26. Alex #2
“My head hurts.” I push my thumb over his bottom lip and feel him go still again. “So does everything else. I still need you.”
Ryder closes his eyes for a second, whispering under his breath and I almost laugh when he leans his head back. When he opens them, it’s the darkness in him that’s staring back. Before, he might have tried to pull back, but now? Now there’s a softness in that darkness meant just for me.
He lifts me onto the bed instead of letting me climb, settling me against the pillows before following.
He undresses me slowly, every movement asking even when his mouth demands my submission.
He lifts the hoodie over my head with pauses for my arms. Sweats pulled down my legs with his eyes on my face the entire time.
Socks tugged from my feet, one at a time, like he’s unwrapping something breakable and beloved.
By the time his shirt is gone and my hands are on his bare shoulders, I am shaking for a reason that has nothing to do with smoke and everything to do with the gentle attention he’s paying my body.
Ryder notices, smirks at me and then kisses my wrist, right where the hospital strap left a faint red mark, then my palm, then the inside of my elbow where the IV tape pulled too hard. He kisses the places everything else touched me and makes them his for one breath at a time.
I tell myself this is not goodbye.
My body, heart, and mind all know I’m lying.
This is my last chance to love him, and there’s nothing I’m going to let stop me from claiming Ryder one more time.
When he settles between my thighs, he keeps most of his weight off me, one forearm braced near my head, his other hand moving carefully between us until my breath turns uneven and my nails press into his back because I want more.
The ache in my head fades behind the fuller, deeper ache building under his touch.
I whisper his name once, and he kisses the sound from my mouth, swallowing it like he can keep it safe there.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” he says against my lips as he lines his cock up at my entrance.
I pull him closer by the back of his neck. “You won’t.”
The first push of him inside me is mercy and torture at the same time. My eyes sting before he is fully seated, and Ryder stops immediately, every muscle in his body locked above me.
“Pain?”
I shake my head, but he waits until I can answer.
“No.” I touch his face because he needs that more than the word. “Not pain. It’s perfect, Ryder. You’re perfect.”
His forehead lowers to mine. For a long moment, neither of us moves. He’s inside me, breathing with me, holding still while my body adjusts and my chest opens around the awful, beautiful truth of us.
For one brief flicker today, I thought I had lost this. I thought smoke had stolen my forever. I thought Preston had killed me before I could say the words, and now Ryder is here, warm and shaking and mine in every way that matters.
And he knows how I feel.
When he finally moves, he does it like he’s listening to my very soul.
Slow. Deep. Careful enough to make me want to cry and hard enough to make me forget I was supposed to be careful too.
I cling to him because there’s nothing else I can do.
My hands memorize the shift of muscle beneath his skin with every single thrust. My fingers find the damp heat at the back of his neck, and I can feel the way his control thins when I whisper that I love him again.
His rhythm breaks.
“Say it again,” he says, voice rough as he braces his forehead against mine.
I smile and even though speaking hurts, I give him everything. “I love you.”
The sound that leaves him is my undoing.
He kisses me harder then, less careful for a few seconds before he remembers himself and gentles his hand at my hip while he adjusts the next thrust. I hate him for that too.
I love him for it. I love him so much that the guilt waiting in my phone feels like a blade I have already pressed under his ribs.
The pleasure is pulled from me in waves instead of sparks, until my body tightens around him and my breath stumbles into a broken sound.
Ryder covers my mouth with his, not to silence me, but to stay with me through the cliff I’m diving over into oblivion.
He follows a minute later, his face buried against my neck, my name wrecked and soft against my skin.
Afterward, he shifts us carefully, cleans me up with a warm cloth from the bathroom, gets me water, checks my pupils in the lamplight while I complain weakly.
“You’re ruining the afterglow of orgasms with medical surveillance.” My voice is scratchy, and without the bliss of sex, I don’t want to say anything else.
But my words hit their mark, and almost make him smile. Almost. Then he climbs into bed beside me and pulls me against his chest with the kind of exhausted tenderness that assumes morning is coming.
I’m the only one who knows different.
I wait for his breathing to change.
It takes longer than I expect and not long enough at the same time.
Ryder is beyond tired, hitting exhaustion in a way I’ve never seen in him.
Now that the adrenaline has faded, that bone deep exhaustion is all that’s left behind after the grief, smoke, fear, and sex have burned through the body.
Even then, he fights it. His hand rests over my hip, loose but present, and every few minutes his fingers twitch like he is checking that I am still there.
I let him, because these last stolen moments are all I’ll have left.
When he finally sleeps, I stay still for another ten minutes, counting the space between his breaths while rain taps against the window until I don’t have a choice anymore.
Then I slide out from under his arm one inch at a time.
He shifts, and I freeze with my hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under my palm.
But that’s it. He doesn’t move again.
I dress in the dark. Soft pants. Hoodie sleeve pulled down over the hospital bracelet.
Sneakers in my hand until I reach the hallway.
I turn my phone’s screen timeout off the way I do when I’m transcribing interviews, open Preston’s messages, and set it on the nightstand beside Ryder where the light from the screen touches his hand.
No phone, Preston said. Fine. I won’t bring one.
But I will leave Ryder a way to find me. A way for him to know immediately what’s happening, where, and why I had to go.
He’ll understand. He’ll find my body. He’ll make sure Preston is held accountable.
Downstairs, the house glows with all the careful protection he built.
The monitors watch empty doors and white-lit grass.
I take the spare truck key from the kitchen bowl because my car is not here, then open the security app on the tablet with fingers that shake badly enough to miss buttons the first time.
Driveway alerts, snoozed for thirty minutes.
Garage Goblin, snoozed. Back Door Drama, snoozed.
I do not turn the system off. I do not erase myself.
I only buy myself time to leave before Ryder realizes I”m gone.
At the garage door, I pause with my hand on the knob and look back at Home Base.
The living room is still. The blanket Mom wrapped around me lies folded over the couch arm inside. The discharge papers sit under Dad’s highlighter. One of Nia’s crackers is abandoned on the counter. Everything about the house begs me to stay.
Mrs. Vance is somewhere in the dark because she didn’t turn her back on me. And that’s the only reason I need to go.
I slip into the garage, ease the door shut behind me, and put on my shoes with one hand against the wall.
The truck unlocks with a soft flash I hate more than a shout.
I climb inside, bite down against the pain in my head, and start the engine without turning on the headlights until I have rolled halfway down the driveway.
The house disappears behind me, bright and useless in the rain. My phone is upstairs beside Ryder, Preston’s messages open on the screen, and the man I love is asleep in the bed I just left.
He’ll get over losing me. They all will.