2. Ryder #2
I don’t.
I keep my hands at my sides, curled loose enough that she won’t see the fists they want to become.
“You don’t know that.” She whispers the rebuttal, but I know she believes me.
“Yes, I do.”
For a second, something in her expression cracks.
It isn’t relief exactly, because there’s nothing relieving about finding out someone has been inside your home.
But it’s close enough to relief that it makes me want to find whoever taught her she needs permission to trust her own fear and break every one of his fingers.
She lowers herself onto the edge of the bed, hands tucked between her knees. “I thought maybe I forgot.”
“You didn’t.”
“I forget things all the time.”
“Not that.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and the look she gives me is careful enough to cut.
I move back to the window because I need something to do with my hands that isn’t touching her. The lock is garbage, which doesn’t surprise me. Cheap metal, loose screws, and a frame old enough that a good shove in the right spot would pop it without much effort.
“What else has happened?”
She goes too still behind me.
That’s an answer in and of itself, but I need her to tell me what I’m not seeing.
I keep my voice even while I tighten one of the screws with my fingers just to keep from turning around too fast. “Alex.”
“There were calls,” she says finally.
I close my eyes for half a second.
“When?”
“This week.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Three, maybe.” I hear the hesitation there. It’s been a lot more than three. “Blocked numbers. I didn’t answer.”
Good.
Not good enough.
“What else?”
She laughs once, brittle and tired. “You keep asking that like you already know there’s more.”
“I know you. And I know that there’s no way in fuck you’d be worried over three weird calls and your window being open.”
The words come out before I can stop them.
The room goes quiet.
I glance back and find her staring at me like I just put something dangerous in the space between us. Maybe I did. Maybe I should stop being surprised every time the truth slips its leash around her.
She looks away first, reaching for a hair tie on the nightstand and twisting it around her fingers without using it.
“There were flowers.”
The air in the room seems to change.
“What kind?”
“White roses.” She drops the hair tie and wraps her arms around herself. “They were outside my door Monday night when I got home. No card.”
I nod once and look back at the window because if I look at her too long, she’ll see everything.
And everything is too much.
“Did you tell Josh?”
“No.”
“Did you report it?”
She gives me a look from the bed. “What was I supposed to report? Flowers? Blocked calls? A feeling like someone is following me, and I can’t get away? That’s not how the world works for women, Ryder.”
I don’t answer right away because the worst part is that I understand. I can already hear the questions she would’ve gotten. Are you sure they were for you? Are you sure you didn’t leave the window open? Are you sure you aren’t just anxious because of everything that happened?
“Someone was in your apartment,” I say instead.
Her throat works. “I know.”
Those two words nearly take me out, because she sounds like she hates knowing more than she hated wondering.
I leave the room before I say something I can’t take back and then take it one step further and go outside to grab my emergency kit from the truck.
When I return, Alex is in the kitchen pouring coffee she never used to drink.
She holds the mug with both hands, letting the steam rise into her face while she watches me carry the toolbox through her living room.
“You just happen to carry something to fix my window locks around?”
“I carry a lot of things.”
“That is not a comforting answer.”
“It wasn’t meant to be comforting.”
Her mouth twitches like she doesn’t want to let it. “Well, good. Because it wasn’t.”
That tiny flicker of her sass almost makes the pressure in my chest ease.
I replace the lock while she leans in the bedroom doorway with the mug in her hands.
She looks exhausted. Too small in that oversized sweatshirt, too pale under the soft bedroom light, too stubborn to sit down even though the adrenaline is starting to burn off and I can see the tremor moving through her.
My father raised me to be useful. He raised me to fix what could be fixed and stand steady when people around me couldn’t. He raised me to believe being prepared was just another way of loving people without making a speech about it.
I don’t think he accounted for Alex.
I don’t think anyone could have prepared me for what it feels like to replace a lock on her bedroom window while imagining another man standing here before me.
“You’re going to strip the screw,” she says quietly.
I realize I’ve been turning it longer than necessary and stop.
She lifts one brow.
For some reason, that almost makes me smile. “You always this bossy with men doing free labor in your room?”
“Only suspiciously intense ones who show up at four in the morning.”
“Fair.”
I check the frame, then the other window, then move to the front door. The deadbolt is new. Matte black. Automatic. Not the cheap brass one that undoubtedly came installed when she moved in.
My hand stills on it for half a second too long.
Behind me, Alex shifts.
“I changed it after I moved in.”
Not after the breakup, or anything like that.
After I moved in.
I nod like I don’t hear the difference.
But I do.
When I turn around, she’s watching me too closely.
“For someone who just happened to drive by, you move through my apartment like you already know where everything is.”
There it is.
The thing I knew she’d notice eventually.
“I’m observant.” The practiced reply comes without me even having to panic.
“That’s one word for it.”
I hold her gaze because looking away would feel too much like admitting guilt, and I’m not ready for that. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Not when it comes to her.
Her hands tremble around the mug.
She notices me noticing and immediately sets it down on the kitchen island, tucking her fingers into the ends of her sleeves like that fixes anything.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
“You’re crashing from the adrenaline of everything that’s happened, and having me in your space.”
She lets out a breath and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “Could you stop being right? It’s getting annoying.”
I reach for her before I think better of it.
Slowly enough that she can move away.
She doesn’t.
My fingers close gently around her wrist, and her pulse jumps beneath my thumb so fast it wipes every useful thought out of my head for a second. She feels small in my hand. Warm. Delicate in a way that makes me want to be careful and completely fucking unreasonable at the same time.
Her breath catches.
So does mine.
We stand there in her kitchen with the coffee cooling beside us and the new lock on her bedroom window and every line I shouldn’t cross sitting right under my feet.
“Did he hurt you?” I ask.
The question comes out rougher than I want.
Alex shuts down instantly.
It happens so fast I almost feel the air change. Her face closes, her spine straightens, and whatever soft, shaky thing was between us disappears behind a wall I know better than to push against.
“I’m tired.”
I let go immediately.
“Okay.”
She looks away, and I hate myself for asking even though I needed to know. Still need to know. Will probably always need to know until the day I put my hands on him and find out how much self-control I actually have.
I step back because she needs the space.
Then I grab my station hoodie from the back of the kitchen chair where I dropped it with the toolbox.
“Here.”
She eyes it like it insulted her personally. “I have clothes.”
“That one smells like smoke.”
“So does yours.”
“Mine smells better.”
Her expression turns flat enough that it almost makes the night feel normal for a second. “Did you just compliment your own hoodie?”
“Yes.”
“That’s embarrassing for you.”
“Put it on anyway, Allycat.”
“You’re so bossy.”
“I’ve heard. Many times. Mostly from you.”
She snatches it from my hand like she’s doing me a favor, but she pulls it on over Josh’s hoodie a second later. It swallows her whole. The sleeves hang past her hands, the hem falling almost to her thighs, and COOK is stitched over the left side in small white letters.
Seeing my name on her does something so possessive and stupid inside me that I have to look away.
Too late.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Your face did something.”
“My face is tired.”
“Your face is suspicious, just like you showing up here in the middle of the night, or right before the morning. Whatever time it is.”
“My face fixed your window.”
She snorts softly, and I hold on to the sound harder than I should.
At the door, I stop with my hand on the knob because leaving feels wrong and staying feels worse. She needs sleep. She needs space. She needs me not to become another man filling up rooms and making decisions for her.
“Call me if anything feels wrong,” I say. “I don’t care what time it is.”
Her hand tightens around the sleeve of my hoodie. “I thought I was supposed to text Josh.”
There’s a little bite in her voice.
A little hurt, too.
That damn near kills me.
“You can text Josh.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “And call me.”
She stares at me for a long second, and I know she hears more than I mean to give away.
Then she nods. “Okay.”
I leave before I make a bigger mess of things.
I make it to my truck and start the engine.
Her bedroom light stays on for twenty-three minutes while dawn slowly turns the sky gray behind the rooftops.
Then it finally goes dark.
She’s trying to sleep.
I should go home.
Instead, I settle deeper behind the wheel.
And I stay.