5. Alex
ALEX
By the end of the week, Ryder has become a problem I can’t stop thinking about.
It’s incredibly inconvenient because I already have enough problems. My apartment doesn’t feel like my apartment anymore, my window lock has become more important than any piece of cheap hardware should, and every vehicle with tinted windows is now auditioning for a starring role in my personal mental breakdown.
Adding Ryder to that mess feels excessive.
Even for me.
I sit at my kitchen island with my laptop open, coffee going cold beside my left hand and the steady thump of my neighbor’s footsteps passing overhead.
Every ordinary sound in this building has turned suspicious since the break-in.
The pipes knock, and I look toward the bathroom in case a Stephen King monster is going to pop out and drag me to my death.
The refrigerator kicks on, and my spine straightens because all I can think of is the idea of being grabbed when I least expect it. Someone laughs in the hallway, and my fingers stop moving over the keyboard until the voices fade.
I am extremely fun now. Very relaxed. A joy at parties, assuming the party has visible exits and nobody moves too quietly behind me.
The bedroom window is shut. Locked. Checked.
Checked again.
I know because I stood there ten minutes ago with one hand on the frame, staring at the new latch Ryder installed like it might suddenly grow a mouth and explain why I slept better after he left than I had in weeks.
That part bothers me more than the lock.
The sleeping.
The fact that my body felt safer after Ryder touched my wrist, fixed my window, gave me his hoodie, and sat outside my building like some morally questionable guardian angel with a truck payment.
I glance at my phone.
His name is still right at the top of my messages.
Ryder: I’m glad you believe yourself.
I’ve reread that text a normal number of times, if normal means embarrassing and possibly grounds for losing custody of my own dignity.
My thumb hovers near his contact for half a second before I shove the phone facedown beside my coffee.
“Nope,” I mutter.
The word sounds confident in a way that I am not.
A new email from Marcy hits my inbox before I can spiral any further into Ryder-related self-destruction. Mason Ridge Apartments. Redevelopment angle. Tenant interviews needed before the planning board meeting next week.
I stare at the email for longer than necessary.
Of course it’s another old building story, and just like that my entire career has suddenly become a tour of neglected electrical systems and landlords who think smoke detectors are decorative.
Still, it’s work. Work gives me something to do with my hands and brain that isn’t checking locks or wondering what Ryder is doing right now.
Probably saving a kitten from a tree.
Or lifting something heavy.
Or brooding in a way that is completely unfair to single women with active imaginations and unreliable vibrators.
I pack my bag before that thought can develop into anything worse.
The rain starts while I’m driving out of town. Not hard enough to be dramatic, just steady and gray, streaking across the windshield while the wipers drag back and forth with a squeak that makes my teeth hurt.
Mason Ridge sits beyond the grocery plaza and the storage units, far enough from downtown that the road narrows and the trees crowd closer to the shoulder.
The complex is a long brick building with chipped stair rails, sagging gutters, and exterior lights that flicker even though dusk is still an hour away.
Charming.
Very welcoming.
Only slightly murdery.
I park near the front entrance, lock my car twice, and immediately feel ridiculous for checking the handle after the second chirp.
My first interview is with a young mother on the first floor who has a baby balanced on one hip and the hollow-eyed exhaustion of a woman who has asked for help too many times and stopped expecting it.
She points to the smoke detector in the hallway outside her apartment.
The cover hangs open. There’s no battery inside.
“It started chirping six months ago,” she says, bouncing the baby when he grabs at her necklace. “Maintenance came by, took the battery out, and said they’d replace the whole unit.”
“I take it they did not do that.”
She gives me a look more telling than mere words can convey.
Right.
I write that down.
The next tenant shows me the laundry room outlet with a dark scorch mark above it.
He says the power flickers whenever both dryers run.
A woman on the third floor tells me everyone uses space heaters because the building never warms evenly, which sounds like a sentence designed specifically to make a fire marshal develop high blood pressure.
By the time I reach Mrs. Henley in 2A, my notebook is damp at the edges from the rain, and the hallway smells like old carpet, wet drywall, and the kind of lemon cleaner people use when they’re trying to convince themselves something is cleaner than it is.
Mrs. Henley is tiny, silver-haired, and sharper than the pen clipped to my notebook. She sits in a recliner by the window with a mug of tea on the side table and a blanket tucked neatly over her knees.
“They’ll wait until someone dies,” she says before I finish turning on my recorder.
I blink at her. “The landlord?”
“The landlord. The city. Whoever signs forms and pretends paper makes people safer instead of actually doing something.” She tips her chin toward the hallway.
“Lights go out when it rains. Wiring shorts happen more often than my knees cracking. Men wander in and out with toolboxes but nothing ever gets fixed. Nobody cares because most of us can’t afford to make anyone care. ”
My pen pauses halfway across the page.
“Men with toolboxes?”
Mrs. Henley’s eyes sharpen, which tells me she hears the change in my voice.
“Some are maintenance,” she says. “They’re usually wearing a company shirt with the truck sitting in the parking lot outside, and they have a proper work order that needs someone to look at it.
Lately, there have been other people too.
No logo on anything, and their boots are too clean.
They look around more than they fix anything. ”
The room seems to cool despite the small lamp glowing beside her chair.
Ryder’s face flashes through my mind immediately, followed by the memory of him checking my deadbolt with his jaw tight and his eyes too focused to make sense.
“Did you report it?” I ask her instead of pulling out my phone to text him.
“Three times. Management says contractors come and go with redevelopment inspections.” Mrs. Henley looks out the window, where rain slips down the glass in crooked lines.
“Men who belong somewhere don’t spend that much time making sure no one is watching them while they skulk around.
I’ll tell you now, they’re up to no good. ”
That sentence crawls under my skin and stays there.
I finish the interview because I am a professional, though honestly professionalism is starting to feel a lot like smiling while my nervous system chews through drywall.
I thank Mrs. Henley, promise to follow up if I need clarification, and step back into the hall with my phone already hot in my hand.
Ryder’s contact is open before I remember making the decision.
I stand outside Mrs. Henley’s door, staring at his name while the hallway light buzzes above me.
Texting him would be reasonable.
Probably.
Maybe.
It would also mean admitting Ryder has become the person I reach for when something feels wrong, and that thought makes my chest tight in a way I don’t know how to name.
I needed years to claw my way out of a relationship where one man knew too much about my fear.
Needing another man right now feels like walking backward.
Even if Ryder feels different.
Especially because Ryder feels different.
I lock the phone and drop it into my bag.
Outside, the rain has picked up, turning the parking lot glossy beneath the flickering lights. Dusk settles over the complex in smudged gray layers, and the cars look darker than they did when I arrived.
I pull my hood up and hurry toward my Subaru.
Halfway across the lot, I stop.
My driver’s side door is open.
Not wide. Barely enough for the interior light to glow faintly against the rain.
For a second, I try to make that mean nothing. The latch is old. Maybe I hit the wrong button. Maybe I didn’t close it all the way. Maybe cars do this sometimes because they, too, have unresolved trauma and poor coping skills.
Except I locked it.
I remember the chirp of my annoying lock.
I closed my fucking door.
I know I did.
The rain pings against my hood while I stand there with my pulse starting to climb.
My keys are already between my fingers when I move closer, even though stabbing someone with a car key seems like an act of optimism more than self-defense. Still, I’m a woman raised to defend myself with what I have handy, and right now that’s my keys.
Then I see the photograph.
It sits on the driver’s seat, folded once, the edges worn and soft.
My body understands before my brain does.
The fear is immediate and ugly, crawling up my throat so fast I have to swallow against it. I don’t want to touch the photo. Leaving it there feels worse.
I open the door with two fingers and pick it up by the corner.
The paper is slightly damp. Old. Bent. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach drop before I even unfold it.
It’s me and him.
Fucking Preston Lee.
The man who destroyed every sense of self and individuality that I had. The one who tortured me. Hurt me. For years.
I’m about to throw up.
His arm is around my waist, his mouth near my temple, my smile wide enough to look happy if someone doesn’t know what they’re seeing.
I know exactly what happened ten minutes before the picture.
I laughed at something one of his friends said, and his hand closed around my hip beneath the table hard enough to make me stop.