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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.”
