Chapter Nine
Ryleigh
I wake up slowly, which never happens.
Since Ella arrived, my mornings start with a jolt—crying, fumbling, the frantic scramble to remember what day it is and whether there’s a clean bottle anywhere. But this morning, I surface gradually, like rising through warm water, and the first thing I register isn’t sound. It’s scent.
Him. Everywhere.
The pillow smells like him. The sheets are soft and warm, and they smell like him. There’s an indent beside me where his body was, still faintly warm, and even the air in this room carries traces of leather and clean skin and that mint thing he has. I press my face into his pillow and breathe.
Then I remember why I’m in his bed, and my whole body flushes hot.
Oh.
Oh, we did that.
His mouth on mine. My hands in his hair.
The way he carried me down the hall like I weighed nothing, the way he laid me down and looked at me—really looked, like he was memorizing something—before he even touched me.
His voice against my skin saying my name like a word he just learned.
The slow, patient, devastating way he took me apart until I forgot my own.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, and my heart is hammering.
What does this mean?
Are we together? Is this a thing now? Was last night a one-time event brought on by wine and proximity and the relief of him being home? Do I go back to the guest room tonight, or—
My brain cycles through scenarios fast enough to make me nauseous.
Every romantic experience I’ve had in the last five years has ended badly.
Guys who stuck around for a few weeks and then didn’t.
One who borrowed money and disappeared. A pattern so consistent it might as well be a personality trait: Ryleigh picks men who leave.
And Alexei is a professional athlete who lives in a penthouse and has women lining up for a chance to exist in his orbit. I’m a twenty-four-year-old with no degree, no savings, and a baby that isn’t mine.
But then I think about the way he whispered “stay right there” when he got up to feed Ella. The way he kissed my temple. The way he said “life-altering” and meant it.
I think he meant it.
I press both hands over my face and make a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh.
From down the hall, Ella cries.
Reality. Right. I’m still a person with responsibilities, even if I did just have the best night of my life.
I sit up, find my underwear on the floor—his side, how did it get to his side—and pull on his T-shirt. Ella is in her crib, face red, fists going, working up to a full performance. I scoop her up, and she settles against my chest immediately, one hand grabbing a fistful of cotton.
“Morning, baby girl.” I press my nose to the top of her head. She smells like baby soap and warmth, and holding her steadies the thing in me that was spinning. “Let’s get you fed.”
After a diaper change, I carry her to the kitchen, make a bottle one-handed, and settle onto the couch. She latches on and goes quiet, those blue eyes locked on mine.
“I’m going to find your mom. I promise.”
Ella blinks up at me, and I lift her to my face, pressing a soft kiss against her forehead. I hold her tiny body close to mine as she makes progress on the bottle.
I lean my head back. My body feels different this morning—loose, warm, tender in places that make my cheeks heat. This is the same couch where he rubbed my feet last night, where I climbed into his lap and kissed him, where everything shifted from maybe to definitely.
And now it’s morning, and the sun is pouring through the windows, and I have to go to work in four hours.
Work. At the club. Where I walk around topless and serve overpriced burgers to men who look at me like I’m on the menu.
The glow dims considerably.
Because here’s the thing about last night that my brain has been carefully skirting around: nothing about my actual life has changed.
Alexei and I hooked up, and it was incredible, and my heart is doing backflips, but I’m still broke.
I’m still technically homeless—and now I’ve been living in his penthouse like some kind of arrangement that neither of us has defined.
Andi is still missing. Ella still isn’t legally mine or anyone’s.
And in a few hours, I have to put on glitter shorts and serve wings to strangers.
Ella finishes her bottle, and I burp her against my shoulder. She lets out an impressive one, and I hear a low chuckle from the hallway.
“Solid eight out of ten.”
I turn. Alexei is standing at the edge of the hallway, leaning against the wall. Shirtless. Gray sweatpants sit low on his hips. His hair is going in six different directions, his jaw shadowed with stubble, and his eyes are still half-closed from sleep.
My mouth goes dry.
I’ve seen him shirtless before—he walks around the apartment like shirts are optional, which they apparently are when you look like a Renaissance sculpture with better abs.
But this morning it’s different. This morning, I know what that chest feels like under my hands.
How soft that fine hair is… What his skin tastes like. The sound he makes when—
“Morning,” he says, and his voice is sleep-rough and quiet, doing things to my nervous system that should require a warning label.
“Morning.” I’m going for casual. I’m aiming for breezy and unbothered. Based on the warmth in my cheeks, I’m failing spectacularly.
He crosses the room, and I watch him move—because I’m allowed to now, I think, unless last night was a fever dream—and starts a pot of coffee.
While it brews, he joins us in the living room, leaning down to touch Ella’s foot.
“Good morning, princess,” he says softly, and she kicks her legs at the sound of his voice.
He settles on the couch beside me, and his hand finds my knee, resting there, warm and heavy, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I want to stay in this moment. I want to freeze it, live inside it, and never deal with anything outside this apartment again.
But I can’t. So I take a breath.
“I have to work today,” I say, testing the waters. “I’ll, um, drop Ella with Mrs. Henderson on my way.”
The hand on my knee goes still.
“You have to work today?” His voice is careful. Too careful.
“Yes. Noon to six.” I hold my breath.
“You don’t have to drop her with your neighbor. I can watch her. We won on Sunday, so there’s no practice today—just a team meeting later. I can bring her with me.”
I stare at him. “You’d bring a baby to a team meeting.”
“Why not?”
“What will your teammates say?”
“I don’t care what they say.”
He means it. I can tell by the set of his jaw and the way he holds my gaze without blinking. He genuinely does not care if he walks into a room full of professional football players carrying an infant in a car seat.
Something warm spreads through my chest, and I have to look away before it shows on my face.
“That’s really generous, Alexei. As per usual.”
He sets his mug on the coffee table and turns to face me. The warmth is gone from his expression, replaced by something harder. “I’m far from being generous right now, Ryleigh.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t want you working there at all.”
And there it is. The thing I’ve been waiting for—the opinion I knew he had but hadn’t voiced until now. I feel my shoulders stiffen, my walls going up brick by brick.
“That’s not your call.”
“I know it’s not. But you asked what I mean, and I’m telling you.” He runs a hand through his damp hair. “You’re smart. You’re capable. You could do anything, and instead you’re—”
“Instead I’m what?” My voice is sharper than I intend. Ella squirms in my arms, sensing the shift. “Walking around half-naked for tips? Yeah, I’m aware. I’ve been aware every single shift for the past year and a half.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“It’s what you were thinking.”
He holds my gaze, and I watch him choose his next words carefully—which is new for him. Alexei usually says exactly what he’s thinking the moment he thinks it. The fact that he’s filtering tells me this matters to him.
“I was going to say that you’re working somewhere that doesn’t deserve you. That’s it.”
The anger in my chest deflates slightly, which is inconvenient because I was gearing up for a real fight, and he just took the wind out of it.
I cross my arms. Look at the floor. Look at him. Look at the floor again.
“Alexei. Last night was . . .” I trail off because how do I finish that sentence?
Last night was the best night of my life?
Last night was a mistake? Last night was something I want to do again every single night until I die?
All of those things are true simultaneously, which seems medically impossible.
“Last night was what?” His voice is careful. He’s watching me the way you watch something that might bolt.
“Amazing,” I say, because lying about it would be pointless.
“But my life is a mess right now. Like, an actual, quantifiable disaster. I have a baby I can’t legally claim, no apartment I can go back to, a job that requires me to be topless, and I’m wearing your clothes because most of mine are in a freezing apartment across town.
That’s not exactly someone who’s ready for… whatever this is.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Whatever this is?”
My stomach drops. “I don’t know what this is. That’s my point. I can’t be . . . I’m not in a position to be with someone right now. I don’t even know who I am right now.”
The words come out harder than I mean them to, and I watch something flicker across his face—not hurt exactly, but close.
He absorbs it the way he absorbs everything, steady and quiet, and I hate that I’m the one putting that look there.
But I’d rather set the boundary now than pretend I’m someone who can handle this and fall apart later.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”