10. Alex
ALEX
“I understand enough to know that I should have told you sooner.” Ryder clears his throat. “But you’re not the only one who’s scared right now.”
I swallow, then nod because I don’t trust my voice. The kitchen feels too intimate suddenly, with my food on his counter and my favorite creamer in his refrigerator, so I drift into the living room while Ryder stays near the island and lets me move.
The room is familiar and new and strange all at once.
The dark couch his parents bought him when he moved in.
Heavy coffee table with the dent Josh put in it during a football game.
Firehouse plaque on the shelf. A photo of Ryder’s parents sitting on the porch, his mother laughing while his father looks at her instead of the camera.
Then I see the Fourth of July picture, and my feet stop.
I remember the day in almost painfully clear detail.
Josh at the grill with tongs in one hand and a drink in the other, Remy pointing across the yard while the kids were screaming, Parker laughing in a patio chair, and me on the porch step near the edge of the frame with a paper plate balanced on my knees.
I’m not centered in the image. I’m not posed or even looking at the camera.
My head is tipped back, and I’m laughing at somebody outside the shot.
The frame is nicer than the others and it sits angled toward the couch like Ryder wanted it in sight, not hidden among old group photos.
I touch the edge of the frame with one finger. “Why this one?”
Ryder followed me to the doorway, and is leaning against the frame when we lock eyes.
“You were laughing,” he says. “I wanted to keep that memory close. It was so rare to see you smile.”
The answer slips under my defenses before I can stop it.
I look at the girl in the picture, trying to remember whether that laugh belonged to a good day or whether I was already getting good at performing even around my friends and my family.
Maybe Ryder knows. Maybe that’s part of the problem that I don’t want to think about.
“How long?” I ask, my hand falling from the frame. “The coffee, the food, this picture. They all paint a picture, Ryder. How long have you been keeping pieces of me for yourself?”
He looks tired enough to tell me the truth instead of covering for what we both can see is a lot of attention, which might be the only reason I trust what comes next.
“You have always been a part of me,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was paying too much attention, and noticing everything.”
“That still sounds like an evasion.”
“It is.” Ryder rubs a hand over the back of his neck, his eyes briefly dropping to the floor before he makes himself look at me again. “I don’t have a clean answer that won’t sound obsessive.”
My breath catches, because there it is. Not a polished lie or something he’s trying to gloss over. Just the ugly word sitting between us where both of us can see it.
Obsession.
I step away from the photo and turn fully toward him. “Say it anyway.”
Ryder’s hands fall to his sides. He keeps them open, visible, and carefully still. “It was always you,” he says. “It will always be you.”
The room and space narrows until all I see is him, all I hear is his voice and the rain against the windows, and all I can feel is the ache of those words moving through me.
I don’t know how to answer him. Every response I can think of feels too small for what he just gave me, and silence feels cruel when he just cut a piece of himself open and let me in.
So I make my move.
Ryder doesn’t meet me halfway. He waits with his jaw tight and his shoulders held rigid, giving me one more chance to change my mind.
I walk straight into the space he leaves open and place my hands against his chest. His heart beats hard beneath my palms, faster than I expected from a man who looks so controlled.
“You should probably tell me not to do this,” I whisper.
His gaze drops to my mouth. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“I know,” he says, and the roughness in his voice sends heat down my spine. “But I’m never going to lie to you, Allycat.”
I rise onto my toes and kiss him.
This kiss does not have the frantic edge of the one outside Lucy’s.
I’m not shaking on a wet sidewalk with Preston’s voice still crawling over my skin.
I’m in Ryder’s living room, under warm light, with rain striking the windows and a photograph of me laughing on the shelf behind us.
I know exactly who I’m touching. I know what I’m choosing.
Ryder’s hand lifts to my cheek, slow enough that I could turn away.
I don’t. His thumb brushes my skin, and he kisses me back with a restraint that feels almost reverent.
It should calm me. Instead, it makes me ache because I can feel what he’s holding back.
It lives in the tension of his shoulders, the low sound he makes when I press closer and slide my hands up to the back of his neck so that I can drag my fingers through the hair there.
His other hand settles at my waist. Firm, careful, warm through the layers of my clothes.
I part my lips, and he stops being quite so careful.
Only for a second.
Long enough for the kiss to deepen organically, for his fingers to slide into my hair, for my back to brush the edge of the couch when he guides me one step behind me.
He moves slowly, giving me room to stop him, but I don’t want room.
I want his mouth and his hands and the heavy, shaking breath he takes when my fingers tighten in his shirt.
“Allycat,” he says against my mouth, and the warning in it makes my knees weak.
“I’m okay,” I whisper back.
His forehead drops to mine. His hand at my waist tightens, then loosens. “I know you are.”
“Then why do you look like you’re in physical pain?”
A strained laugh leaves him, warm against my cheek. “Because I want to touch you everywhere, and that is a bad idea tonight.”
My face heats so fast that I’m grateful he’s close enough to make hiding pointless. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Oh.”
I kiss him again before I can think of a safer response. Ryder gives in for one breath, maybe two. His mouth turns hungrier, his hand firming in my hair, and every thought in my head scatters until all I know is the weight of him close to me and the fact that I want more.
Then he pulls back like it costs him.
I blink up at him, offended and breathless. “Again?”
He closes his eyes briefly, then steps back, putting real space between us. “Yes.”
“This is starting to feel like a thing”
“I’m not rejecting you,” he says, opening his eyes.
The words come fast, like he knows exactly where my mind might go and wants to block the door before I get there.
“I want you. I want you so much I can barely think straight, but tonight has been hell. He grabbed you, followed us, and left that picture at your apartment. I won’t let your first night here become another thing you have to sort through tomorrow. ”
My throat tightens. “I kissed you because I wanted to.”
“I know.” He looks wrecked when he says it, and that helps more than it should. “I stopped because I want to be the only thing you’re thinking of when we cross that bridge. Not if, Alex. I plan on taking this further. I plan on everything.”
The words take the anger out of me in one clean sweep.
I press my lips together, trying to hold on to the last scraps of annoyance because they feel safer than gratitude. “You’re very irritating for a man with this many red flags.”
His mouth curves. “I’ll try to make a better list of things for you to hate me over.”
“Start with the fact that you have so many cameras.”
“Not tonight.” He looks at me with patient eyes. “Tonight, and for the foreseeable future, those cameras are going to make sure that you’re safe in my space.”
“No,” I admit, glancing toward the dark window. “Not tonight.”
Ryder nods, then bends to pick up my duffel from where he left it near the hallway.
He carries it to the guest room without opening it, while I follow with the leftover McDonald’s bag because letting him handle both my safety and my fries feels too intimate after everything we’ve said and done tonight.
The guest room is clean, warm, and prepared in ways I do not want to examine too closely.
Navy comforter. Extra blanket folded at the foot of the bed that looks suspiciously like the one my mom and I got him for his high school graduation.
A bottle of water on the nightstand. Two phone chargers beside it.
My work bag sits near the small desk where he must have placed it earlier.
Ryder sets the duffel on the bench, then backs toward the doorway instead of coming farther into the room.
“You have charging options,” I say, staring at the nightstand and those two options.
“I wasn’t sure what you used.” He shrugs like all of this isn’t a huge deal. Like he wasn’t preparing for me to be in his space, if not his bed.
“Obsessive behavior, is what it is.”
His expression softens for a second. “I’ve been called worse.”
I set the food bag on the dresser, then cross to the window and check the lock. It’s solid, but I test it twice because I have to. Ryder watches from the hall without telling me I’m safe, which is good because I’m not sure I could handle reassurance right now.
Not on top of everything else.
When I turn around, his hand is resting against the doorframe and his eyes are on my face. “Do you need anything else?”
“Will you answer if I call out for you?”
“Every time.”
“Even if I just think I hear something?”
“Especially then, Allycat.”
I nod, tugging his jacket tighter around me. “And you’ll be downstairs?”
“Living room,” he says. “I can see the feeds from there, and I’m not gonna get much sleep anyway.”
“Oh?” I ask. “You planning on doing manly brooding?”
“Probably.” He smirks.
That almost gets a real smile from me. Almost. “Thinking inappropriate thoughts about me?”
His eyes sharpen, and the heat in them makes my pulse jump.
“Bed, Allycat,” he says, voice rough enough to make the word feel like a reward and a warning at the same time.
“There are so many jokes I could make right now.”
“I know. Save them for when I’m not hanging on by a thread.”
The honesty sends a hot, quiet thrill through me, but I let him have the retreat. He starts to close the door, then pauses with his hand on the knob, half his face still visible in the hall light.
“It was always you,” he says again.
The door closes softly before I can answer.
I stand in the guest room until his footsteps move away down the hall and descend the stairs. A minute later, the low murmur of the fire department scanner rises from below, followed by the faint electronic chirp of the security monitor.
Ryder watching the feeds.
Ryder keeping himself downstairs, when he told me point blank that he wants me.
I think about locking the door. Keeping Ryder out. But…honestly, I almost wish I’d wake up with him there, wrapped around me. Protecting me from everything except myself.
Shaking that thought off, I turn to the waiting bed. The rain taps the window, and somehow I feel safer than I have in a long time.
For the first time all night, I let myself breathe.