“They’re Minnie’s ears,” Kaylee says.
“So?”
“So they’re for gi—”
Ryder glares at his daughter. “Finish that sentence, bub. I dare you.”
She turns to Ryder. “You mean boys can wear Minnie ears?”
“Anyone can wear whatever the hell they want.” I put on a fully sequined rainbow pair of ears with a bow.
“You look very pretty.” Kaylee’s serious voice makes me smile, and I pat her head.
“So do you.”
The cashier doesn’t even blink at my chosen ears, but she does do a double take when she hands Ryder’s credit card back.
We’re quick to move on and hope the look she got of him was too quick to make a definite identification.
“What ride are we hitting up first?” Ryder asks.
“Ariel ride! Ariel ride!”
“And she’s off,” I say.
Her little legs work overtime toward the Ariel ride.
“Just so you know,” Ryder says, “we’re gonna spend most of today on this damn ride.”
I start singing “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.
Ryder shakes his head at me, but he’s so fighting a smile.
Even though I fight it all day, I can’t help the overwhelming feeling of family I get when I’m with Ryder and Kaylee.
It makes me see a future with both of them in ways I’ve never pictured with anyone before.
And despite Ryder being recognized a handful of times, everyone is surprisingly respectful.
He does his trick of being nice and voluntarily taking selfies so they’re less inclined to post candids on social media of the three of us hanging out.
When I ask him if he’s worried they’ll post photos of me and people will speculate who I am, he waves me off.
“You are her nanny. They can’t dispute that.”
And I realize that in any sort of relationship with Ryder, I will always be Kaylee’s nanny to everyone else. Nothing more.
It’s not something I’m entirely comfortable with even though I understand it. It’s hiding a part of me I promised myself I wouldn’t when trying to make it big in Hollywood.
Ryder does everything to protect his daughter, sometimes too much, but Ryder coming out would put Kaylee in the spotlight. Not only her, but questions about her paternity, about Maggie, and about the whole dynamic they’ve managed to keep close to the vest. There’s no denying that.
And when Kaylee starts to lag by midafternoon and she asks me to carry her on my back, not her dad, my own overwhelming sense of protectiveness for this little girl makes me realize I would willingly do anything for her too.
Even step back into a closet.
Ryder checks the rearview mirror and smiles. “She’s out cold.”
I turn, and my heart melts a little. She’s still got her Minnie ears on. Her face has been painted with blue and white snowflakes—Elsa inspired, of course—and she looks so tiny and small in her big booster seat. “She’s adorable. Today was a good day.”
He reaches over and squeezes my thigh. “It was a great day. Thank you for coming with us.”
“Thanks for letting me hang out with you guys. I know why you don’t want to tell her about us yet, but I appreciate you still including me.”
“Do you think …” Ryder purses his lips.
My heart thuds a little harder. “Do I think what?”
“Never mind. I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to my place after your gig again tonight, but Calabasas is out of the way, and I’ll probably be asleep again.”
“I can do one better.”
I take out my phone and shoot off a text, knowing the answer will be yes.
“What’d you just do?”
“I gave my set time away to Alex, the bartender guy. He’d jump at the chance to take a weekend slot.”
“You gave up your gig for me?”
“Honestly, after today, having dinner and chilling with you in front of the TV sounds a hell of a lot better than singing in a rowdy bar. Who knew Disneyland was so exhausting? And we didn’t even stay for the fireworks.”
Ryder laughs. “You loved it. I swear you were more excited than Kaylee when you saw the real Mickey Mouse!”
I take off my Minnie ears and mutter a half-hearted “Shut up.”
“It was adorable and cute.”
“Wrong. It was charismatic and manly.”
“Especially with the sequined ears.”
I grin. “Exactly.”
My phone pings, and it’s a message from Alex.
“All set. I can stay.”
Ryder’s gaze turns heated, and I swear he puts his foot on the accelerator a tiny bit heavier. “If we can transfer Kaylee to bed when we get home without her waking up, I’ll be able to make it up to you for being asleep last night.”
“Challenge accepted.”
It’s a team effort, but we manage to get a very tired little girl into bed, only waking her enough to go to the bathroom before she falls asleep again as soon as her head hits the pillow.
“Silent high five,” I whisper, and we lift our hands without actually touching.
On the way out of her room, Ryder intertwines his fingers with mine and shoots me a smile.
He takes me into the fancy part of the house he hardly uses and tells me to take a seat on a stool at the fancy marble kitchen counter. “Wine?”
“Ooh, this is, like, a real date.”
“Yep. I’m going to ply you with alcohol so my cooking tastes edible.”
Ryder pours each of us a glass of red wine and then goes to get ingredients from the other kitchen.
I sip the expensive wine while sitting in a mansion and watching the guy I’m sleeping with move around the kitchen like he’s a chef and wasn’t one-fifth of the most famous boy band ever. It’s surreal.
“When did you learn how to cook? I figured you’d have people to do that kind of thing for you.”
He smiles. “My momma taught me before I moved to LA to make it big.”
“Your mom. In Texas.”
His smile dims a little. “Yep.”
“Do you ever see your parents?”
“Not since Maggie and I caused big neighborhood drama by deciding to have a child out of wedlock because, in Maggie’s words, she’s not in love with me, and my words, I’m gay as fuck.”
Red wine shoots out of my nose.
Ryder laughs and passes me a napkin. “Turns out I have no trouble with labels when used to make a statement.”
“I bet that was the statement to end all statements.”
“Yeah. That was basically the end of everything with us.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I don’t want their toxic views anywhere near Kaylee.”
I spin the wineglass stem between my fingers. “Has Kaylee ever met them?”
“Once. When she was a baby.” Ryder doesn’t stop prepping our dinner as he keeps talking. “As a favor to Maggie. She told me if I was going to do this parenting thing on my own, I’d need a good support system. We didn’t even make it through a meal.”
“So you did it all on your own?”