Page 2 of The Boyfriend Algorithm

She signs her texts. Every time. Like I might not know who’s sending them.

I close my phone and stare at the ceiling for a minute, and then I push off the counter because standing still makes me think and thinking is bad and there’s always more to do. I work through tomorrow’s prep list. Check the walk-in. Make sure the oven is actually off this time because last week it wasn’t and I got a gas bill that nearly made me cry.

I head into the back, past the kitchen, flipping off lights as I go. The bakery at night has its own rhythm—the hum of the walk-in fridge, the creak of the floors under my feet. I’ve spent more nights here than in my apartment upstairs and that probably says something about my social life that I don’t care to examine.

I’m halfway through the kitchen when I hear it.

A sound from the utility room. The small one at the back where I keep the mop buckets and cleaning supplies and the extra aprons—the one with a door that leads out to the alley.

The sound is wet. Heavy. Like a body shifting against a floor.

I stop.

My hand is still on the light switch, and my brain is doing the rapid math that brains do at ten-thirty at night when you’re alone in a building and you hear a sound that shouldn’t be there. Maybe it’s just the wind, or a very aggressive raccoon. It’s probably nothing.

But my heart is hammering, and my feet won’t move.

I grab the rolling pin from the counter. The big one, the marble one that weighs about four pounds and would absolutely do damage if I swung it hard enough. I’m not going to swing it.

Probably.

Unless I have to.

I cross the kitchen. The utility room door is cracked open—just an inch. I push the door open with the end of the rolling pin.

And I see him.

There’s a man on the floor. Naked. Soaking wet. Crouched between the mop sink and the shelf of cleaning supplies like he crawled in from the alley and made it this far before whatever was driving him forward ran out. He’s covered in mud—his arms, his chest, his legs—and his hair is plastered to his forehead, and rain or sweat or both is dripping off him onto my floor.

He looks up at me.

I should scream. I should run. I should call Ben, or 911, do anything other than stand here in my socks holding a rolling pin and staring.

But I’m staring.

Because he’s—and I hate myself for this, I really do, because this is not the time, but—he’s beautiful. Not cute, not handsome, not attractive in a normal way that my brain can process and dismiss. He’s beautiful in a way that doesn’t make sense. I’m talking male model. His jaw, his cheekbones, the line of his shoulders. Even crouched on a dirty floor, covered in mud, he looks devastatingly gorgeous.

His eyes are dark and steady and locked on mine with an intensity that makes my pulse spike. He’s not moving. Not toward me, not away from me. He’s just… there. Still. Watching me with this expression I can’t read because it’s not quite an expression at all. More like he’s waiting—patiently, calmly—for me to decide what happens next.

“Who are you?” My voice comes out shaky and too loud in the small room. I adjust my grip on the rolling pin and point it at him. “How did you get in here?”

He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes move over my face, scanning, processing, that word—processing—shows up uninvited, and I don’t know why.

“The door,” he says. His voice is low and steady, and it’s the steadiness that rattles me. A guy who just broke into my bakery naked and soaking wet should not sound that calm. “It was open.”

“Okay.” I swallow. “Why are you naked?”

He looks down at himself like he’s genuinely considering the question, then back up at me. “I don’t have clothes.”

I mean. Fair enough. That much is obvious.

We stare at each other for what feels like a full minute, but is probably five seconds. He’s not threatening me. He’s not reaching for me. He’s not doing any of the things that the self-defense class my brother Ben made me take said to watch for. He’s just sitting on my floor, dripping, looking at me with those dark, steady eyes, and I’m gripping a rolling pin and trying to figure out why my gut is telling me something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.

He’s soaking wet and he should be shivering, and he’s not. He’s perfectly still. Eerily still. The only movement is the water dripping off him and the faint rise and fall of his chest, which is so slow and even it almost looks intentional.

I should call someone. I should call Ben. Ben would know what to do. Ben would be here in ten minutes with his badge and his cop voice and his ability to handle situations that involve naked strangers on the floor.

But the man doesn’t look dangerous. He looks lost. He looks like he ended up here the way a stray animal ends up on your porch—not by choice, not by plan, just because the door was open and there was a light on inside.