3. Alison #2
“Fundraiser.” Walter glances at me, and his voice gentles the way it does when he’s pretending it isn’t. “You holding up all right, Ally? With everything?”
“I think so,” I say. “Better than last week.”
“Good.” He nods, once, like that settles something. “That’s what we like to hear.”
Cassandra grabs Walter’s arm. “Come on. Love you kids, bye!” The front door closes behind them a minute later.
Ryan locks it. Then turns.
I lean against the kitchen island. He looks at me. I look at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I haven’t been allowed to all day.”
My stomach flips. “Poor baby.”
“Keep mocking me.”
“What are you going to do?”
He walks toward me. There he is. The boy who doesn’t exist at Edgewood. The one who knows exactly how I take my tea and what foods don’t make me sick this week. The one who texts me from twenty feet away because publicly looking at me for too long isn’t safe.
Ryan's hands settle on my hips then he kisses me. Slow. Easy. I slide my hands up his chest. His mouth brushes mine again. Then again. No rush. No pretending. Just us.
Something inside me tightens. Not because I don’t want him touching me.
Because lately, I don’t know what I’m going to feel when he does.
My body is changing faster than my head can catch up.
Not enough for anyone at school to notice.
Enough for me. Enough that some mornings my bra feels wrong.
Enough that my jeans don’t sit quite the way they used to.
Enough that I catch myself turning sideways in the mirror and staring.
Ryan notices me go still. He pulls back slightly. “What?”
I sigh. “I feel weird.”
“Sick?”
“No.”
“Tired?”
“No.” He waits. I hate that he’s good at waiting. “My body.”
His expression softens. “What about it?”
“I don’t know.” I look down. “It just doesn’t feel like mine sometimes.”
Ryan doesn’t immediately tell me I’m beautiful. Thank God. He doesn’t laugh or tell me I’m imagining it either. His thumbs move slowly over my hips. “Do you want me to stop touching you?”
My eyes snap to his. “No.” I swallow. “I just feel...” I search for it. “Different.”
“You are.”
I stare at him. His mouth twitches. “That came out wrong.”
“No.” I laugh quietly. “It’s true.”
“Yeah.” His hand slides carefully around my waist. “You’re changing.”
“I don’t know if I like it.”
He leans in and kisses the corner of my mouth. “I can tell you what I think.”
“Which is?”
“I think you’re fucking gorgeous.”
I roll my eyes. “You have to say that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re my boyfriend.”
“Exactly. I’m heavily invested in being honest about how hot my girlfriend is.”
I laugh. His mouth moves to my jaw. “I notice the changes.”
Heat creeps up my neck. “And?”
“And I like them because they’re you.” His hand settles over the slight softness low on my stomach. My breath catches. “That okay?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
He kisses me again. “I want you.” His mouth brushes mine. “I wanted you before.” Another kiss. “I want you now.” His hand stays warm against me. “And I’m going to want you when you yell at me in three months because none of your pants fit.”
He kisses me until I’m not thinking about the mirror anymore. Until my fingers are in his hair and his hands are moving over me with the same certainty they always have. Nothing hesitant. Nothing careful because he thinks I’m fragile. Just Ryan. Wanting me.
When he lifts his head, his eyes are darker. “Come upstairs.”
He starts toward the stairs. I let him pull me after him. Because I want him too. Because here, we’re allowed to be what we are. Because for the next few hours, Ryan doesn’t have to pretend he barely knows me.
And I don’t have to pretend I don’t love belonging to him.
He starts toward the stairs, my hand still caught in his, and I let him pull me after him.
The house is quiet in the particular way it only gets when Cassandra and Walter are gone—no low voices from the study, no television humming, just the soft click of the front door lock settling behind us and the sound of our footsteps on the hardwood.
Ryan doesn’t rush. He never rushes once we’re inside these walls.
His thumb moves slowly over the back of my hand as we climb, like he’s reminding both of us that we have time.
The afternoon light coming through the tall windows is soft and gray, the kind that makes everything look quieter than it is. Our footsteps are almost soundless on the runner. I can hear my own breathing. I can hear his.
He stops in front of his door, reaches for the handle, then pauses with his free hand still wrapped around mine. For a second, he just stands there, looking at the wood like it might tell him something. Then he pushes it open and draws me inside after him.
The room smells like him—clean laundry and the faint edge of whatever cologne he wears that never quite fades from his pillows.
The bed is made. The blinds are half-drawn.
His blazer from earlier is folded over the back of the desk chair.
Everything is neat in the way Ryan’s spaces always are, like he needs the outside of his life to stay ordered so the inside can be whatever it needs to be.
He shuts the door behind us. The soft click of the latch sounds louder than it should.
Then he turns to face me fully, still holding my hand, and the look in his eyes is the one nobody at Edgewood ever gets to see.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just looks at me the way he only ever looks at me behind a locked door—like the rest of the world has finally shut up long enough for him to see properly.
Then he steps in, cups my face with both hands, and kisses me.
It’s slow. Deep. The kind of kiss that doesn’t ask for anything yet, just takes its time remembering the shape of my mouth. His thumbs stroke along my cheekbones. I can feel the tension he’s been carrying all day bleeding out of him in small increments, every second we’re alone.
When he pulls back just enough to speak, his voice is low and rough against my lips. “Fuck, I missed this.”
“You saw me three hours ago.”
“Not like this.” His forehead rests against mine. “Not where I get to look at you as long as I want. Not where I get to touch you without calculating who’s watching.”
He kisses me again—softer this time—then trails his mouth along my jaw, down to the side of my neck. I tip my head to give him more room and feel him smile against my skin.
“You’re so pretty when you do that,” he murmurs. “When you let me in.”
His hands leave my face and settle at the buttons of my blazer.
He doesn’t rush. He undoes them one by one, eyes flicking up to mine between each, like he’s checking in even though he already knows the answer.
When the blazer is open he slides it off my shoulders and lets it fall to the floor behind me.
The white button-down is next. He works the buttons slowly, deliberately, and every time another one opens he presses a kiss to the newly exposed skin—collarbone, the top of my sternum, the soft space between my breasts over the lace of my bra.
“Look at you,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “Every single time. I still can’t believe I get to have this.”
I feel heat crawl up my neck. “Ryan—”
“Don’t.” He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Don’t start that. Not with me.”
He pushes the shirt off my shoulders. It joins the blazer on the floor.
I’m standing in front of him in my bra and the regulation skirt and I can feel every place my body has started to change—the slight fullness in my breasts, the soft curve low on my stomach that wasn’t there two months ago, the way my waist sits differently now.
His hands settle at my waist, thumbs brushing the small swell there through the fabric of the skirt, and he goes still for a second, just looking down at the place where our baby is.
When he looks back up at me his eyes are darker. Softer.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says, and there’s nothing performative in it. Just quiet, absolute certainty. “Do you have any idea what you look like right now? Standing here in my room with my baby inside you?”
My throat tightens. “I look different.”
“Yeah.” He nods once. “You do. And I can’t stop staring at it.
” His thumbs stroke slow circles over the curve.
“This body is doing the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, Ally.
And it’s still yours. It’s still the body I fell in love with.
It’s just… more. And I love every single inch of the more. ”
He sinks to his knees in front of me.
I suck in a breath as his hands slide up the backs of my thighs, under the hem of the skirt, and he looks up at me like he’s asking permission even though his eyes already know he has it.
He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the soft place just below my navel, right over the small firm swell, and stays there for a long moment, breathing me in.
“Hi,” he whispers against my skin, so quiet I almost miss it. “It’s your dad. I’m still here. I’m always going to be here.”
He kisses the curve again, slower this time, then rests his forehead against it for a second like he’s grounding himself.
When he finally stands he cups my face again and kisses me hard—deeper, hungrier—and I can feel how much he’s holding back, how carefully he’s keeping himself in check so this stays exactly what I need it to be.
“I’m going to take the rest of this off,” he says against my mouth. “And then I’m going to show you exactly how I see you. Okay?”
I nod.
“Use your words, baby.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
His smile is small and private and completely mine. “Good girl.”
Ryan’s hands settle at my waist, and he walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the mattress. He lowers me down carefully—like I’m something precious he’s been trusted with—and follows me, bracing his weight on his forearms so he never fully settles on top of me.
The second my back touches the sheets he kisses me again. Deep. Slow. The kind of kiss that feels like he’s trying to pour every hour he spent pretending not to know me into my mouth.