9. Alex
ALEX
Ryder barely turns out of my apartment complex onto the road when I say, “Can we stop at McDonald’s?”
His hands tighten around the steering wheel, the movement brief enough that I might have missed it if I hadn’t spent the last several hours watching every inch of him like my life depends on reading men correctly.
Rain slides down the windshield in thick, uneven lines, and the wipers shove it aside with a tired squeak that makes the inside of the truck feel smaller but not in a bad way.
Ryder glances over once, taking in the duffel clutched to my chest, the sleeve of his jacket pulled down over my bruised wrist, and whatever expression my face is making.
“McDonald’s?” he asks, careful in a way that tells me he was braced for crying, yelling, or a request to turn around. Not for salty deliciousness.
“Yes,” I say, shifting the duffel higher on my lap. “Nuggets and fries. Maybe a Sprite if the machine is working, though I realize that’s a lot to ask from the fast-food gods at this hour.”
His mouth curves a little, and the sight of it does an unfair amount of damage to my ability to breathe. “How many nuggets?”
“That feels judgmental.” I cock an eyebrow at him.
“I’m trying to figure out so I can order your food.” He shakes his head slightly. “Unless you want to unbuckle and lean over me to get your order in.”
“Twenty,” I decide, then immediately look out the window because asking for twenty nuggets after fleeing my apartment with a smashed motion light and a threatening photograph taped to my door feels like the kind of choice that might concern a medical professional. “And sweet and sour sauce.”
“I know,” he says.
The words come out before he can stop them.
I see the moment he realizes it, because his jaw flexes and his eyes stay fixed on the road with too much concentration for this time of night.
I turn my head slowly and stare at his profile while the truck passes beneath a streetlamp, light sliding over the hard line of his cheek and the dark stubble he hasn’t had time to shave.
“You know my nugget sauce,” I say.
He takes the next right toward the only McDonald’s open this late. “You’re loyal to condiments.”
“That is a very strange thing to know about a person.”
“I’ve known stranger things about Josh.”
“Please don’t bring my brother into your condiment surveillance.”
This time, Ryder laughs. It’s low, rough, and almost gone before it starts, but I hold on to the sound anyway because the rest of the night has been made of Preston’s voice, broken plastic, and my own heart trying to punch its way out of my body.
The drive-through is empty except for us.
Ryder orders my food without taking his eyes off the mirrors for more than a second at a time, adding a bottle of water and a second large fry before I can object.
When we reach the window, the teenage cashier leans out with the bored, glassy expression of someone who has seen enough weird late-night customers to stop asking questions.
Ryder hands over his card. “Thanks.”
The cashier glances from Ryder to me, then to the duffel on my lap. “You guys having a night?”
I lean forward far enough to see him around Ryder’s shoulder. “We are not criminals. I feel like the bag gives off a fleeing-the-police vibe, and I want to be clear.” I’m stammering and I know it. “I’m not a criminal. Just… hungry.”
The kid blinks.
Ryder’s shoulders move with another quiet laugh as he takes the receipt. “She’s had a lot of Sprite.”
“I have had no Sprite yet,” I tell him, settling back into the seat and not even caring that I’m contradicting him in front of a teenager.
“That’s my concern.”
The cashier wisely shuts the window.
Ryder parks after we get the food instead of pulling back onto the road.
He passes me the bag, then rests one forearm across the steering wheel while I dig through the fries and nugget boxes, the smell of salt and grease filling the cab.
The warmth of the bag against my hands should help.
For a few seconds, it does. Then my gaze catches on the Ziploc bag tucked mostly inside the center console, and the photograph inside it is right at the front of my mind again.
The picture is face down but that doesn’t matter.
My mouth dries out, and the fry in my hand suddenly feels impossible to swallow let alone stick in my mouth.
God, I just want to cry.
Ryder notices. He always notices, but this time he doesn’t comment right away.
He reaches for the bottle of water, twists the cap loose, and sets it in the cup holder closest to me before picking up one of the extra fries like he’s giving his hands a job.
“We can sit here as long as you need,” he says, looking through the windshield instead of staring at me.
I eat the fry because he isn’t staring and just that simple fact makes it easier to breathe.
It tastes like salt, oil, and being alive when I’m not fully convinced I should be hungry. I eat another one, then a nugget, because my body is shaking and the food gives me a task that doesn’t involve thinking about Preston stalking me.
“Josh’s house is closer than yours,” I say once I can speak without sounding like I’m about to crack apart.
Ryder’s gaze shifts toward me, but he keeps his body angled toward the windshield. “It is.”
“My parents are fifteen minutes the other way.”
“They are,” he says, his voice low. He folds the top of his fry carton down and sets it on the console, leaving the food alone now that I’ve started eating. “I was going to remind you, but not because I don’t want you at my place.”
The quick clarification makes my chest ache. I pick at the corner of the nugget box, bending the cardboard until it creases beneath my thumb. “I can’t go to them tonight.”
“Okay,” he says.
I glance at him, waiting for more of a reply.
For him to demand an answer. When he doesn’t push, I let my head fall back against the seat and stare at the rain running over the glass.
“Josh will lose his mind if you take me to him. My parents will try to stay calm, and that will be worse because then I’ll know they’re trying.
They’ll call Josh anyways, and then I’ll have to deal with all of that while my mom makes tea she doesn’t drink, my dad will get that look like he wants to fix the world with his bare hands, and Josh will pace until somebody has to sedate him or put him in the yard like a dog that won’t stop barking. ”
Ryder’s fingers curl around the wheel, but he doesn’t interrupt. He gives me the space to keep going, and that makes the words easier to find even though I don’t want any of them.
“I know they love me,” I admit, rubbing my thumb over the sleeve hiding Preston’s marks.
“That’s why I can’t do it. I can’t stand in front of them tonight and say his name and what he did to me while they look at me like I’m breakable.
I can’t explain what happened at Lucy’s, then the photograph, then the door, then convince everyone I’m okay enough to keep them from falling apart.
I’m too tired to manage anybody else’s fear or their emotions. ”
Ryder turns toward me then, his expression tight in the pale light from the drive-through sign. “You don’t have to manage mine.”
“I already am,” I say, softer than I meant to.
“I’m sitting here thinking about how you haven’t slept, how you’ve spent days watching my apartment and following me and probably calling Remy, how you almost took Preston apart in a bar, and now I’m dragging all of this to your house.
I don’t want to do that to you, either.”
He reaches toward me, then stops with his hand resting on the console between us. The restraint in that unfinished movement hurts more than it should. I wish he’d touch me. But I’m grateful he waits. Both feelings exist at the same time, annoying and inconvenient and mine.
“This isn’t something you’re doing to me, Alex,” he says, each word steady and deliberate.
“I want you safe. I want you fed. I want you somewhere he can’t get to you.
None of that is a burden you put in my hands.
It’s something I’m offering, and pretty much forcing at this point.
And if you don’t want to go to your parents or your brother, that’s fine. It means you’re coming home with me.”
My eyes sting, so I shove a nugget into my mouth before crying can become my next activity. “You’re being really calm for a man I know for a fact has some rage issues.”
His mouth twitches. “I’m not calm.”
“No?” The challenge slips out.
“No.” He looks out at the rain, his hand still on the console, close to me but not touching. “I’m just trying to keep my hands where they belong until you give me permission to touch you again.”
That shuts me up long enough to eat three more fries and drink half the Sprite. Ryder stays parked until my breathing stops snagging in my chest, and when he finally pulls back onto the road, he does it without asking if I’m ready.
I’m pretty sure if he asked, I’d be answering more than one question anyway.
His house sits back from the road, porch light glowing against the rain and trees crowding the edges of the yard.
I’ve been here for cookouts, movie nights, random family fun things when we were younger, but tonight I notice things I never cared about before.
A camera tucked beneath the porch roof. Another angled from the garage toward the driveway.
A third near the side gate, half-hidden beneath a part of the house.
I stop beside the truck with the McDonald’s bag in one hand and my duffel strap sliding down my shoulder. “That is a lot of cameras.”
Ryder closes his door and comes around the hood slowly, my work bag over one shoulder, his gaze flicking toward the garage camera before returning to my face. “Not really. I’ve got them on the exterior only. Front, driveway, garage, back door, side yard. Nothing inside.”
“You had that answer ready fast, Ryder.” I want to smile at him, to tell him that I see through him. But the words die on my tongue.