Page 40 of Only for Tonight

“About the baby at the team meeting, man.”

Briggs walks over. Then Tate. Then Doug, hovering at the edge of the group like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.

“Whose kid?” Briggs asks.

I give them the version I’m willing to share. Street corner, late at night. A woman named Ryleigh whose roommate left her with a baby and disappeared. Broken heat in her apartment. She’s staying at my place while she figures things out.

That’s all they get. They don’t get last night. They don’t get this morning.

When I finish, nobody says anything for a beat.

“So you met a girl,” Briggs says, “brought her home, and now she’s living with you and you’re watching her kid.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” It’s not even her kid, for starters.

“I’m sure it is. How long have you known her?”

No point stretching it. “Seven days.”

The silence shifts into something heavier.

“Seven days,” Weston repeats. “She’s in your penthouse. After seven days.”

Heat pricks the back of my neck. “The situation called for it.”

“What situation?”

“The one where her apartment had no heat and she had a two-month-old baby. That situation.”

Weston holds up his hands. “I’m not attacking you. I’m just pointing out that this is . . . a lot.”

Tate pulls a chair around and sits across from me. Ten years in the league, married, two kids, the closest thing this team has to a voice of reason. When Tate talks, people listen. Including me.

“Ivan. Where does this woman work?”

I rub the back of my neck. “She’s a waitress.”

“Where?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

I exhale. “Shimmer.”

Quiet. The wrong kind of quiet. Briggs runs a hand over his face. Weston stares at the ceiling and releases a slow, pained breath.

“The place on Rush Street,” Tate says.

“She’s a waitress, Tate. She works there because it pays. She wants to be a teacher—she had two years of college on scholarship before her parents died and she lost everything. She’s not—”

“Nobody’s judging her job.” His voice is level, and I believe him. “I’m talking about what this looks like from the outside. To the front office. To the press. To anyone who cares about how Alexei Ivan is spending his time during the biggest contract year of his career.”

That lands. I don’t have a quick response for it.

“You’re in the middle of a thirty-million-dollar negotiation,” Tate continues. “Your agent’s been building this for months. The organization is watching everything you do. And you’ve moved in a woman nobody here has met, with a baby that has no legal custody arrangement, and you’re bringing that baby to team meetings.” He pauses. “I like you, Ivan. That’s why I’m saying this.”

Something inside my stomach sinks. “I know.”