21. Alex #3
I look at Ryder first, waiting to see if there’s some cosmic sign telling me that I’m making a mistake, but none comes.
He’s still just out of reach, hands loose at his sides, face wrecked in a quiet way.
He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t encourage. Doesn’t take the choice away from me or make it something easier. He’s just here. For me.
“I’m staying here,” I say.
Josh’s eyes cut to Ryder again, but Nia steps into his line of sight with a muffin in hand and murder in her expression.
“Eat,” she tells him.
“I don’t want a muffin.”
“Then hold it and imagine a world where you don’t interrupt your sister when she is explicitly telling you what she needs in the way you didn’t listen to me when we went through this shit.”
He takes the muffin, and tears an angry bite out of it while glaring at his best friend.
Ryder looks like he might laugh and die from tension at the same time.
“I’m staying here,” I repeat, stronger now.
“Not because Ryder decided it or forced me to or convinced me. I don’t want to go back to my apartment.
I don’t want my clothes from there. I don’t want to sleep anywhere Preston has touched.
Ryder’s house has cameras, locks, and a man who looks at me like he’d burn the world down for me.
So for right now, this is where I feel safest.”
Dad nods. Mom squeezes my hand once and lets go before I have to pull away.
Josh stares at the muffin like Nia handed him a live grenade. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I say.
“I hate that he gets to be the place where you feel safe.”
Feeling Ryder shift, I point at him without looking. “No.”
He closes his mouth.
Josh sees it, and some of the fight drains out of his face. Maybe because Ryder listened. Maybe because I didn’t even have to turn around for him to do it.
“I’m still your sister,” I tell Josh. “I still need you. But I need you as my brother, not as another man deciding my life works better when he’s louder than me.”
Nia’s face softens. Josh’s does too, though he fights it because Harmon stubbornness is a genetic curse.
He sets the muffin down untouched and crosses the kitchen. Slowly. Carefully. Like he’s approaching a bridge he doesn’t know is safe or a deer about to bolt.
I meet him halfway.
His arms wrap around me, tight at first, then gentler when Nia makes a warning noise behind him. I bury my face against his chest, and for a second I am six years old again, hiding from thunder while Josh tells me that storms are just clouds being dramatic.
“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair.
“I know.”
“I’m still mad.”
“I know that too.”
“At you. At him. At Preston. At myself. At the whole goddamn universe.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
Nia appears at his side and slides one hand up his back. “He’s been rehearsing in the car. None of the drafts were good.”
A laugh breaks out of me, shaky but real. Josh exhales over my head, and the sound is almost a laugh too.
Mom wipes her face, stands, and points toward the table with the authority of a woman reclaiming herself through breakfast. “Everyone sit. We can be terrified and furious with plates in front of us.”
Dad starts moving chairs before anyone argues. Nia steals the muffin from Josh and takes a bite out of it, then presses the rest back into his hand.
Ryder stays by my side, sitting next to me after I grab a chair.
He sits there quietly while my mother fills plates like portion size is a love language.
It’s quiet until my father asks Ryder where he keeps extra napkins.
Josh watches every movement Ryder makes with open suspicion.
Nia watches Josh watch Ryder and keeps kicking him under the table.
Mom asks about bruises without asking to see them. Dad asks whether Ryder has enough exterior lights, and Ryder answers only after glancing at me to get my answer. Josh hates that too, but he doesn’t explode.
It’s awful.
It’s warm.
It’s my family taking over Ryder’s kitchen because feeding me is the only thing they know how to do with fear this big.
Halfway through breakfast, Mom reaches across the table and pushes a napkin closer to Ryder, even though he already has one. “You’ll tell us if she needs anything?”
The old version of him would have answered before I even had time to process the question.
This Ryder looks at me.
I take a sip of cold coffee, then look at my mother. “I’ll tell you.”
Mom’s eyes shine again, but she nods. “Okay.”
Josh leans back in his chair, jaw tight, muffin destroyed into crumbs on his plate. “And if Preston shows up here?”
Ryder’s hand stills beside his fork.
I feel the whole room waiting for the answer.
So I give it.
“Then we call Remy. We stay inside. We don’t go rogue. We don’t hand Preston exactly what he wants by turning this into a contest over who loves me violently enough.”
Nia lifts her coffee. “That one. Put that on a throw pillow.”
Josh shoots her a look.
She smiles at him over the rim. “A tasteful one.”
For the first time since they arrived, Ryder’s hand finds mine under the table. No one misses it.
Josh looks like he wants to say six things.
Nia rests her chin on his shoulder and smiles at me like she’s proud of both of us.
Mom pretends to be busy with the fruit container.
Dad clears his throat and asks Ryder about the new cameras to match the lights, because he is a good father and a desperate man who wants to keep his daughter safe.
Dad and Ryder talk angles and motion lights. Mom starts making a list of clothes I might need, then hands me the pen when she catches herself. Josh asks what Remy knows, and I answer what I can. Nia quietly eats three muffins and threatens to bite Josh when he interrupts me twice.
By the time breakfast cools and the rain starts tapping against the windows again, I’m exhausted in a way that feels ridiculously cathartic. Loved too loudly. Watched too closely. Still angry. Still scared.
But not alone.
Ryder’s thumb moves against my hand beneath the table. I look at him, and he doesn’t ask whether I’m okay. He already knows better.
Across from me, Josh follows the movement, then looks at my face instead of Ryder’s hand. It takes effort. I can see it. But he does it.
“What do you need from me right now?” Josh asks.
The kitchen goes quiet again, but this quiet doesn’t press on my chest the same way.
I look at my brother, at Nia’s hand tucked around his arm, at my parents sitting shoulder to shoulder in Ryder’s kitchen, at Ryder beside me letting me speak for myself.
“I need you to stay,” I say. “And I need you to listen.”
Josh nods once, rough and immediate. “Done.”
Mom reaches for the serving spoon like the matter is settled because food is moving again. Nia steals the last piece of bacon off Josh’s plate and kisses his cheek when he notices.
Ryder keeps my hand under the table, warm and steady, while my family fills his house with noise.
For once, I don’t try to outrun it because I’m seeing what the future holds. A life…as long as Preston doesn’t take it from me.