19. Alex
ALEX
Ryder fucking wrecks me, and that’s the only reason I agree to his ridiculous requests.
I drive myself because I said I would, and Ryder lets me because I think we both understand the choice matters even if neither of us likes it.
The morning is damp and washed-out, the roads slick, the sky low enough that the tops of the trees look like they’re holding it up.
My phone sits in the cup holder, Ryder’s name already pulled up because I’m brave, not stupid.
Going back into the newspaper building is both awkward and eerily the same. Yes, my privacy was violated, but I’m not afraid as I step through the doors.
I answer emails, revise two paragraphs of the redevelopment piece, pretend not to notice Marcy watching me from her office, and fail to eat the granola bar Ryder shoved into my bag when he thought I wasn’t looking.
By noon, my brain keeps circling the same list: underwear, jeans, notebooks, hairbrush, the sweater I actually like, enough socks that Ryder stops talking about my cold feet like they’re a civic emergency. My things.
When I pull into my apartment lot, I call him before I turn off the engine.
He answers on the first ring. Of course he does.
“I’m here,” I say, putting the car in park.
I can hear noise behind him, the clank of something metal and a low voice in the distance. Station, probably. “What do you see?”
“Cars. Rain. Mrs. Vance’s curtains moving because her life would have no meaning without surveillance.”
“Alex.”
I take the key from the ignition and look around again.
My building sits squat and ugly under the gray afternoon, first-floor windows reflecting the lot.
No dark SUV. No strange man pretending to fix something.
Nothing except wet pavement, two trash bins, and Mrs. Vance’s lace curtains shifting again in the apartment beside mine.
“I don’t see anything,” I tell him. “I’m going in, grabbing a bag with my stuff, and leaving.”
His breath changes over the line, but he keeps his voice level. “Keep me on speaker.”
I tuck the phone into the outer pocket of my bag with the speaker facing up. “Bossy, but acceptable.”
The second I step into the covered walkway, the smell hits me.
Damp concrete. Old paint. Someone’s cigarette smoke from last night.
My apartment door is at the end, directly beneath the motion light Ryder installed before Preston broke it.
The replacement bulb buzzes weakly overhead, trying its best and failing to be comforting.
Halfway down the hall, I slow.
My door isn’t closed.
It’s cracked open by an inch, maybe two, enough to show the dark seam of my living room beyond it.
Ryder says my name through the phone before I make a sound beyond the gasp of breath.
I stop so fast my shoulder hits the wall. My keys cut into my palm. “My door’s open.”
“Back away.”
His voice drops low enough that it doesn’t sound like a request anymore, and for once, I don’t have the energy to be mad about it. I take one step back.
The door swings inward.
A man in a black ski mask comes out of my apartment so fast my brain can’t make sense of him as a person. One second there’s a gap in the door. The next, there are gloved hands on my arms and the hard shove of his body forcing me backward.
My phone hits the floor.
Ryder’s voice comes through the speaker, sharp and distant, but the man’s hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream. My bag slips off my shoulder. I twist, slam my heel down, miss his foot, hit the side of his shin, and bite the leather of his glove hard enough that he curses.
He tries to drag me through the open doorway and into my apartment.
That’s when the world gets loud.
“Get your goddamn hands off that girl!”
Mrs. Vance comes out of her apartment in a purple housecoat, orthopedic sneakers, and pure fury. Her cane cracks across the attacker’s shoulder with a sound so loud it echoes down the hall.
The man releases my mouth.
I suck in air and scream Ryder’s name because it’s the only thing in my head.
Mrs. Vance hits him again, this time across the arm. “Coward. Sneaking around in a mask like a pervert.”
He shoves me hard enough that I hit the wall, but before he can run past her, she swings low and catches him in the knee. He goes down badly, one hand slamming against the floor, and I see the black glove, the muddy boot, the flash of pale skin at his wrist where his sleeve rides up.
Then he’s on his feet and running toward the back exit.
Mrs. Vance starts after him.
I grab her sleeve before she can chase a masked man into a parking lot with nothing but a cane and unearned confidence. “Don’t.”
She turns on me like I’m the one being unreasonable, hair rollers trembling in her silver curls. “I had him.”
“You absolutely did,” I manage, because my voice is doing something strange and thin. “Please call the police.”
“Already am.” She digs a phone from the pocket of her housecoat with one hand while the other clamps around my wrist. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re full of shit, Alexandra Harmon. Now sit down, because don’t think I’m not calling your parents about this either. And that brother of yours. No one fucks with my building.”
I sit.
Not because she’s right.
Because my knees won’t hold me up anymore.
My phone is still on the floor near my bag, Ryder’s voice coming through the speaker over and over. I crawl two feet, grab it with shaking fingers, and press it to my ear.
“Alex.”
“I’m here.” My voice breaks on the second word, and I hate that. I hate it so much my eyes burn. “I’m here. He ran. Mrs. Vance hit him with her cane.”
There’s a sound on his end, not words. A door slamming. An engine. Someone yelling his name.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stay with Mrs. Vance. Don’t go inside. Don’t hang up.”
Mrs. Vance lowers herself beside me with a grunt and keeps her cane across her lap like she’s guarding a bridge. “Tell that boy I said he better drive careful, because I’m not scraping another one of you off the floor today.”
Ryder hears her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“He sounds smart,” she says.
“He’s not,” I whisper, and then I start crying.
Not pretty crying. Not quiet movie crying.
The ugly kind that comes after your body figures out it almost got taken and doesn’t know where to put that information.
Mrs. Vance doesn’t hug me. She presses her shoulder against mine, hard and bony, and stays there while the dispatcher asks questions and doors start opening down the hall while neighbors check on us then go back to minding their own business.
Remy arrives first, blaring lights and sirens as his cruiser pulls in.
Ryder arrives thirty seconds after him, which means laws of traffic were probably violated.
He comes down the hall in his department hoodie and work pants, hair windblown, face so controlled that I almost don’t recognize him.
His eyes find me on the floor, then my hands, my face, my throat, my arms.
He stops in front of me and crouches.
Not close enough to crowd.
Close enough that I can reach him if I want.
I do. I grab the front of his hoodie with both hands, and the control on his face cracks just enough to let me see what it’s costing him not to pull me into his chest hard enough to hide me from the entire building.
“I’m okay,” I say, which is a lie and not one at the same time.
His hands come to my elbows, gentle around the places the attacker grabbed. “I’ve got you.”
That does it. Something inside me caves, and Ryder catches me when I lean forward.
His arms close around me carefully, like he’s afraid every part of me hurts, and I bury my face in his neck while Remy speaks to Mrs. Vance in a calm voice that doesn’t match the way his eyes keep cutting toward the open apartment door.
Nobody lets me go inside alone.
Remy clears it first with another officer, then Ryder steps in with me after I insist on seeing what the attacker came for. Even though I know the real answer. He wanted me.
My living room looks mostly normal, which is worse somehow than everything being destroyed. The couch is fine. My backup laptop charger is still plugged in near the wall. The mug I forgot on the counter days ago has dried remnants of coffee in the bottom.
Then we reach the bedroom.
Every drawer is open.
Clothes hang over the edges. Socks are scattered across the floor. My underwear drawer has been dumped onto the bed and handled in a way that makes my stomach turn so hard I have to press a hand over my mouth. Ryder goes completely silent beside me.
That silence scares me more than rage would.
On my pillow, placed neatly in the center like a gift, is a photograph.
I know what it is before I pick it up.
Ryder says my name, but I already have it between my fingers. The picture is grainy and dark, taken through a window from outside his house. His living room window. Me asleep against his chest after the storm, my hair across his shirt, his arm wrapped around me.
Beneath it, in thick black marker, Preston wrote:
YOU DON’T DESERVE THIS.
For a second, I don’t feel anything.
Then I feel everything at once.
Ryder takes the photo from my hand before my fingers can crush it, holding only the corner. Remy appears in the doorway and stops when he sees Ryder’s face.
“He was outside your house,” I say.
Ryder doesn’t answer.
“He saw us.”
His eyes come to mine, and the apology there is so immediate and useless that I want to tear it out of him before it can become another thing he carries.
“No,” I say, voice shaking. “Don’t. Don’t make this your fault.”
“He got close enough to take this.”
“And today he tried to grab me in broad daylight.” I look at the clothes on my bed, the open drawers, the doorway where Remy is already calling for another evidence bag. “This isn’t about scaring me anymore.”
The truth sits there, ugly and undeniable.
My life is in danger.