Chapter Fifteen
BABYSITTING
Tori
My phone buzzes while I’m elbow-deep in laundry.
I almost ignore it. It’s Sunday afternoon, and my day has consisted of laundry, leftover Chinese food, and a true crime documentary I’m only half paying attention to.
Then I see the name on the screen.
Zayden.
My stomach flips. We haven’t talked since the banquet two nights ago. Since the hallway. Since he kissed me like he was trying to prove a point—and he succeeded spectacularly.
I stare at the phone for three full rings before answering.
“Hello?”
“Hey.” His voice is tight, stressed. “I’m sorry to call like this, but I need a favor. A big one.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hannah’s mom fell. She’s at the hospital—broken hip, they think. Hannah had to leave, and I have a team meeting in forty minutes that I can’t miss, and my mom’s flight doesn’t land until tomorrow, and—” He stops and takes a breath. “I don’t have anyone else to call.”
I sink onto the edge of my bed, my heart hammering. “You need me to watch Maisie.”
“Just for a few hours. Three, maybe four. I know it’s a lot to ask, and if you can’t—”
“I’ll be there.”
Silence. Then, “Yeah?”
“Text me your address.”
“Tori...” He sounds like he wants to say more. Thank you, maybe. Or something bigger.
“Just send the address, Zayden. I’ll be there.”
I hang up before I can second-guess myself.
· · ·
His townhouse is in a quiet neighborhood in Brooklyn.
I don’t know what I expected—something sleek and modern, maybe, all glass and angles like you see in those athlete home tours online or on MTV Cribs. But this is... warm. A brick rowhouse with a blue door and window boxes that probably hold flowers in the spring.
I stand on the sidewalk for a full thirty seconds, trying to remember how to breathe.
This is his life. His real life—not the arena, the training room, or stolen moments in hallways. This is where he makes breakfast, reads bedtime stories, and exists as something other than a hockey player. Where he’s someone’s dad.
I’m about to step inside it.
The door swings open before I can knock.
Zayden’s standing there in jeans and a gray henley, looking harried, grateful, and unfairly attractive. His hair is messy, like he’s been running his hands through it, and there’s something on his sleeve that might be peanut butter.
“Hey.” He steps back to let me in. “Thank you. Seriously. I owe you.”
“You can repay me in tacos. The good kind, not Tito’s.”
He almost smiles. “Deal.”
The inside of the house is exactly what the outside promised. Cozy. Lived-in. There’s a toy bin in the corner of the living room overflowing with stuffed animals, a stack of picture books on the coffee table, and crayon drawings taped to the refrigerator that I can see through the kitchen doorway.
It smells like laundry detergent and something baking. Cookies, maybe.
“Hannah put cookies in before she left,” Zayden says, following my gaze. “The timer should go off in about ten minutes. Maze knows she’s only allowed two.”
“She’ll try for three?”
“She’ll try for six. Don’t fall for the face.” He grabs his jacket from a hook by the door. “She’s in her room. I told her you were coming.”
“What did you tell her about me?”
He pauses, jacket half-on. “That you’re the person who’s helping Daddy’s shoulder get better. And that you’re nice.”
“Am I nice?”
“Sometimes.” His eyes meet mine, and there’s a flicker of heat beneath the stress. “When you want to be.”
Before I can respond, a small voice calls from upstairs. “Daddy? Is she here?”
“Yeah, shadow. Come say hi.”
Footsteps on the stairs—quick, a little clumsy—and then Maisie Bishop appears.
She’s smaller than I expected, with dark hair in two slightly uneven braids, wearing leggings adorned with dinosaurs and a purple sweater that says GIRLS RULE.
She has Zayden’s big, dark, serious eyes, and she’s currently studying me with an intensity that makes me feel like I’m being interviewed for a very important position.
“Hi,” she says carefully. “I’m Maisie. But you can call me Maze if you want.”
“Hi, Maze.” I crouch down to her eye level. “I’m Tori.”
“I know. Daddy told me.” She tilts her head. “You fix people’s shoulders?”
“I do. Arms and legs too, sometimes.”
“Did you fix Daddy’s shoulder?”
“I’m working on it. He’s not always a very good listener.”
Maisie nods solemnly, like this confirms something she already suspected. “He doesn’t listen about vegetables either.”
Behind her, Zayden makes an indignant sound. “I eat vegetables.”
“Not the green ones.”
“Broccoli is a scam, Maze. We’ve discussed this.”
I press my lips together to keep from laughing, but Maisie catches it anyway and gives me a tiny, conspiratorial smile.
“The cookies are almost ready,” she tells me. “I’m only allowed two, but sometimes I can have three if I ask nicely.”
“Maisie.” Zayden’s voice is warning but fond.
“I’m just telling her the rules, Daddy.”
“Uh-huh.” He checks his watch and winces. “I have to go. Tori, her bedtime is eight. She can have screen time until seven, then it’s bath, books, bed. Ellie—that’s her elephant—has to be in the exact right spot or she can’t sleep.”
“Which spot?”
“Under her left arm, trunk facing out. She’ll tell you if it’s wrong.”
“Trunk facing out. Got it.”
He hesitates, looking between me and Maisie, unsure if he should leave. Like he’s entrusting me with something precious, fragile, and irreplaceable.
Which he is.
“Go,” I tell him gently. “We’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, Daddy.” Maisie grabs my hand—just like that, easy as breathing—and starts tugging me toward the kitchen. “We’re gonna be fine. Go do your meeting.”
Zayden watches us for another moment. Then he meets my eyes, and something passes between us—gratitude, yes, but also something deeper. Trust.
“I’ll text you when I’m on my way back,” he says.
“Take your time.”
He leaves, and I’m alone with his daughter in his house, holding her small hand in mine.
No pressure.
The cookies are chocolate chip, and they’re incredible.
Maisie eats her two—she doesn’t even attempt a third, which makes me think Zayden oversold the negotiation tactics—and then gives me a tour of the house. Her room is upstairs, painted lavender, with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and a small bookshelf overflowing with picture books.
“This is Ellie.” She holds up a well-loved stuffed elephant, gray and slightly balding in places. “She’s been my best friend since I was a baby.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She’s a little old,” Maisie admits. “But Daddy says that just means she’s extra loved.”
My chest tightens.
We color for a while—Maisie is very particular about staying within the lines and even more particular about which colors go where—and then we watch an episode of Bluey, which I’ve never seen before but is apparently the greatest show ever created, according to Maisie.
“This one’s about when Bluey doesn’t want to go to sleep,” she explains very seriously. “It’s a good one.”
“Is that a problem you have? Not wanting to go to sleep?”
She considers this. “Sometimes. When Daddy’s not home, it’s harder.”
“Why?”
“Because...” She picks at a thread on the couch cushion. “What if he doesn’t come back?”
The question hits me like a punch to the sternum. I have inadvertently wandered into territory I have no business being in. Eating cookies and coloring and watching cartoons was my sweet spot. Not… this. But Maisie’s still looking at me.
“He always comes back,” I say carefully. “Doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. But my mom didn’t.” She says it matter-of-factly, as if she’s explaining that the sky is blue. “She was supposed to come back, and then she didn’t. So sometimes I worry.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m not equipped for this—for the casual devastation of a six-year-old who’s learned that people leave.
“Your dad loves you very much,” I finally manage. “I can tell.”
“I know.” She looks up at me with those dark, serious eyes. “He says I’m stuck with him forever.”
“That sounds like something he’d say.”
“Daddy talks about you,” she says, her eyes still on the TV.
I blink. “He does?”
“Mm-hmm. He says your name funny.” She scrunches her nose, thinking. “Like it’s special or something.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. I’ve always liked the way he says my name. I thought it was just me. My face feels warm.
“Do you like my daddy?” she asks next.
The question is so casual, so matter-of-fact, that it takes me a second to process.
“I... yes. He’s my friend.”
“Good.” She nods, satisfied, and turns back to Bluey.
I sit there with my heart in my throat, wondering how a six-year-old just saw straight through me.
· · ·
Bedtime goes smoother than I expected.
Bath, pajamas, teeth brushing. Maisie insists on picking three books instead of two, and I don’t have the heart to argue. We read about a hungry caterpillar, a runaway bunny, and a little girl who tames a wild thing.
Ellie goes under her left arm, trunk facing out. Maisie adjusts her twice before declaring it acceptable.
She’s asleep within minutes, her breathing slow and even. I sit there longer than I need to, thinking. She’s so small. So brave. So determined to be okay, even when the world keeps giving her reasons not to be.
Something dangerous unfurls in my chest. Not just affection, but want.
The kind I’ve been pushing down for years, telling myself there’s time, telling myself career first. But sitting here in this lavender room filled with books and stuffed animals and a unicorn nightlight?
I want this, and that persistent little ache I push down grows a little.
I carefully extract my hand and slip out of the room, leaving the door cracked and the hallway light on.
Then I go downstairs and try to remember how to breathe normally.
· · ·
Zayden gets home at nine.
I’m on the couch, pretending to watch TV when I hear his key in the lock. My whole body goes alert, pulse spiking, and I hate how much I’ve been waiting for this. For him.