16. Alex
ALEX
Ryder’s house looks completely normal until I start opening drawers and looking into the cabinets.
It’s not like I’m snooping with malicious intent. It started with me looking for coffee filters, which feels like a reasonable activity for a woman who slept in the same bed as a man she wants badly enough to damage her common sense.
The problem is that Ryder keeps his coffee filters in a cabinet above the machine like a boring, functional adult, and I find them almost immediately, which means every drawer I open after that would be harder to defend in a court of law.
The junk drawer has three flashlights, two rolls of batteries, a multi-tool, a lighter, waterproof matches, zip ties, and a laminated card with emergency numbers written in blocky black ink. All normal adult things to have, and that just makes me more suspicious.
Under the sink, sitting beside dish soap and garbage bags, he has a small fire extinguisher, a first-aid kit, and a plastic tag labeled WATER SHUT OFF.
The pantry is useless and contains normal things like cereal and pasta, but the bottom shelf has bottled water stacked behind protein bars and an old crank radio still in the box.
I stand there with the pantry door open and my coffee going cold on the counter.
Behind me, Ryder’s bare feet stop on the kitchen tile. “You found the emergency shelf, I see.”
“That sentence is not doing what you think it’s doing for your defense.”
“I wasn’t defending myself.” He reaches past me for a mug, careful not to crowd even though crowding is exactly what my body would like him to do. “I’m explaining the shelf.”
“There are enough protein bars down there to survive a very boring apocalypse.”
“Protein is useful.”
“Joy is also useful, but I notice you didn’t prepare for that.”
His mouth curves as he pours fresh coffee.
His hair is still damp from the shower he was taking when I came downstairs, and he’s wearing gray sweatpants with a black T-shirt, which is honestly rude.
Men like Ryder should have to wear warning labels when walking around barefoot and sleepy after spending the night wrapped around a woman without doing anything but actually sleeping.
He holds out the mug. “Vanilla creamer. Oat milk. Ridiculous amount of both. I mean, is this even coffee at this point?”
I take it from him and try not to think about his hand under mine in bed or the way his body fit perfectly against me.
“Your obsession continues to have excellent customer service. And it’s coffee as long as it has caffeine and hot bean water in it.
Don’t judge me or I’ll make sure to stab you with a spork in your sleep. ”
His smile fades just enough to make me regret the word.
Not because it isn’t true. Because it is.
That’s the whole damn problem.
I turn back to the pantry and tap one finger against the crank radio box. “How long have you had all this?”
“Some of it since I was in school. Some of it since I bought the house.”
I need to ask the important question. “Have you had some of it since me?”
Ryder sets his own mug on the counter instead of answering right away. He reaches around me to close the pantry, then stops with his hand on the door when he realizes that would be deciding the conversation is over.
I close it myself.
His eyes come to mine. “Some of it since you.”
At least he doesn’t lie.
The honesty should make me feel better. It does, in the same way a smoke alarm makes me feel better by screaming that something is on fire.
I carry my coffee into the dining room because standing in the kitchen with him is becoming dangerous again.
I just want to walk into his chest and see if he’ll hug me when I do it.
The table is covered with my laptop, Marcy’s notes from the redevelopment story, printed articles from the paper’s archive, and three pages of police-report follow-up questions I’m pretending not to hate the idea of answering.
I had intended to spend an hour sorting research.
Instead, I slept late because Ryder’s arm around me works better than medication, locks, and denial.
Ryder follows with his coffee and stays on the opposite side of the table. “You don’t have to work today.”
“I do, actually.”
“Alex.”
I pick up a printed article and hold it between us. “This is from the fire in Chapter One of my increasingly terrible life. Older building where the fire started in a utility area. Faulty wiring got blamed before anyone could even suggest a hint of accelerant was used.”
He looks at the page, then at the others spread across the table. His body goes still in that way I’m starting to recognize better than my own bad habits, the one where he turns every emotional reaction into a practical assessment so no one notices how he’s actually feeling.
I point to the next stack of articles. “It’s not just Birch that’s having issues.
Mason Ridge has inspection failures, faulty detectors, tenant complaints, electrical issues, and redevelopment pressure.
My apartment had the breaker flipped, the motion light broken, and Preston has possible access to tools that would make all of that easier. ”
Ryder rests one hand on the back of a chair but does not sit. “You think he’s using your work to pick targets so that it makes you more vulnerable.”
“I think he’s smart enough to use what already looks broken.
” I move another page into place, lining up dates because the visual helps.
“If an old building burns after years of ignored complaints, people blame negligence first. If a reporter covering redevelopment gets scared during the same window of time, people call that a separate problem that’s related by circumstance.
But Preston likes overlap. He always has.
He makes everything look like coincidence until I’m the only common denominator, and then he’ll make everyone around him feel crazy for questioning the grossly serendipitous situation. ”
Ryder’s fingers tighten on the chair. “That’s not your fault.”
“I know.”
The answer comes out fast enough that he notices.
I look down at the articles again. “I mean, I’m trying to know. In the way that I’ve got the evidence, and I know the truth, and now I’m sharing it with the only person who doesn’t make me feel like I’m losing my mind.”
Ryder pulls out the chair slowly and sits, leaving the mess of papers untouched.
That restraint is becoming its own language between us.
He could take over. He wants to. I can see it in the way his attention moves across the dates, locations, and notes, but he folds his hands around his mug and lets me keep the table and control of the situation.
“You’re good at this,” he says.
“Being stalked?”
“Finding patterns in things.” Ryder nods toward the articles collected. “It’s got to be what makes you a good journalist.”
The compliment should feel simple. It doesn’t.
Nothing between us feels simple now that I know he saved pictures of me, bought creamer for me, kept my articles, and still somehow spent last night holding me like the safest place for his hands was exactly where I put them instead of trying to cop a feel or make a move.
Even when I woke up to use the bathroom and felt his massive dick pressing against my ass.
Rain presses against the windows while the morning drags into afternoon while I sit at the table and peck away at the keyboard on my laptop.
Ryder makes lunch and burns the first grilled cheese because he gets a call from Remy halfway through and tries to watch me, the stove, and his phone at the same time.
I scrape the blackened side into the trash while he stands beside me looking personally betrayed by bread.
“This is what happens when you attempt surveillance and cooking at the same time,” I tell him.
“I was multitasking.”
“You were brooding with accessories and fire.”
He takes the spatula from my hand, but he does it slowly enough that I could refuse. “Sit down before you insult the next sandwich and I decide that feeding you isn’t in my wheelhouse.”
“The next sandwich has my full support unless it disappoints me.”
By early evening, the storm moves in hard enough to darken the whole house.
Thunder rolls over the roof while Ryder checks the back door, then the front, then the panel by the garage.
He does it casually at first, or what he thinks passes for casually.
I almost feel bad watching him trying to hide his brand of crazy.
But he’s doing it to keep me safe, so I don’t say anything.
By the time he circles back to the living room, I finally close my laptop and move to the floor beside the coffee table with a deck of cards I found in the cabinet under the television.
“You’re pacing,” I say, shuffling badly.
He stares at my hands, where I proceed to drop all of the cards. “I’m walking.” Ryder takes another step just to prove his point.
“With dread.” I pick up the cards I scattered until they’re all facing the same way.
“Didn’t know dread had a specific walk or look to it.”
“Yours does.” I split the deck, fail to bridge the cards, and leave half of them crooked on the rug. “It’s very broad-shouldered.”
He checks the side-yard feed before sitting on the couch behind me. “You want to play cards?”
“No. I want to play truth or dare.”
Ryder looks down at me. “With a deck of cards?”
“I’m improvising. Red is truth, black is dare. That way we don’t have to go through the whole choice that isn’t really a choice thing that most people do.”
“That’s not how cards work.” He pulls the cards from my hand and shuffles them efficiently and effortlessly.
“It is in my house.” I swat his hand and try to take the cards back.
He laughs at that. “This is my house.”
I look over my shoulder. “Red is truth, black is dare.” And make it my job to ignore what he said about the house. Nope. Not touching it with a ten foot pole.
His mouth twitches, and he reaches down to take the top card from the messy pile. He flips it over on his knee. Eight of clubs.