Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

Aelin clutched her towel tighter around her chest, cognizant of the dripping water pooling on the wood floor. A tendril of hair had broken free from her claw clip and now stuck to her shoulder, and her skin still prickled from the hot shower.

"Sorry, I was—" Her words caught in her throat, her brain short-circuiting. Why was a man standing on her porch? With her ten-year-old daughter? She set her phone on the edge of the pillar next to her so she could grip the towel with two hands.

"I can see that." The stranger shuffled on his feet, then awkwardly put out a hand. "Ryan." Aelin didn't take it since her hands were currently the only thing keeping her from starring in a neighbourhood soft porn.

Ryan glanced down, then pulled his hand back. He leaned on the railing, but his elbow slipped, and he nearly smashed into the porch column.

Aelin jumped and barely kept her feet from slipping off the threshold. "I'm Aelin." She pursed her lips as he straightened and smoothed his shirt.

Ryan gave that look that everyone gave her when they first learned her name. The one that said "Are you Eastern European or do your parents speak Elvish? "

"It's the second one," she said. Ryan blinked. "My parents were obsessed with Lord of the Rings, so they gave me a name that sounded like I was an elvish princess."

"Oh." He frowned, then scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "Are you the nanny, or?—"

"I'm the mother. Her mother. That's—" She pointed at Bailey standing in front of them like a child zombie. "Bailey is my daughter."

"Did you leave her at school this morning?"

Aelin frowned, bristling, and yet it didn't keep her stomach from flipping. His dark eyes stared right at her, and with his dirty-blond hair tied up and his obvious musculature, she somehow felt even more naked than she was. She cleared her throat. "I dropped my daughter off at school this morning if that's what you meant."

"Choir was cancelled." Bailey huffed and slid past her into the house, making her towel split, revealing her entire upper left thigh.

"Cancelled?" Aelin turned. "How do you know it was?—?"

"The door was locked. She was sitting outside," Ryan recited, his tone cool.

"Dad!" A little girl who looked to be the same age as Bailey leaned out the back window of the car. "Your work is calling!"

Ryan pulled his phone from his pocket. "I have to go."

Aelin's cheeks flushed. "She walked through the alcove, and I was in a rush."

"Yeah. Well, maybe next time, wait two seconds to make sure she actually got in." Ryan nodded once and headed for the steps.

"I did wait," she snapped. Why was she trying to defend herself to this asshole? Who showed up on someone's porch first thing in the morning when there's been an obvious miscommunication and accuses them of being a terrible parent? "What a treat, to meet the world's most perfect dad. Had I known you'd be on my doorstep, I would've dressed up for the occasion!"

Ryan stopped and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes dropped to her towel as if that was enough of a rebuttal, then continued toward the car. Before he passed the last lilac bush, a voice boomed from the speakers.

"—meeting starts in less than thirty minutes, and I don't have those numbers in my inbox."

Ryan started to jog. "Amaya, did you answer?"

"I didn't mean to! It was ringing, and I tried to hit the red button?—"

"Who the hell is that?" the voice snapped.

Ryan yanked on the passenger door handle, then swore under his breath when it wouldn't open. He lunged to the back, throwing his head through his daughter's open window. "Marc, I'm here. Sorry, the phone picked up through my car's Bluetooth."

"You're not in your car? You were supposed to be here?—"

"Yeah, I know. Had a bit of a snafu this morning."

Aelin smiled to herself. She didn't usually enjoy witnessing another person's pain, but in this instance, it filled her with warm fuzzies. What, Ryan? Are you caught in an unexpected circumstance and can't control every second of your life because you have children?

She remembered that he'd been the one to pick up her daughter standing alone in front of the school and bring her home, and a bit of the self-righteousness drained out of her. But just a bit.

"I need those numbers. Now," the voice barked from the window, and Ryan smacked the top of his car, exhaling an inventive string of curse words that would've made her football coach of a father blink.

"Your daughter is right there," Aelin snarked, then realized she'd been standing on the porch in a towel for the past five minutes with her daughter very much not at school and an appointment of her own that she was supposed to get to.

What the hell was she going to do now? She had to leave for the lawyer's office at seven forty-five, the same time the doors opened at the school. The choir practice, as annoying as it was to wake up early, was why she'd scheduled this meeting today instead of last week.

She turned to go back in the house when the little girl in the back of Ryan's car suddenly came bolting up the front steps.

"‘Scuse me, can I show Bailey something?" She grinned up at Aelin, and before she could answer, pushed into the house to her dad growling "Amaya!" after her.

Ryan jogged up the path holding a laptop in his hands, the door to his car flung out into the street. "Sorry, can I?—"

"Be my guest." Aelin moved to the right so he could follow his daughter through the door, but Ryan went left, and before she could correct, his chest slammed into her. Ryan grunted, gripping her barely dry arm with one hand and saving his laptop with the other. His palm was warm and rough, and he smelled like . . . man. Like sea minerals and citron vibes, which she only had a name for because she'd purchased body spray for her nephew in May.

"You pass on the left!" Aelin clutched her towel and steadied herself.

"What?"

"You always go to your right, and then I go to my right, which means you pass people on their left side."

"Umm, okay. Didn't realize there were rules." He dropped his hand and stepped into the entryway. "Amaya!"

His daughter's voice floated down from the second floor. "Just a second, I'm?—"

"No just a second, I'm already late!" he barked.

"You know, kids really respond better to calm, understanding voices."

Ryan shot her a look. "I hear they also respond well to not being abandoned before seven in the morning."

Aelin laughed out loud. "You're one of those guys, aren't you? The ones whose wife always does drop off but because there was a change in schedule you decided to be nice and take the hit, wake up early, and the second you get to the school, you decide you have all these opinions on things. Like ‘why does the drop off lane run counterclockwise, and why did you tell me to park here because this spot is strategically better for getting back on the road and avoiding traffic.'"

"His wife can't do drop off." Amaya came running down the stairs holding a tiny stuffed keychain penguin. "My mom's in the hospital."

Aelin's eyes widened. "Oh, shit. I'm?—"

"My daughter's right there." Ryan shot her a look. "C'mon." He put an arm around Amaya's shoulder and led her back onto the porch.

"Dad, you're not going to make it to work in time for your meeting. It takes more than thirty minutes to get downtown," she chattered.

"I'm aware."

Aelin watched them walk to the car. Ryan set his laptop on the hood, lifted the screen, and pulled out his phone. He was trying to hot spot so he could send whatever his boss had been asking for.

"That's not going to work." Aelin stepped out onto the mat.

Ryan huffed a breath. "Thanks."

"No, I meant—" She drew a deep breath. "There's not a great signal in this neighbourhood. You can use my WiFi if you want. If it would be helpful."

Ryan glanced up, considering. Finally he nodded and picked up his computer.

Amaya poked her head out the window. "Are you going to be a minute? Can I go see Bailey?"

Ryan started to shake his head, but Aelin said, "Sure. If it's okay with your dad."

Amaya's eyes lit up. His jaw worked, but he nodded. She jumped out of the car and ran back into the house with a hurried, "Thank you."

Ryan ascended the steps, his brow drawn into a scowl .

Aelin shifted on her feet and motioned to the porch swing. "Sorry. I don't have another chair out here." Ryan sat, and the bench creaked. "Um, the network is . . ." She paused, kicking herself for not changing it already. "DarylIsADouchebag."

Ryan glanced up.

"It's a long story."

He clicked on the WiFi network, then turned the screen toward her. Aelin started to drop into a crouch to type in the password, then realized her entire ass was dropping out of the bottom of the towel. She shot back up. "I—can you stand?"

"You can just tell it to me."

"I'd rather not."

His lip twitched. "It can't possibly be better than the network name."

Aelin pursed her lips. If he stood, she'd still have to either hen peck out the password with one hand or hope her armpit could hold up her towel while she typed. She debated for a moment, then accepted her fate. "The password is ‘BJs!nmyPJs72.'"

Ryan's eyes widened. "Wow."

"Hm. Yep." Her face felt like the surface of the sun.

"Another long story?"

"Pretty short, actually," she quipped, then clamped her mouth shut. She shuffled back toward the door. "No apostrophes. The "I" is an exclamation point. The J's and the B and the P are capitalized."

He nodded. "So the BJ?—"

"And the PJ. Mmhmm. Seventy-two." Aelin escaped inside and closed the door behind her. Sweat dripped down the inside of her arm. Could that have been any more embarrassing? Maybe if she'd had a penis drawn in Sharpie across her cheek like she had when she originally came up with that password when she was a junior in college .

There was something very wrong with her, and now, because of her sick sense of humour and her abject refusal to bring new passwords into her rotation, the angry hot dad on her porch knew far too much about her nightmare brain. And was definitely judging her for it. At least her twenty-year-old self hadn't gone with sixty-nine. There was that.

She glanced up at the clock. Seven-ten? Aelin's hands started to shake. She'd been dreading this morning for at least three weeks, and the stress of this situation was only making her anxiety worse.

She took the stairs two at a time and heard the girls giggling in Bailey's room. "Bailey, you have fifteen minutes!"

It would be fine to drop her off a little early, wouldn't it? There were other kids there, she wouldn't be outside of the school for long, and it wasn't like it was the middle of December.

When she reached the landing, she sprinted down the hall to her bedroom, dropping the towel the second she got into the washroom and closed the door. She hopped back into the shower, did a quick rinse to wash away her stress sweat, then dried off and applied moisturizer and deodorant. She ran a brush through her hair, hung up her towel, then rushed into the bedroom and grabbed underwear from her dresser.

She'd already laid out the outfit she planned to wear that morning. Something nondescript and comfortable so she had one less thing to think about while her ex, Clark, was coming after her for everything else.

Aelin fumbled with the clasp of her bra, her fingers slipping on the hook and loop, then finally got it on and pulled her blouse over her head. Aelin grabbed her jeans and pulled them on, zipping them up just as she turned to the mirror. Her hair hung in messy, damp tendrils around her face.

She ran back into the washroom, snatched her hairdryer from the drawer and plugged it in, the roar of the motor filling the room. As she worked the dryer through her hair, her eyes ran over the message she'd written to herself in dry-erase marker on the glass. Bailey is #1. Let everything else go.

Aelin drew a deep breath and switched the dryer to her other side. It killed her to think about walking into that office and allowing Clark to get away with only claiming a hundred grand in income the prior year. It felt like a succubus was draining her life force each time she imagined him driving home in his freaking Audi to his custom ranch in a brand-new gated community and then sitting there at mediation pretending he shouldn't have to increase his child support payments.

She felt the familiar spiral begin to take hold. She needed to find a job for the summer. A good one. That meant she wouldn't be around for Bailey, and since Bailey wasn't old enough to be home on her own, she was going to have to find childcare, which meant her job needed to be even better , and she was a terrible mother for missing the entire summer with her daughter, and?—

Aelin shuddered. Nope. She wasn't going to think about that. She'd been working with her therapist on not catastrophizing, and she was getting better at it. But it was proving more difficult when her worst-case scenarios were staring her in the face.

Aelin turned off the hairdryer and swiped smoothing cream through her locks, tamping down the post-shower fluff.

She grabbed her makeup bag and pulled out her concealer, dabbing it under her eyes and over the spot next to her nose that always seemed redder than the rest of her face. She swept bronzer over her cheekbones, then reached for her mascara.

When she finished applying, she smoothed tinted lip balm over her lips and grabbed a hair clip just in case. Sometimes the feeling of her hair on her neck annoyed her. Especially when Clark was around. He hated when she wore her hair up.

Aelin took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Breathe in for four counts. Hold for four counts. Breathe out for four counts . . . It was supposed to ground her. Right then, it was only pissing her off.

Aelin rushed into the hall. "Bailey!"

"We're downstairs! I'm giving Amaya some Fruity Pebbles!"

Fantastic. Sugar cereal for breakfast. Yet another thing man-bun Ryan could judge her for. She glanced out the window when she reached the main floor and saw the back of Ryan's head. He was still on the porch swing. Still staring at the screen of his laptop.

Okay, looked like she was playing babysitter. She swept into the kitchen and found the girls sitting at the counter with their bowls of cereal. "Sorry to make you rush, babes, but we have to go now. I'm going to have to drop you off a little early. That's okay, right?" She cringed, realizing she wanted a ten-year-old to validate her life choices.

The girls whispered to each other, then Amaya slurped another mouthful of cereal and hopped off the stool.

"Bailey—"

"It's fine, mom. Just a sec. She's going to ask her dad something."

"Bailes, I don't have time for extras this morning." Aelin grabbed a protein shake from the fridge. The breakfast of champions slash soon-to-be-divorced moms who hoped to someday focus on getting back into shape but were still in the trenches of their emotional trauma.

"He said yes!" Amaya ran back into the kitchen, her eyes lit up like Christmas trees.

Bailey spun on her stool. "Amaya and I want to walk to school."

Aelin started to open her mouth, then froze as Ryan entered her field of view.

He cleared his throat. "Sorry. She left the door open."

Aelin turned back to Bailey. "I love this idea, but Bailes, you know your dad won't?—"

"He's not even here anymore! Why does he get to say when I only go to his house after school?"

Aelin's cheeks flushed. Perfect. More of their dirty laundry just flung around for Ryan to inspect. She grabbed her keys from the bowl on the counter. "I can explain all of that later, but if we don't leave now?—"

"He said I couldn't bike to school. He never said I couldn't walk. Plus I'll have a friend with me." She threw her arm around Amaya who was drinking from her bowl, and pink cereal milk sloshed onto the counter. "Then you wouldn't have to drop me off early, and you'd still be on time to the lawyer's office."

"Wow, Bailey. We're really just throwing it all out there," Aelin snapped, snatching the dishcloth from the sink and wiping up the mess.

"I can take them." Ryan leaned against the wall, and when Aelin looked up, she felt a little like a bird who'd just run headfirst into a sparkling glass window. There was a man in her kitchen. A man with grey eyes and an impressive jawline wearing a collared shirt and pants that looked like they had to be Lululemon athletic fit.

"Dad, you have a meeting," Amaya whined.

"They sent me a Zoom link. I can turn it on in the car."

Aelin exhaled, grabbing her purse from the counter on the other side of the fridge. "No service, remember?"

Ryan opened his mouth, then closed it.

Aelin put her hands on her hips. "You're okay with them walking together?"

He shrugged. "It's what, a ten-minute walk?"

"Something like that." Aelin ignored the girls squeezing their arms around each other and crossing their fingers.

"I could take the meeting here. Amaya has a watch. If something happens, I'll be just a few seconds away," he said.

Amaya held up her wrist, showing off her device. Aelin had thought about getting one of those for Bailey for Christmas, but it required an extra data plan.

Aelin nodded. "Fine. But stick together and look both ways across the street."

She couldn't even hear herself over the sound of their elated cheers. They cleared their bowls and ran to the front entryway to slip on their shoes and grab their backpacks.

Aelin followed, then stopped when she noticed Ryan hadn't moved .

"You left this. On the porch." He held up her phone, and Aelin exhaled. She hadn't realized she didn't have it.

"Thank you." She took it from him and glanced at the screen. Three new messages. Her heart punched through her chest at the preview glaring at her from Clark Moses.

This would all be a lot simpler if you weren't so difficult and exhausting to love

Aelin blinked, her eyes suddenly swimming. She needed to say something, to act normal, but her throat felt like it was clamped with a chip clip.

"I'll be right here on the porch." Ryan's voice floated down the hall. Thank heavens he wasn't still standing in front of her. Aelin grabbed a tissue and pressed it to the corner of her eyes.

A second later, Bailey rounded the corner and threw her arms around Aelin's waist. "Love you, mom."

"Love you." Her words were more of a breath than a whisper as she clutched her daughter to her chest. "Have a great day at school."

Bailey ran back to the front door, and Aelin didn't say a word about her running through the house with her shoes on. She strode directly to the back door and opened the garage.

She did not pass GO.

She did not collect two hundred dollars.