8. Ryder
RYDER
Alex is wrecked when I pull back from the kiss.
Not regretful. That would be easier to survive.
Her face is flushed, lips damp from mine, eyes wide and unfocused in the dim spill of light from Lucy’s windows. Condensation beads in her lashes. One hand is still fisted in the front of my jacket, and the other is curled against her chest like she forgot what to do with it after I let go.
I should step away.
Instead, I keep my hand in her hair because I’m a selfish bastard and I’ve wanted this woman for so long that the shape of her against me feels less like a shock and more like finding the missing piece of my own goddamn body.
“You’re shaking,” I tell her.
Alex blinks, then looks down as if the tremor in her hands is news. “That seems like a fair assessment.”
A laugh scrapes out of me, rough and useless. I want to kiss her again. I want to take her home. I want to go back inside Lucy’s, drag Preston out by his throat, and make sure he understands down to the bone that touching her was the last mistake he’ll ever get the chance to make.
Alex glances at the door behind me. That kills the heat fast.
“Is he coming out?” she asks.
“No.” I glance toward the front windows.
Parker is behind the bar now, phone pressed to her ear, her attention moving between the door and us.
She caught my eye thirty seconds after I got Alex outside and gave me one tight nod.
Remy will know soon. Maybe already does. “Parker won’t let him follow us.”
“You say that like Parker is scarier than Preston.”
“She is.” I chuckle. “Have you ever seen her try to wrangle Remy and her kids at the same time?”
Alex’s mouth twitches, but it doesn’t hold. Her fingers loosen on my jacket. “I don’t want to go home yet.”
The admission is quiet. Small enough that I know what it costs her.
“Okay,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re not going to tell me I need to rest? Or drink water? Or make good choices like someone who owns a reasonable amount of socks?”
I pick up her laptop bag from the ground and slide the strap over my shoulder. “You do need water.”
“Ryder.”
“And socks.”
Her glare is shaky, but it’s there. I’ll take it.
“I’m not ready to walk back into my apartment,” she admits, and this time she looks away before the words hit.
“I know that sounds ridiculous when I’m standing outside in the rain after letting a man assault me in public like I’m apparently still auditioning for the role of easiest victim in Maine—”
“Stop.”
The command comes out harder than I mean, but I don’t take it back. Not when she’s standing there with red marks around her wrist and shame in her voice that belongs to someone else.
“You didn’t let him do anything,” I tell her. “He chose to hurt you but that doesn’t mean that you let him do shit.”
Alex’s throat works as she tries to keep herself from responding to me.
I soften my voice because her eyes are getting glassy again and the last thing she needs is me adding force to a night already full of it. “You want air?”
“I’m literally standing outside.”
“Different air.”
Her brow pinches. “That isn’t an answer.”
“Harbor,” I say, nodding toward where my truck is parked half a block down. “Ten minutes. We sit. You don’t have to talk unless you want to.”
“And if I don’t want to go with you?”
“Then I stand right here until you decide where you do want to go, and I make sure that you get there safe and sound.”
She studies me for a long second, rain darkening her hair and sliding down the side of her face. I can still taste her. That is going to be a problem for the rest of my life.
Finally, she holds out her hand. “Keys.”
I hand them over without arguing because I’m not an idiot. If the only way Alex is going to get in a vehicle with me is if she’s in the driver’s seat, then so be it. I’d cut off a toe at this point, if she demanded it of me.
Surprise flashes across her face.
“You’re driving?” I ask.
“No.” She unlocks the truck and gives the keys back. “I just wanted to see if you’d let me decide something.”
There’s no accusation in it which just makes the entire situation worse than it already is.
I close my hand around the keys and nod. “Anytime.”
The drive to the harbor is quiet in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re pretending or awkward.
Alex sits in the passenger seat with my jacket around her shoulders, her bag at her feet, and her face turned toward the rain-streaked window.
I keep both hands on the wheel because if I don’t, I’ll reach for her.
The need keeps pulling at me every time headlights pass over her face.
When I left her apartment earlier, I told myself one more pass.
Then one became two.
Then her door opened.
She came out in leggings, boots she didn’t need to tie, and a sweatshirt I’m pretty sure used to belong to her brother. Laptop bag over one shoulder.
I followed because I was already there and might as well make sure she made it wherever she needed to go. That’s the excuse I used for the first block at least.
By the third, I stopped pretending.
I watched her walk into Lucy’s. I parked across the street.
I told myself that Alex being in public was safer anyway, and she needed space more than she needed me breathing down her neck.
Ten minutes later, I got a gut feeling that she needed me and I wasn’t going to wait outside anymore.
Worst case, she’d be annoyed that I showed up.
I could live with that. But the haunted look in her eyes when she saw me?
Fuck, I’ll be haunted by that for as long as I live, I just know it.
Alex shifts beside me, and the memory cuts off.
“You followed me,” she says.
Not a question.
The wipers drag across the windshield. I slow for a red light even though the streets are almost empty.
“Yes.”
She exhales, staring ahead. “From my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Because of the motion light?”
“Because of a lot of reasons.”
Her fingers tighten around the edge of my jacket. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean…” She turns her head toward me, and I feel her attention more than see it. “Part of me is furious.”
“You should be.”
“And part of me is really glad you’re here.”
I stop at the harbor lot and put the truck in park.
The engine keeps running, heat blowing low from the vents.
Outside, the storm pushes hard against the shoreline, slapping dark water over the rocks and throwing white spray into the air.
The boats tied along the docks jerk against their lines, masts clinking in uneven bursts.
Alex watches the water for a while.
I let her.
The harbor has always been good for silence. It’s loud enough to take the pressure off and empty enough this time of night to make the rest of the world feel far away.
“My apartment used to be the first place that was mine,” she says after several minutes.
I turn down the heat because the cab has grown warm, but I don’t answer. Not yet. She isn’t asking me to fix anything.
“When I moved in, I bought dishes I liked,” she continues, her voice careful around the edges.
“Nothing matched. He would have hated that. Matching things mattered to him. Towels. Glasses. My clothes. My mood. Instead, I bought one of everything in different styles just because I could. And I loved it. Until that stupid break-in.”
My hand tightens on the steering wheel.
She notices.
“You’re doing the jaw thing,” she says. “And the hand thing.”
“I’m trying not to.” Every breath I take, I try to relax, but I just can’t.
“That’s not reassuring.” Her voice is almost comically flat.
“I know.”
She pulls one knee onto the seat and turns slightly toward me. My jacket slips down one shoulder, and I have to look back at the water before I do something stupid like fix it for her just to feel the fabric under my hand.
“It wasn’t awful at first,” she says. “That’s the part I hate saying.
People want the monster to show up on day one wearing a name tag and holding a weapon, but he didn’t.
Preston was charming. He remembered details that I didn’t think anyone did.
He brought coffee to my classes when I was tired, made exactly the way I liked it.
He met Josh and shook his hand and acted like he respected him. He made me feel chosen.”
I look at her reflection in the side window. Her mouth twists in a way that makes me want to put my fist through something hard enough to hurt myself.
“Then he started making comments,” she says. “Small ones. My skirt was too short. My laugh was too loud. My friends were jealous. My deadlines were making me selfish. If I got upset, he’d say he was only trying to help me be better. I believed him for longer than I want to admit.”
“That’s what men like him do.”
Her eyes come to mine. “You sound like you know.”
“I’ve seen a lot of shit at work, Alex.” The domestic call sits behind my ribs again. So did every time Alex smile with dead eyes while the rest of us called her busy. But I’m not about to bring that shit up.
She looks back at the water. “Eventually, I stopped going places without telling him. Not because he told me to…at first. I just got tired of the fight that came after I made my own decisions. Then my phone became his phone when he took it and gave me a new one on his plan. My passwords became his passwords, things he had to be able to control and check. If I changed them, he found out. If I got quiet, he said I was punishing him by giving him the silent treatment. If I talked too much, I was embarrassing him. Every version of me was wrong unless he was the one who made it.”
My throat burns with everything I can’t say.
Alex gives a humorless little laugh. “The worst part is how boring it sounds when I say it out loud. Like a checklist from a terrible brochure. Isolation. Criticism. Control. Escalation. Congratulations, you have completed your abusive relationship punch card. Now, you either escape, or you die.”
“Alex.”