26. Alex
ALEX
The lie sits under my tongue long after everyone accepts it.
Just a lot I missed. I need rest.
Eight words, and somehow they manage to make the whole room rearrange itself around me.
Mom touches my forehead again, Dad starts gathering the discharge papers into a neat stack, and Nia slides off the counter with the kind of suspicious look that tells me she does not fully believe me but loves me enough not to challenge me in front of everyone.
Josh stays near the back door, one hand on the lock, watching Ryder instead of me like he expects him to know what is wrong and fix it before the rest of them have to panic again.
Ryder doesn’t look away from my face.
That is the problem with loving a man who notices everything.
Even when he has soot under one fingernail and a bandage at his temple.
Even when he looks like he has spent the last day being hollowed out by the fear of what could have happened to me.
Even when I’m wrapped in blankets in a nest on his couch, drowning in other people’s care, he still sees the shape of the thing I am trying so hard to hide.
Another text comes through while Mom is arguing with Dad about whether soup is enough protein.
I don’t open it right away. I can’t. My fingers are already tight around the phone, and Ryder is close enough to see the tendon jumping in my wrist if he looks down.
He doesn’t reach for it again after I pulled it away from him, but his stillness feels worse than grabbing.
It feels like trust he is choosing to give me, even though some trained, protective part of him is screaming not to.
The worst part is that at this moment, he’s right not to believe me. I’m intentionally lying to the man I love, about the monster who keeps trying to hurt me.
But I have no other choice. Not if I want to save Mrs. Vance.
I turn the screen against my thigh and cough once to cover the way my breathing changes.
Ryder’s hand lands on the edge of the couch beside my knee. Not on me. Close enough that I can take it if I want. Careful enough that I almost hate him for being exactly what I need right now.
“You need bed,” he says quietly.
I nod because I really do need to rest, and because it’s the only thing I can’t lie about right now.
Getting everyone to leave takes longer than it should.
Mom wants to stay. Dad offers to sleep in the chair. Josh says nothing, which is worse because his silence is a locked door with a heartbeat behind it. Nia is the one who finally picks up Mom’s purse and pushes it gently against her chest.
“Alex has a head injury, Mom. She had smoke inhalation, and enough hovering humans to qualify as a small emergency shelter. Let’s let her breathe.”
Mom starts to protest until I cough to get her attention.
“I love you, but I cannot breathe with everyone staring at me. You all started panicking over my unread notifications.” I hedge the truth a bit. “Nothing else has changed, but I need to rest.”
That does what nothing else has managed. It hurts her. I see it. Then she kisses my hair and lets Dad lead her out.
Josh waits until they’re gone before he moves or says anything.
He looks at me first, then at Ryder. His eyes are still red around the edges, and there is a kind of exhaustion in him that makes him look younger and older at the same time.
“Call me if anything changes.” He pulls me into a tight hug.
“You scared the shit out of me, and it’s never allowed to happen again. ”
Ryder stands near the couch, shoulders tight, hands empty. “I’ll keep you in the loop.”
Josh’s gaze cuts back to me, and for one second, I think he knows.
Not the details. Not Mrs. Vance’s broken cane or Preston’s words or the address waiting on my phone with a 24 hour time clock on it.
Just that something in me has gone quiet in a way it should not be quiet, and he can’t quite figure it out.
Nia touches his back before he can start digging. “Come on, handsome. You can glare from the truck.”
He lets her pull him toward the door, but he stops on the porch and turns back. “Allycat.”
The nickname breaks something small in my chest.
I lift my hand from the blanket and wave him away.
It is enough to get him outside, and I take a deep breath.
Ryder locks the door after them, then stands with his hand on the deadbolt until their headlights wash across the front window and disappear down the drive.
The house is still bright from every exterior light he installed, monitors glowing softly from the living room, the security app open on the tablet beside the couch.
Porch Witness. Garage Goblin. Bad Vibes Side Yard.
Home Base. Murder Maple. Back Door Drama.
All of it is meant to keep me here. Keep me safe.
But none of it can reach Mrs. Vance.
My phone buzzes against my thigh again.
Ryder turns.
I hold it still, screen hidden, and make myself look as tired as I feel.
It isn’t difficult. My skull is pounding.
My throat feels torn from whatever meds and ash and everything else that it’s gone through in the last few days.
Every breath drags rough through my chest, and the blanket around my shoulders is suddenly too warm.
“The paper,” I rasp before he can ask. “Probably Marcy checking on me.”
He watches me for one second too long. Then he crosses the room and crouches in front of me, giving me his hands without taking mine. “Upstairs.”
The second I put my fingers in his, his expression changes. Not much. Just enough to show me how badly he has wanted to touch me since I woke up strapped to that bed. He helps me stand like I’m a porcelain doll, one hand hovering near my waist, the other ready at my elbow.
I hate how slowly I have to move. I hate that Preston’s message is burning through the cotton of my sweats pocket while Ryder guides me past the kitchen, past the locked doors and warm soup and all the evidence that people are trying very hard to keep me alive.
The bedroom smells like clean sheets, cedar, and smoke that has sunk too deep into him to wash away in one shower, but it’s not a bad smell.
Ryder turns on the bedside lamp instead of the overhead light, then sets my water on the table, lines up the medication bottles, and checks the charger near the bed like the correct placement of a cord might hold the world together.
And honestly, in this moment, I think he’s right. It’s the tiny small things that are keeping me from falling apart, and every single one of them starts with him.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and finally look at the message on my phone.
Unknown: You have until dawn now. Old Mason Ridge maintenance building. Service road. No phone. No Ryder. No police. Every minute you’re late is one she feels.
A video follows.
I press play with my thumb half covering the screen, as though hiding part of it will make any of it less real.
Mrs. Vance is in the same chair, chin lifted, mouth uncovered now but tight with pain or fury.
Someone off camera says my name. Her eyes sharpen.
She spits toward the floor, and the video cuts off before the sound lands.
My hand shakes so hard the phone slips against my palm.
Ryder’s footsteps stop behind me.
I lock the screen before he can see and turn, already reaching for him because I have no time left to be a better person. “Stay with me.”
The words hit him wrong. I see it in the way his face drains of all the careful restraint he has been using since the hospital. He looks at the bed, at me, at the water on the nightstand, then back at my face.
I know what I’m asking him. What I’m doing. But he still pushes back. Because he cares. “You need sleep.”
“I know.” But I need him more. I need this more.
“Alex.”
I stand before he can finish whatever half-hearted rejection is on the edge of his tongue, which is a mistake because the room tips hard enough that his hands close around my waist on instinct. He steadies me, then tries to put space between us, but I grip the front of his shirt and hold on.
“I almost died before I could tell you,” I say.
Everything in him goes still.
My throat burns, and the headache behind my eyes pulses in warning, but this is the one thing I can give him that doesn’t belong to anyone else. Not Preston. Not the truth about Mrs. Vance. Not the promise that I’ll stay. Just this.
“I love you, Ryder.”
His fingers flex against my waist like he loses control for half a second and has to find it again by touch. His eyes move over my face, searching for fever, confusion, injury, any medical reason to doubt me, and the fact that he feels like he has to check almost undoes me.
“Don’t look at me like it’s the concussion talking,” I whisper.
His mouth trembles, not quite a smile and nowhere near a laugh. He lifts one hand to my cheek, thumb careful beneath the bruise of exhaustion under my eye. “I’ve loved you for so long, Alex.”
I close my eyes because I know.
I know, and I am about to use every bit of that love against him. Not because I don’t love him…but because I do.
When I pull him down to me, he comes slowly.
Even his kiss is careful at first, lips brushing mine like he is afraid of hurting my throat, my head, my lungs, the pieces of me the fire left behind.
I hate the care for half a second, then I break under it because this is Ryder.
He does not take when I am weak. He waits until I ask.
He keeps his hands open until I close mine around him and show him where I want them.
The kiss deepens when I make a soft, frustrated sound against his mouth.
His hand slides into my hair, cradling the back of my head without pressure, and the restraint in him shakes so hard I feel it in his fingers.
He tries to pull back when my breath catches.
I follow, one hand locked in his shirt, the other at his jaw.
“I need you,” I tell him, and the words come out rough enough that his eyes flare.
“Your head.”