4. Ryder #2
He didn’t run. Running would’ve made things easier. He just kept walking with the smooth, practiced speed of someone who knew exactly how much urgency looked like guilt and was keeping just to this side of it.
I followed him down the stairs and out the side exit.
By the time I reached the alley, he was already getting into a white work van with no company markings. I caught a partial plate as he pulled away, because apparently that was all the day wanted to give me.
Pieces.
Always pieces.
I stood in the alley with my fists tight at my sides and felt something hot and violent move through me.
Someone had been inside her building.
Near her door.
Close enough they could almost smell the soap she used, hear the floorboards that complained outside her kitchen, see the cheap brass number screwed crookedly into the wood. So close.
I went back inside and asked three questions too calmly. The real maintenance worker gave me the landlord’s name, confirmed he didn’t know the other guy beyond “sent by the office,” and got nervous when I asked who had signed the work order and whether they’d already been in her apartment.
Good.
He should be nervous.
I left before my face said too much.
For the next hour, I sat in my truck outside a gas station two blocks from Alex’s building and debated telling her everything.
The words were easy in my head.
There’s a dark SUV following you. Someone unauthorized may have been near your apartment. You need to stay somewhere else tonight. Preferably with me, though I’d never say that part with Josh still breathing.
Alex would hear the first sentence and sharpen.
She’d hear the second and panic.
She’d hear the third and fight me because pressure made her push back, and the last thing I could afford was to make myself one more man trying to move her around the board like a chess piece.
So I chose the version that made sense only if I didn’t look at it directly.
The version where I get to stay close, keep my presence a secret, and still keep her safe.
That was where the line in the sand shifted for me. I felt it happen. Protection became something quieter and uglier, something that didn’t ask permission because permission might be denied.
My phone buzzed at 7:42.
Alex: Thanks again for last night.
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Then I tapped it awake and stared some more.
Alex did not text me first. She didn’t reach out like that.
Not emotionally. She deflected, minimized, made jokes sharp enough to keep people from leaning too close.
A thank-you from her wasn’t just a thank-you.
It was a door opened a few inches by someone who expected it to get slammed on her toes for her effort.
I typed three different replies.
Of course.
Nope. That’s not good enough.
You okay?
Nope.
I’d do it again.
Still not it.
I deleted all of them.
Anytime.
I sent it before I could make it worse.
The bubbles appeared almost immediately, then vanished. Came back. Vanished again.
I didn’t breathe right until her next message arrived.
Alex: You were right. About someone being there.
I closed my eyes.
The relief should’ve been simple. She believed me now. She wasn’t alone inside the fear anymore.
Instead, it hit somewhere deeper and made a mess of my already admittedly fragile control.
Trust was dangerous. Alex trusting me was worse, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.
I wanted to step between her and every sharp edge in the world.
I wanted her keys on my dresser and her toothbrush in my bathroom and her breathing steady against my ribs where I could count every inhale for myself.
I wanted too much.
I always had when it came to Alex.
My fingers hovered over the phone.
Ryder: I’m glad you believe yourself.
I sent that because it was the right thing to say.
The thing I wanted to say was that she could believe me instead. That I would carry the certainty for both of us if she needed me to.
That I would always come when she called.
That I’d come even when she didn’t.
At 11:58, I was parked across the street from her building again.
I told myself it was because of the shady maintenance worker.
That was partly true.
Her bedroom light was on, glowing through the first-floor window, soft and yellow behind thin curtains. I could see her shadow move once, then again, pacing near the edge of the room with her phone in her hand.
She was still awake.
I hated that.
I loved knowing that she’d been texting me, though.
The thought settled over me with enough weight to make my grip tighten on the steering wheel.
A normal man would text her to tell her to go to sleep. A better man would go home. I sat there in the dark cab of my truck with the engine off and watched the window like my attention could hold the walls around her in place.
A little after midnight, her bedroom light went out.
My entire body went alert.
Three seconds later, another light came on deeper inside the apartment.
Bathroom.
I relaxed before I understood why.
Then I did understand. I knew the layout well enough to tell where she was by the placement of the light.
The knowledge sat there between one breath and the next, plain and damning.
I had been telling myself tonight was different because someone was after her. Because the SUV was real. Because the man in the hallway was real. Because Alex had finally admitted she was scared.
But the truth was uglier than that.
The danger hadn’t created this part of me…it had only given me permission to stop pretending.
The bathroom light shut off a few minutes later, and the apartment finally went dark completely.
I should’ve driven home after that.
Instead, I stayed parked across the street for another hour anyway, because my night is never complete unless I make sure Alex is home and safe.