Chapter Eleven

Then

Ryleigh avoided me like the plague.

I didn’t know how she got home, but I hadn’t been able to find her at the banquet, and when I got back to the apartment, all my things were sitting in bags outside her door. She’d moved fast.

Never doubt a woman scorned…

I didn’t force myself into her apartment. I decided to give her a night or two of space, but that proved to be yet another wrong move on my part. On day three, I knocked on her door.

Nothing.

Days four, five, and six, all the same.

Day seven, I decided enough was enough, and tried to use my key.

Ryleigh had had the locks changed.

One week turned to two, and not once did I see her. Not at a game, not out and about around the apartment complex, and the more I went without her, the more I realized space hadn’t been what she needed. I should have been a man, and confronted her and the situation—both what I’d said out of my ass, but also regarding Jason—not letting doubt and ill-at-ease run our relationship.

It had been damn near three months, the post season dwindling to a close, when Natalie called me. “You about ready to get your head out of your ass?”

I knew that Natalie and Ryleigh had grown close. Over Christmas break, I’d brought Ryleigh up to the lake house, where she met the family and became fast friends with my sister. If anyone knew what was up with Ryleigh, I hoped it was Natalie.

When I didn’t answer, she said, “You and Ryleigh were perfect together!”

“Were. Now we’re not,” I told her, even though the words were stiff to my own ears. It couldn’t be over…

It had been ten weeks.

It was over.

“You should talk to her.”

She won’t listen. I’ve tried. I’ve been there. I’ve knocked on her door. I’ve called her phone.

“I saw her,” Natalie continued. “You should talk to her, Noah.”

I’d told her I would try, and I’d started hatching up a plan. Once again, though, the decision was taken out of my hands—this time, by Ryleigh herself.

It was my birthday. Big ol’ quarter of a century old. I couldn’t even be happy about it though, because the hockey season was over. It was my birthday, I was apparently single, and we’d just lost in game four of the Calder Cup series.

There would be no more hockey for months to come.

I was pissed, sure; we’d been so fucking close to winning. So close.

We lost in the last ten seconds of the game.

I drove back to my mostly-empty apartment, working off a mad, but that quickly evaporated when I walked inside.

Standing in front of me after I closed the door, was Ryleigh.

My Ryleigh.

The one I hadn’t seen, or heard from, in weeks.

She stood there, worrying on her bottom lip, and all I wanted to do was pull it from between her teeth and kiss her senseless. The only person who should have been nibbling on that full lower lip was me.

“Ryleigh,” I managed to say, my duffle dropping and hitting the floor by my feet with a thud.

“Hi.” She visibly swallowed, uncrossing her arms and shifting uneasily in her spot. She wore a loose tank top. It was starting to near the seventies during the day, but was still chilly at night. She was going to get cold. I was about to offer her a sweatshirt when her stumbled words continued. “I’m. Um.” She swallowed again and pointed to the door behind me. “I’m just going to go. You have a spare key. Um. Jason…” She fidgeted again. “Jason got me your key and I made a copy, and now you have a spare. It’s on the kitchen counter. I’m sorry.”

I heard none of it.

Well, I did, but I didn’t care.

She was here, but she was leaving?

Ryleigh moved toward me, trying to leave, but I had to stop her. “Where are you going so fast? We should talk.” It sounded awkward to my own ears, but I was on uneven ground with her right now. I screwed up. She overheard me spouting bullshit about not getting married when, in reality, all I wanted to do was change her name to mine.

I wanted Ryleigh with a fierceness I’d never experienced before.

But I knew if I let her walk out that door…

It was done.

She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You had a rough night. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I—” But she didn’t let me finish.

Ryleigh slipped right past me, leaving me alone in my big-ass empty apartment.

“Fuck.” I started after her, getting as far as swinging the door open and calling out her name, but then the house phone was ringing, and the oven timer was going off—which left me momentarily confused—and I couldn’t leave the apartment in the state that it was.

The phone stopped before I reached it, and when I got to the oven, the timer was at zero, but nothing was inside. I looked around the counter, eventually noticing a cake pan.

Why was Ryleigh baking in my apartment?

I walked over and peered under the foil.

It was a brownie with the words Congrats & Happy Birthday piped out in blue frosting, but there was a chunk missing. Did she really eat my brownie?

There was something comical about the moment, but I was having a hard time mustering up the laugh. Instead, I went to work cleaning up the kitchen; not that Ryleigh left a mess. The only things left over that said she was here, was a box from the brownie mix and an unused napkin.

As I went to toss them into the garbage, my world stopped spinning.

On top, was the missing piece of brownie.

And, in the same blue piping, the rest of the birthday wish spelled out—

Daddy.