra and underwear should embarrass me, but the way he looks at me—slow, reverent—burns away every insecurity.
“Are you sure?” he asks again.
“Absolutely.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing and carries me to the bed.
Everything after that is a blur of heat and hands and breathless wanting—his mouth against my throat, his fingers tightening at my waist, the relentless build of pleasure that shatters me once, then again.
“Condom,” I gasp when I can think.
He freezes. “Oh my God.” He scrambles for his jacket, relief flickering when he finds one.
“You’d better have a condom,” I mutter.
“I do,” he says, a rough laugh breaking through.
I roll it onto him, and then he’s inside me—one strong, devastating thrust that steals every thought from my head.
His movements are deep, controlled, coaxing pleasure from places I didn’t know still worked after Derek. His mouth finds mine, swallowing my moans. His hand cups my jaw like I’m something precious.
“Come for me,” he whispers. “Please.”
And I do—hard—pulling him over with me. His groan buries itself in my neck as his body shudders against mine.
Afterward, we lie tangled in each other, hearts racing, breath unsteady.
“Stay,” he murmurs.
“I thought this was just tonight.”
“It is,” he says. “But stay anyway.”
So I do.
***
Sunlight wakes me. The bed beside me is empty.
For a split second, I’m back in Derek’s bedroom—alone, betrayed—but then I see the folded note on the pillow.
There’s coffee in the kitchen.
Thank you for last night.
My dress is neatly folded. My shoes are by the door. In the kitchen, a mug waits with a sticky note:
Help yourself.
I drink the coffee black, staring out at the city. Somewhere down there is Derek. Somewhere is the life I thought I wanted.
My phone buzzes. Twelve missed calls from Derek. Five texts from Gretchen. And one email.
Subject: Welcome to Williams Ventures.
My heart slams into my ribs.
Dear Ms. Rodgers,
Congratulations on your new position as Lead Graphic Designer…
I reread it twice, letting it sink in. A fresh start. Proof that life goes on.
I delete Derek’s voicemails. Rinse my mug. Grab my dress and slip quietly out of the suite.
The elevator doors close around me, reflecting a slightly rumpled woman with kiss-swollen lips, last night’s dress, and eyes that are clearer than they’ve been in months.
Monday, I’ll be Professional Bailey. Competent Bailey. The Bailey who has her shit together.
But this morning, I’m just a girl who survived the worst night of her life and came out on the other side still breathing.
That feels like enough.
I don’t know it yet, but in forty-eight hours, I’m going to walk into my new office, look up from the HR paperwork… and see the stranger whose name I never asked.