Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Alycia
The words still cling to me as I step out of Cooper’s office, echoing in time with the thud of my heels against the hallway floor.
The training facility hums with its usual late-afternoon rhythm, but I barely notice any of it.
My head is already full of lists, strategies, and potential disasters.
If I’m smart, I will start a whole new crisis binder just for him. Hendrix: Handle with Care.
My phone buzzes in my bag, snapping me out of my thoughts.
My mother’s name lights the screen again.
Of course. I silence it and shove the phone deeper before turning toward the elevator.
My mind chews on Cooper’s words as I jab the elevator call button harder than necessary.
The golden boy skips rookie orientation, and somehow, I’m the one cleaning it up.
Typical. One misstep and my entire internship tilts sideways.
I can already feel the familiar knot tightening under my ribs, warning me I don’t have room to slip.
The elevator doors open with a cheerful chime that feels like a personal insult.
I step inside, rehearsing all the ways this rookie is about to derail my month, maybe even the rest of my time here.
The doors begin to close when a hand shoots out, stopping them.
The metal doors slide back, and a man steps in like the space belongs to him.
He’s tall, broad across the shoulders, a frame that makes the elevator feel suddenly smaller, wearing a gray T-shirt that clings in ways that should be illegal, dark joggers, and sneakers scuffed to look intentional.
His dirty blonde hair is too long in that deliberate, artfully messy way, with curls that look soft enough to curl a finger into.
And his grin is pure confidence, sharp enough to feel like heat against my skin.
“Looks like I got lucky,” he says, leaning back as though the elevator is his living room.
My brain short-circuits for one stunned beat.
Not because he’s gorgeous—plenty of players are—it’s his presence.
There’s something sharper there, edged with a confidence that borders on arrogance.
What unsettles me most is how certain he seems about knowing me.
His gaze lingers, and I wonder if we’ve met before.
Something about the heat in his eyes scratches at the back of my memory.
“Excuse me?” My brows lift, voice sharpen to hide the jump of my pulse.
“Sharing an elevator with you isn’t a bad end to the day.” His smile tilts, slow and unbothered, as if he’s been waiting for me to speak.
Oh, great. He’s one of those men who thinks he’s the prize and the world is lucky to orbit him. Normally, I’d shut this down without blinking, but my pulse betrays me, thudding a little deeper each time his eyes brush mine. Professionally speaking, he’s exactly the complication I cannot afford.
“If that’s your opener, you should probably retire it.”
He laughs, and the sound lingers too long in the small space. “Feisty, I like that.”
“I wasn’t auditioning for your approval.” My voice is crisp, steady, but my breath hitches when his gaze doesn’t break. He studies me like he has all the time in the world and no intention of looking away.
The air between us shifts, charged enough to make my shoulders tighten in automatic defense. A familiar prickle crawls beneath my skin—too much eye contact, too much closeness, too many sensory signals firing at once.
My phone buzzes again. I grab it quickly, silencing my mother’s call before the sound can split me open.
When I glance up, he’s watching me with a look I can’t decipher—curiosity threaded with something quieter.
I press the button for the media floor. A second later, he leans forward and presses the same one.
“Seriously?”
“Great minds,” he says easily. “Or maybe fate.”
“Or maybe you’re following me.”
“Would that be the worst thing?” he asks lightly, but there’s a steady undertone in his voice that lands low in my stomach.
My phone buzzes again, sharp and persistent. I silence it harder than before, irritation prickling under my skin.
“Persistent boyfriend?” he asks.
“Persistent mother.” It comes out thinner than I’d like.
His brows lift, clearly entertained. “Then again… maybe you could use someone in your corner.”
“That’s the line you’re going with? A boyfriend audition?” I roll my eyes, but my breath stumbles again when he steps a fraction closer, enough to shift the air between us.
“I like a challenge,” he says, leaning in until his shoulder almost brushes mine. “And you strike me as someone who doesn’t make it easy.”
My grip tightens on my bag strap—my go-to grounding spot—while every sensible part of me screams that he’s a disaster waiting to happen. My body, apparently, didn’t get the memo.
My phone buzzes a third time, and I silence it again, jaw locking as though that alone will hold me together.
“That’s your mom, isn’t it?” His voice loses its teasing edge, softening in a way I don’t expect. “You should pick up. You won’t always get the chance to just… talk to her.”
The weight of his words drops into the small space, heavy and oddly intimate. Something that looks a little like loss. Then it vanishes, smoothed over by that infuriating grin before I can be sure I saw it at all.
“She can wait,” I say, even though something inside me twists.
My voice is steady, but my body betrays me with the quick stutter of my pulse and the restless shift of my stance.
He watches me openly, unashamed, with a small grin that feels like it’s peeling back my layers faster than I can rebuild them.
And then my phone buzzes a fourth time. Without thinking, I swipe to answer.
“Hi, Mom,” I say automatically, my eyes locked on the last person I should be looking at and the exact one I can’t seem to look away from.
Her sigh spills through the line, the weight pressing into my chest the way it always does. “I’ve been calling. Are you busy?”
Before I can answer, he leans closer. “Don’t let me audition on an empty stomach. You should at least buy me dinner first.”
My breath catches so hard it sounds like a gasp, and my cheeks go nuclear. Of course, my mother hears him.
“Alycia.” My mother’s voice sharpens, suspicion cutting clean. “Was that a man’s voice?”
Panic spikes so fast it’s dizzying. My mind sprints for an escape route it can’t find. Before I can talk myself down, I’m already digging into my bag, yanking out my wallet, and slapping a fifty into his palm.
“Congratulations, you’re my boyfriend now.”
His brows shoot up, but that way-too-pleased-with-himself grin spreads like I’ve just made his entire day. He twirls the bill between his fingers before tucking it into his pocket as if I’d handed him a trophy.
“Fifty?” he echoes. “That’s all I’m worth?”
“Take it or leave it.” My tone is like the one I use when rookies test me, but the warmth pooling low in my stomach betrays me.
“Oh, I’ll take it.” He leans in a fraction, heat radiating from him as he pats his pocket, eyes glinting. “And the job.”
The elevator jolts as it continues its ascent, and I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to stop a smile from escaping.
My brain is shrieking that this is a disaster.
The type of mistake rom-com heroines spend three hundred pages untangling.
But my body has already signed the contract, and that terrifies me almost as much as it thrills me.
“Mija,” my mom snaps through the line, suspicion slicing sharp.
“That was my boyfriend,” I blurt out, pulse pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
The lie leaps out before I can stop it, tasting completely insane on my tongue, but before I can come up with a single follow-up, her voice sharpens.
“Well, let me talk to him.”
“Mamá, no—” I blurt out way too fast, panic flooding my chest as he reaches for the phone.
No. Absolutely not. Abort mission. I jerk the phone back on instinct, but before I can yank it away, he plucks it from my grasp and presses it to his ear.
“Este hombre…” I mutter, disbelief punching through my voice.
“Hello,” he says, voice warm and confident, like he’s been waiting his whole life to play this role.
I nearly choke as he lounges back against the wall, answering my mother with the ease of a seasoned actor and the confidence of someone who’s never once second-guessed himself.
“No, ma’am,” he responds quickly, winking at me before focusing his attention back on his conversation with my mother. “We, uh… met a little while back.”
Shit. I didn’t even think about what to say to my mom about how we met. Bribing him with fifty bucks in an elevator at work isn’t the best first meeting. I feel the heat climb my neck, but he doesn’t miss a beat because, of course, he doesn’t.
“A small town called Redwood Falls, just outside Portland. My family still lives there. I came to the city to visit your gorgeous daughter and my brothers.”
My heart trips over itself so fast it hurts. Brothers? Redwood Falls? He’s lying through his teeth and sounding better than any crisis-trained rookie I’ve ever coached. Worst of all, he does it with this effortless confidence that makes me want to scream and laugh at the same time.
He tilts his head, listening to her next question, eyes flicking to me with a spark that should not make my stomach flip.
“Oh, college?” He chuckles, low and rich. “Graduated last June. Business economics with a double major in something fancier than I usually say out loud. Let’s just call it numbers and leave it there.”
I slap a hand over my mouth, equal parts horrified and impressed.
He’s way too good at this. He pauses, listening again, with that damn grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.
I can’t hear a single thing my mother is saying, but I know that tone.
She’s moved from suspicion to something even worse: interest.
“Ay, no, no, no…” I groan quietly, dread curling tight in my stomach.
“I’d love to come to dinner one night,” he adds, eyes gleaming with mischief as they meet mine. “I’ll even bring my mom’s world-famous apple pie. Alycia’s been talking about it nonstop since the last time my mom made it for her.”
What? No, I haven’t. I don’t even like pie that much.
The lie is so absurdly specific, I know exactly what’s coming next.
My mom is going to latch on to it like a bloodhound, digging for every detail.
She’ll want to know when I ate this pie, and how it compares to the apple cobbler I claimed was my favorite in high school.
Then I’ll be forced to tell her the entire story, front to back, and she’ll keep pressing until my flimsy answers collapse like a badly built Jenga tower.
I can already hear her questions stacking in my head like bullets fired from a machine gun: Where did you meet? How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? And God help me, when am I getting grandchildren?
I should grab the phone back and stop this madness before it spirals any further, but my feet won’t move. I’m stuck watching, helpless, while he spins a fantasy my mother will dissect with surgical precision.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says smoothly, his tone all polite and charming. “I’ll see you then.”
I’m still reeling when he reaches past me, fingers brushing the strap of my bag. My breath snags, but rather than the disaster my brain concocts, he grabs the pen I'd forgotten I had clipped to my bag and catches my hand.
His eyes flick from mine as he scrawls a number across the inside of my palm in quick, confident strokes.
“Just in case your mom calls back and I need to keep my story straight,” he murmurs, his voice pitched low enough to slide right beneath my skin.
Then, with a grin that should come with warning labels, he dips his head and presses a quick kiss to the spot he just inked. The contact is nothing more than a brush, and my knees turn traitor beneath me.
“Bye, sweetheart.” He hands the phone back to me as the elevator doors slide open on our floor.
He strolls out like he didn’t just hijack my entire life.
My jaw hangs open, phone limp in my hand, brain trying and failing to reboot, as the doors slide shut again, carrying me back downstairs.
That’s when my mom’s laugh cuts through the line, warm and delighted in a way that feels like a death sentence.
“Well, he sounds wonderful, Alycia. You’ve been holding out on me.”
“Mamá, no es así…” I say quickly, tripping over the words, desperate to undo whatever she thinks she just heard.
“Ay Dios, por fin,” she says, sounding like she’s been waiting her whole life for this.
My stomach drops clear to the basement, and all I can do is stare at my reflection in the mirrored wall, hair slipping loose from its clip, cheeks still pink, eyes wide and stunned.
I am so completely, irreversibly screwed.