2. Ryder
RYDER
I notice the window before Alex even steps inside her apartment. It’s a problem for a lot of reasons.
The first is that I’m not supposed to be here.
The second is that there’s no good explanation for how I know Alex keeps the second window from the left locked unless she’s home and airing the place out while she works, which she sure as hell wouldn’t be doing at three forty-seven in the morning when it’s cold enough outside for condensation to make the pavement glitter.
The third is that I shouldn’t be close enough to have noticed the window was open in the first place.
Which means whatever careful, respectable distance I’ve convinced myself exists between watching out for her and watching her is starting to feel like bullshit.
Just like every night, I lightly tap the brakes of my truck before I reach her building, rolling past the parking lot once with the headlights dimmed.
Then I go home. That’s my routine. But tonight, seeing that window open has my heart doing something it didn’t do during that entire goddamn fire call.
A fire call that I didn’t even need to be on because it’s my night off, but I was in the area and they needed the help.
My heart is racing in an unsteady beat filled with panic. Not in a way anyone else would notice if they were sitting beside me, or a way that would make my hands shake on the wheel or my breathing change enough to give me away.
But it’s panic all the same.
The kind that settles low and cold behind my ribs while I roll past her building a second time and scan the parking lot, the sidewalk, the alley, and the half-broken streetlight she parked under even though I told her not to.
Of course she parked there anyway.
Alex has never met a reasonable warning she couldn’t argue with just to prove that she can, and most of the time, I admire the hell out of that.
Tonight, I want to throw her over my shoulder and carry her somewhere with better lighting, better locks, and a whole lot fewer ways for someone to get to her.
Not to mention they’d have to go through me to get to her.
And all of this frustration is coming from the fact that I can’t even tell her I’m here.
Which is exactly why I keep both hands on the wheel and don’t get out yet.
I don’t get to think like that.
Not about her.
Alex doesn’t belong to me.
Yet. That incessant voice in the back of my brain insists. Alex could be mine. She should be mine.
The hallway light outside her unit flickers through the stairwell window, buzzing loud enough that I swear I can hear it from across the street.
Everything about this place pisses me off.
The cheap locks. The dim lot. The open stairwell.
The old windows that probably haven’t closed right since before Alex was born.
And even worse is that window.
Barely cracked.
Wrong.
I pull into a spot close to her apartment, where I can see everything, and leave the truck running, because apparently part of me still thinks I might be able to drive away from this…from her.
Don’t be an idiot, Ryder.
My phone sits in the cup holder, screen dark. I should call her. That would be the normal thing to do. I could tell her I was driving by after shift and saw the window. I could make it sound casual enough that she wouldn’t immediately wonder why I know which window is hers.
Except nothing about this is casual.
There’s no driving away or just driving by when it comes to Alex, and I’m afraid she’ll be able to hear the obsession in my voice.
There’s nothing normal here.
There’s only me doing the same pathetic loop every time she works late, convincing myself I’m looking out for Josh’s little sister and not feeding the sick obsession I should have starved years ago.
The kitchen light comes on.
My whole body locks with anticipation.
A few seconds later, Alex appears in the window, partially hidden by the curtain.
Her dark hair is loose around her face, and Josh’s old hoodie hangs off one shoulder, too big on her small frame in a way that makes something ugly crawl through me even though I have no right to care whose clothes she wears.
She should be in my clothes. In my house. In my bed.
She steps closer to the window and stops.
I know the exact second she sees it.
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t jump back. Instead, Alex goes still, and that stillness makes me feel fucking murderous because I know something hellish taught her to freeze before she reacts.
When she disappears from sight, I’m out of the truck before I think better of it.
The cold slaps against my face as I cross the street, but I barely feel it.
Smoke still clings to me from the fire, stuck in my hair and skin, and my body is exhausted enough that everything should ache.
Instead, I feel focused in that dangerous way I get when there’s a problem in front of me, and I know exactly where to put my hands.
Only this problem… the biggest problem…is Alex.
And I never know where to put my hands when it comes to her. Because all I want to do is put my hands, and my mouth, on her.
I take the stairs two at a time and stop outside her door long enough to listen. No voices. No footsteps that don’t belong to her. No sound of a fight. Just quiet movement inside the apartment and the faint mechanical hum of the shitty hallway light above me.
I knock once.
The deadbolt turns after a pause that lasts long enough to tell me she’s scared and trying to decide if opening the door is better or worse than staying alone.
Then the door cracks open.
Alex peers out with one hand wrapped around the edge and the other hidden behind her back.
Good girl.
I hope she grabbed a knife since I know she doesn’t own a gun.
Then I hate myself a little because there are probably healthier reactions to seeing the woman you’ve been in love with for years holding a potential weapon while barefoot in her doorway.
“Ryder?” Her eyes widen before narrowing almost immediately. “How did you know something was wrong?”
I keep my gaze on her face because letting it move down her body right now would make me the worst kind of asshole. I still notice too much anyway. Pale face. No visible blood. No bruises. Her breathing is too shallow, and there’s still a faint smear of soot near her cheekbone from earlier.
The memory of my thumb brushing her skin comes back so fast I have to push it away before my body reacts.
“Your light was on, and I was driving by; it seemed weird.”
“At almost four in the morning?”
I shrug because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like the creep that I am. “Seemed like you needed me to check on you.”
She stares at me with the kind of look that says she knows I’m full of shit but isn’t steady enough to call me on it yet.
“I bet you don’t have people checking on you,” she finally says.
“I don’t live alone with an open window on the ground floor where anyone can just break in.”
That lands harder than I mean for it to.
Her fingers tighten around the edge of the door, and her gaze flicks over her shoulder into the apartment because she needs to remind herself nothing has moved in the last ten seconds.
“I might have left it open.”
“You didn’t.”
Her chin lifts, and the tiny flash of stubbornness on her face almost makes me breathe easier.
Almost.
“You don’t know that.”
I do.
That’s one of the biggest issues in my life, right now. The knowledge of pretty much everything that goes on in her life. But not everything… because I don’t know what caused her to freeze instead of run when she noticed that damn window open.
Instead of saying that, I glance past her. The apartment is dim except for the kitchen light spilling across the floor, and the air coming from inside carries cold, smoke, coffee, and the soft scent of lilacs and peaches that I’ve spent years pretending I don’t associate with her.
“Can I come in?”
She hesitates.
I hate the hesitation more than I should. Not because she owes me trust. She doesn’t. But because I remember when Alex didn’t have to think about whether I was safe to let into her space.
She used to curl up on Josh’s couch during cookouts and shove her cold feet under my thigh like I was furniture.
She used to call me when her car made a weird noise because she trusted me to tell her whether it was dangerous or just expensive.
She used to laugh without checking who was watching first.
Then she met and started dating him.
After that, she changed so slowly I was able to lie to myself about missing it until it was too fucking late.
“Yeah,” she says, stepping back. “Okay.”
I move inside before she changes her mind.
The apartment feels wrong immediately.
Nothing is shattered or dumped or torn apart. Her camera bag is on the kitchen island beside her sleeping laptop, and the couch looks untouched with a throw blanket folded over one arm. Unopened boxes sit against the wall like she never fully decided this place was worth settling into.
But the cold coming from her bedroom tells me enough.
Alex shuts the door and trails after me, staying just far enough behind that I know she’s watching everything I do. I don’t blame her. I would too.
The bedroom window is open three inches.
I crouch beside it and check the frame without touching the lock first. The curtain is twisted near the rod, pulled wrong and left wrong by someone who didn’t know or didn’t care how Alex keeps it. There’s a faint smear of mud on the outside sill where someone braced their hand.
My jaw tightens hard enough to hurt.
Someone put their hands on her window.
They stood close enough to look inside her bedroom, and then they opened it.
Someone entered the place where she sleeps.
“Ryder?” she asks from behind me, and her voice is too quiet.
I stand slowly and turn just enough to put myself between her and the window. She notices. Of course she does. Alex notices everything when she’s scared.
“No,” I say.
Her brows pinch together. “No what?”
“No, you’re not being paranoid.”
The color drains from her face so fast I have to fight the urge to reach for her.