Page 80 of Only for Tonight

“The second time?”

“My mother has a sixth sense about these things. She told me after dinner. Said she could see it in the way I looked at you.”

Ryleigh traces the rim of her glass. “What way?”

“The way I’m looking at you right now.”

Her cheeks flush, and she takes another sip of champagne. “Smooth.”

“I try.”

We’re quiet for a minute. The good kind—where the silence isn’t empty; it’s just full of things neither of us needs to say out loud. I can hear a siren somewhere far below, and the fridge humming, and Ryleigh breathing.

“Ella rolled over by herself today,” she says. “Both directions. Your mom sent me a video during the second quarter, and I almost missed a play because I was watching it.”

“Both directions?”

“Belly to back and back to belly. Full rotational capability. Your mother narrates the whole thing like a nature documentary.”

I laugh—a real one, loose and easy—and it feels good. Everything feels good tonight. My body hurts, and I’m exhausted, and I should probably ice my shoulder, and none of it matters because Ryleigh said yes.

“My dad used to say something,” I tell her, leaning against the counter. “He didn’t talk much—he was always working, always tired—but sometimes at night he’d sit on the porch with a beer, and if you sat with him long enough, he’d say things.”

She turns to look at me.

“He said the way you know it’s real is you can’t picture going back. Not that you don’t want to—that you can’t. Like your brain won’t even construct the image anymore.”

The apartment is so quiet I can hear the heat come on.

“I can’t picture this apartment without your shoes by the door,” I say. “Or the kitchen without you humming in it. I can’t picture it without the crib, or the mornings without you stealing my T-shirts, or any of it. I can’t go back. My brain won’t do it.”

Her eyes are bright. She blinks, and a tear slides down her cheek, and she wipes it with the back of her hand.

“I’m scared,” she says.

“Of what?”

“Of deserving this.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “The girl who was standing outside that bar two months ago . . . she didn’t have any of this. She didn’t have a family. She didn’t have a home. She was just surviving. And now I’m here, and you’re here, and Ella’s here, and I have a ring on my finger and sisters who text me every day, and sometimes I wake up at 3 a.m. and check that it’s all still real.”

I cross the room and take her face in my hands. “It’s real.”

“I know. I know it is. It’s just . . . a lot.”

I lean down and press my forehead against hers. “I know.”

She laughs, wet and quiet, and tips her face up to kiss me. Soft at first. Salt from her tears on her lips and champagne on her tongue and her fingers curling into the front of my shirt.

Then not so soft.

Her hand slides up my chest, around my neck, into my hair, and the kiss deepens into something slower and more deliberate. I pull her closer, my hands finding her waist, and she makes a sound against my mouth—this quiet, need-filled thing—that lights me up from the inside.

“I believe,” she murmurs against my lips, “that we have a championship to celebrate.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm-hm.” She pulls back just enough to look at me, and her eyes are dark and her cheeks are flushed and she’s biting her bottom lip in a way that makes my pulse spike. “Take me to bed.”

I grin. “Bossy.”