Chapter Nine #2
“Yeah. Okay.” He picks up his coffee mug and takes a sip, leaning against the counter.
Calm. Measured. “I’m not asking you to be anything, Ryleigh.
I’m not asking you to define this or label it or figure it all out this morning.
I just want to be honest about the fact that I care about you. What you do with that is up to you.”
I stare at him. That was . . . not the response I was expecting.
I was expecting him to push, to argue, to make some grand declaration that would force me to either give in or run.
Instead, he just stood there and gave me room, and somehow that’s worse because now I have no one to fight except myself.
“I can’t quit, Alexei. What would I do for money?” I move Ella to her blanket on the floor and stand, needing space. “And don’t you dare suggest that I keep relying on you. You know I hate it. It makes me feel cheap and useless, and I won’t—”
“Hey.” He stands too, crossing the distance between us.
His hands find my shoulders, and he ducks his head to meet my eyes.
“You are the opposite of cheap and useless, and you know it. Ninety-nine percent of the women I meet are happy to let me pay their way. You’ve fought me on everything since the night we met: the diapers, the formula, the crib.
I practically had to beg you to let me buy groceries. ”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because groceries are one thing. Having someone pay your entire way through life is another. I’m not .
. .” I look down at my bare feet on his marble floor.
“I won’t be someone’s obligation. I’ve been taking care of myself since I was twenty-two, and before that, my parents took care of me, and then they died, and I figured it out.
Badly, maybe, but I figured it out. I can’t unlearn that just because you have a nice apartment and a gold card. ”
His thumbs rub slow circles on my shoulders. “I’m not asking you to unlearn anything. I’m telling you that you deserve better, and when you’re ready to figure out what that looks like, I want to help. That’s it.”
I swallow. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. No strings, no agenda. Just me being honest with someone I care about.”
Someone I care about. After last night, the words land differently—heavier, warmer, scarier. He cares about me. He’s not just being generous or charitable or noble. He actually cares about me.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, releasing my shoulders and stepping back to give me room.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and lean against the counter. “Sure.”
“If you didn’t work there, what would you want to be doing instead?”
That one’s easy. “Teaching. I always wanted to be a teacher. I finished my first two years of college on a scholarship and with money my parents set aside. Then the accident happened, and my parents . . .” I look down at my coffee.
“I lost my focus. Lost the scholarship. That was two years ago. I’d love to go back and finish, but I make decent money at the club, and now with Ella . . .”
“You’d be a great teacher.”
I look up. He says it simply, like it’s obvious, like it’s a fact he’s known for a while and is only now mentioning.
“Thanks,” I mutter, but his words settle around me—warm, solid, the kind of thing I want to hold on to even though I know I shouldn’t get comfortable.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” he says. “You go to work today. I watch Ella. And we don’t solve everything right now. We just . . . do what feels natural.”
“What feels natural?”
He fills his coffee mug and leans against the counter. A smile tugs at his mouth—small, private. “Yeah. Tonight, you sleep in my room. Not the guest room.”
My stomach drops and soars. He’s not hedging. Not playing it cool. Just saying it directly and looking at me with those blue eyes like the answer matters more than he’s letting on.
I’m trying to play it cool. Trying to channel the version of myself with witty comebacks and an unshakable poker face. “Okay.”
He grins, and before I can say anything else, he crosses the kitchen and kisses me. Brief, soft, coffee-warm. When he pulls back, I’m smiling, and I can’t stop.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
“Stop saying okay.”
“Okay.”
Ella shrieks from the floor—happy, kicking—and we both look at her.
“She approves,” he says.
“She has gas.”
He laughs.
I leave for work just before noon. The same time that Alexei heads out for his meeting. When I climb into my car, he leans down and kisses me, his hand on the back of my neck, and when he pulls away, his eyes are dark.
“Be safe,” he says.
“It’s a restaurant, Alexei. Not a war zone.”
“Still.”
I watch him drive away with Ella in the back seat, and for a minute, I just sit in the parking lot, keys in my hand, trying to reconcile the two halves of my life—the one where I wake up in a penthouse next to a man who looks at me like I’m the only person in the room, and the one where I’m about to put on body glitter and serve loaded potato skins to men who think a twenty on the table entitles them to stare at my chest for an hour.
I sit in my car and call Desiree.
She picks up on the second ring. “Finally she calls. Someone’s dead or you slept with the football player.”
I press my lips together. “Nobody’s dead.”
Silence. One beat. Two.
Then a scream so loud I have to pull the phone from my ear.
“Ryleigh Marie. Tell me everything. Right now.”
“You have to be calm about this.”
“I will not be calm. Talk.”
I maneuver the car onto the street. “He got back from his away game last night. We were on the couch. He was rubbing my feet—”
“He was RUBBING YOUR FEET?”
“Des.”
“Sorry. Continue.”
“And he said he missed me, and I said I missed him, and then he said come here and—”
Desiree makes a sound I can only describe as feral. “Come here. He said COME HERE. That’s straight out of a movie. Then what?”
“Then we kissed. And then, um, more than kissed.”
“Define more.”
I wait for the streetlight to turn and make a left, heading toward work. “He carried me to his room.”
Desiree makes a sound that can only be described as feral. “He CARRIED you. How good? Scale of one to ten.”
I think about his mouth on me. The way he took his time. The way he said my name against my skin. “The scale doesn’t go high enough.”
“I need you to understand that I’m on my kitchen floor right now. You’ve put me on the floor, Ry.”
“Get up. I need advice.”
“My legs are broken. But go ahead.”
“He asked me to sleep in his room tonight. And he told me he doesn’t want me working at the club.”
The screaming stops. “Oh. Okay, that’s… complicated.”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel about the room thing?”
“Terrified. Happy. Mostly terrified.”
“And the work thing?”
I stare through my windshield at the club’s parking lot—the neon sign unlit in the daylight, the dumpsters along the side, the cracked asphalt. “He’s right. I know he’s right. But I can’t just quit and let him support me. That’s not who I am.”
“Babe, there’s a difference between letting someone support you and letting someone be there for you.”
“It’s been four days, Des. Four days.”
“And in those four days, he’s bought a crib, handled night feeds so you can sleep, and asked you to move into his room. Most guys I date won’t even text back within four days.”
I don’t say anything because she’s not wrong, and I hate that she’s not wrong.
“Ryleigh. Listen to me. I have watched you claw your way through the last two years on pride and stubbornness and not a lot else. And I love that about you. But at some point, you have to let someone in. Not because you need saving—because you deserve someone who shows up. And from everything you’ve told me, that man shows up. ”
My eyes sting. I blink it away. “What if it falls apart?”
“What if it doesn’t?”
I sit there in my car, keys still in my hand, the club in front of me and Alexei’s penthouse behind me—somewhere across the city. Two lives. Two versions of me. The one who survives and the one who might actually get to be happy.
“I have to go to work,” I say.
“I know.” Her voice softens. “But think about what I said, okay? Just think about it.”
“Okay.”
“And Ry?”
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t invite me over to that penthouse soon, our friendship is in jeopardy.”
I laugh, and it loosens something in my chest. “Deal.”
After we hang up, I sit for another minute. The sun is bright, and the parking lot is empty, and in a minute I’ll walk through those doors and put on the costume and do the job. But tonight I’ll go home to Alexei’s apartment and sleep in his bed, and if I’m not careful, I’ll start falling for him.
And I don’t know how to fall without bracing for impact.
But maybe I don’t have to figure that out today. Maybe today I just go to work, come home, and let tonight be tonight.
I grab my bag, lock my car, and head inside.