Chapter 13
Ididn’t sleep. I couldn’t.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Ryder’s voice again telling me that some men don’t stop until someone makes them and the quiet certainty behind those words. The implication sat heavy in my chest all night, growing louder until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Around two in the morning, I finally gave up. I pulled on an old sweatshirt, went downstairs, and made a pot of coffee. I sat at the kitchen table in the dark and drank it black, staring out the window toward the Kane Ranch even though I couldn’t see anything past the porch light.
My mind kept turning over the way Ryder’s face went carefully blank whenever my father’s name came up, the way he never volunteered a single word about him, and the quiet way the whole town seemed to treat Dwayne’s death like a relief no one wanted to question.
By the time the sky started to pale, I was on my third cup and still no closer to feeling calm or less confused and concerned.
I stood to rinse out my mug but froze and leaned toward the window above the kitchen sink. That’s when I saw it. Ryder’s truck was parked at the end of my drive, headlights off. I didn’t need to ask why because I knew. He’d been there all night.
I set the mug down, walked outside barefoot, and crossed the gravel toward him. He opened the driver’s door as I approached but didn’t get out. He just watched me, that same dark intensity settling over him like a second skin.
I stopped a few feet from the open door and crossed my arms over my chest, the early morning air chilly. I wasn't going to beat around the bush. I’d been mulling this over all night. “Did you kill my father?”
The question hung in the cool morning air as Ryder looked at me for a long time. His expression didn’t change. There was no surprise, and he sure as hell didn’t show any shame or guilt. He kept that steady, unshakable stillness.
“Yeah, Lila. I did.” Four words. Flat and final.
I waited, my heart slamming against my ribs, knowing he was going to say more. I took a step back as he climbed fully out of the truck, shut the door with a final click, and leaned against it.
Ryder’s eyes never left mine, and when he spoke again, his voice was low, rough, and stripped of any softness.
“He found out where you were living. Got it in his head that he was comin’ to get you.
Started talking about what he’d do once he had you back under his roof.
Said it like it was already decided.” His jaw flexed hard, the muscle jumping once.
“Said it right in front of me. Drunk and mean and smilin’ like he already owned you again.
” The quiet that followed made the hairs on the back of my neck raise.
“After he started sayin’ that shit about you that night, I decided he wasn’t ever going to touch you again. ”
“What did you do?” I asked, and I heard the horror in my own voice.
Ryder didn’t look away as he gave me what I wanted.
“Waited until he was good and drunk. Then I messed with the steerin’ on his truck just enough that it wouldn’t hold a straight line at speed.
Followed him out of town and stayed far enough back that he never saw me.
When he started driftin’ all over the old highway, I let him. Didn’t try to help. Just watched.”
His voice stayed low and even, and I didn't know if that comforted me because he was so in control or scared the shit out of me. My father was going to find me and hurt me? It was probably the ramblings of an abusive drunk, but God… what if?
“He went off the road on that bad curve near the river…” He let the words hang. “No one questioned a thing. They already knew what he was.”
A bird called somewhere in the distance cutting through the silence.
“I’d do it again,” Ryder said with no hesitation, no apology. “Be damned if I let anyone—least of all that motherfucker—come near you again.”
Something broke open in my chest. It wasn’t horror or fear. Relief. Pure, sweet relief. But it was thick and shameful and so strong it made my knees weak. I was glad when my father was dead. I was glad Ryder had been the one to do it. And that truth scared me more than the murder itself.
I stared at him, the pieces starting to shift in my head.
Ryder must have seen how raw I felt in that moment because he stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a near whisper, laced with determination and possessiveness.
“I checked on you,” he admitted. “Not every day like it was some sick game. But every few months, I’d go to the city and sit outside your apartment just long enough to see you walk to your car or come home from work.
” He took another step closer, and I moved one back on instinct.
“Long enough to know you were safe. Long enough to leave things when you needed them…Then I’d turn around and come back. ”
I wracked my brain, trying to recall anything I might have noticed in all the years I was away. Then the small, unexplained things started lining up.
Extra cash that showed up in my coat pocket right when rent was due.
The battery I’d been meaning to replace for weeks that somehow never died after one particularly cold morning.
Fresh tires I only noticed months later when a mechanic commented on how new they looked.
A fridge that was emptier than I remembered one week and then somehow had milk, bread, and eggs again…
They were all things I shrugged off as luck or billing errors.
“You never said anything,” I whispered.
“Wasn’t about sayin’ anything.” His eyes stayed locked on mine, dark and unflinching. “It was about makin’ sure that bastard never got another chance at you and makin’ sure you were okay.”
The morning air felt thin, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I should have been horrified. Terrified of everything Ryder was admitting. The years of watching, the quiet interference, the way he had moved through my life without me ever knowing. He stalked me. He was a murderer.
He'd done it to protect me.
Instead, all I felt was the same thick, shameful relief from earlier now tangled with something even harder to name. I didn’t say anything else, but I did turn around and walk back inside. I sensed Ryder behind me and knew he wasn’t going to let me run away again.
But I needed space, needed to figure out what it meant that the man I was in love with had not only killed my father… but had spent fourteen years making sure I survived without ever once letting me know he was there.