Chapter 22
SLOANE
“Fine,” Ryker said.
The word hit the kitchen like a slammed latch.
His mother didn’t flinch at his tone. She smiled as if she’d won something small but precious—a moment she’d been collecting since he was a kid, one that had never stopped mattering.
“Good.” She was already moving. Plates. Forks.
A skillet dragged closer. “Don’t give me that look, Ryker. You’re eating.”
Ryker didn’t argue. He stayed seated, but his presence changed slightly until I was pinned by his proximity instead of chains. One arm draped on the table, the other loose near his thigh as if he could move fast if he needed to.
I could feel how hard he was holding himself together and trying not to crack in front of his parents. I stayed in my chair because the warmth of the house made my body want to obey anything that kept me under this roof one second longer.
His dad set a plate down in front of me like it was the most normal thing in the world. Eggs. Toast. A bowl of fruit. The muffins were still steaming. I stared at it and felt my chest tighten. Food wasn’t only food. Not for people like me. It meant someone expected you to still be here in an hour.
“You’re pale.” His slid a glass of orange juice toward me. “Drink.”
“I’m fine,” I said on reflex.
Her brows lifted in a way that wasn’t offended. Just knowing. “Mhm. You’re here, which means you get taken care of for at least one morning.”
The words landed in my stomach.
Ryker glanced at me, then away, as if he realized he’d shared a moment of vulnerability. I curled my fingers around the glass to anchor myself. The cold steadied me.
On the bookshelf in the living room, the same framed photo I saw Ryker look at when we arrived pulled my attention hard.
The young man was smiling and Ryker’s dad’s arm wrapped around his shoulders. He belonged. I’d only had that with Nate. My throat tightened, and I looked away before it could show.
His dad followed my gaze. “Have you met Sebastian?”
“No,” I answered quietly.
“Good kid.” There was weight to his words. A protective kind of pride that didn’t ask permission. “Hard-headed. Loyal. Too smart for his own good.”
Ryker’s fingers tightened around his mug.
His mom set the skillet down and joined us at the table. She looked at me as if she was trying to read my silence.
“Sloane, where’s your family, sweetheart? Are they close?”
The question was normal, casual. It still made my stomach drop to my fucking toes.
Family.
Ryker went still beside me. Listening.
I kept my expression unreadable. “They’re not around.”
“Oh, honey.” His mom’s voice broke slightly.
His dad didn’t push. He watched me the way you watched a skittish animal.
“Do you have anyone,” he asked carefully, “that you’re close to?”
My leg bounced, grazing Ryker’s thigh. I stilled. This was when I lied. This was where I smiled and gave a name and invented a sister in another state, because the truth made people treat me like I was broken. “My two closest friends,” I said. “I grew up in foster care with my little brother.”
The words hit the table with a thud.
Ryker’s head turned slowly. His gaze locked on me. I hated that I could feel it—that kind of attention.
His mom’s hand went to her chest. “Oh, sweetheart.” She reached for me without thinking, then stopped when my shoulders tightened. When my body betrayed me with the smallest flinch. Her hand froze in midair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” I lied too fast, because that’s what I did when a situation got too real.
“How long?” Ryker’s tone was almost gentle.
I refused to look away first. “Since I was little. There were too many homes to count.”
Empathy flickered across his face, so quick I might have imagined it. His chair shifted an inch. Like his body wanted to move closer and his mind yanked it back.
His mom forced a smile through the ache in her eyes. “Well, you’re here now.”
The sentence shouldn’t have mattered. It did. No one had ever told me that before. Sitting at someone’s table had always been temporary, even when they said it wasn’t.
Ryker didn’t look away, and my skin prickled.
“You didn’t tell me that.” His words came out too quiet. As if he was irritated not knowing.
I felt my spine stiffen. “Why would I?”
“Because I—” He stopped mid-sentence.
His dad saved him from whatever was about to stumble out of his mouth. “Not everyone gets handed a family. But some people are lucky enough to find one. Sometimes they build it. We took Sebastian in after he lost his parents.”
His mom nodded. “Sometimes the right family finds you first.”
I stared at my plate so they wouldn’t see the way my eyes burned with unshed tears. Blinking rapidly, I shifted my attention to Ryker.
Ryker’s gaze dropped to the cuffs hidden under my sleeves.
I felt the weight of them silently reminding me about the consequences if I said too much. Maybe he didn’t like seeing them especially around his mother’s kindness.
“How did you not know about my past?” I asked him because anger was safer than the ache. “You’re very good at finding things.”
His attention snapped to me. A warning flared there, sharp and immediate, then something else slid under it. A hesitation. Possibly a line he didn’t want to cross.
“Foster records aren’t public.” His tone was clipped. “Not the real ones.”
I watched him. “So, you looked.”
His brow rose. Then he surprised me. “No.”
The honesty hit harder than any lie.
I blinked. “Why not?”
His attention turned to his parents. He probably wasn’t going to say the real answer in front of them. When he turned back to me, for a second, his eyes weren’t steel. They were tired.
“I wasn’t digging into you like that. Not without a reason.”
I held his stare, pulse thudding. “And now? Now you have a reason?”
His mouth flattened. “Now I have bigger problems. Why I went missing.”
His dad cleared his throat. “Ryker, about what you asked earlier.”
Ryker’s posture went rigid. His shoulders rose and fell once.
His mom’s fingers flexed the same way her son's did.
“If you’re going to push,” she whispered, “then you should talk to him.”
Ryker’s forehead creased. “Talk to who?”
“The man who brought you home—we never found out who he really was. But there was someone else. Someone we did know.” His dad hesitated.
“One of our closest friends, Hamilton … Well, he used to be. That was another lifetime ago. If we had to work late, he drove you places. Sometimes he brought games and toys for you to the house. He recognized that you were highly intelligent. Gifted. At the time we didn’t think anything about it. ”
Ryker didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His gaze went distant, though. Not the bunker “offline” look. This was different.
“Hamilton,” Ryker repeated slowly. “The one you stopped mentioning years ago.”
His mom flinched. “We thought we were protecting you.”
Ryker’s mouth twitched as if the sentence was a trigger. “Apparently, you thought a lot of things.”
His dad leaned forward. “He always denied that he knew anything, but it never settled well with me. Eventually we stopped spending time around him. If anyone can tell you what happened, I suspect he can. The question is, will he?”
Ryker stared at the table. “And you never made me talk to him.”
His mom’s eyes glistened. “You were a child. When you came back you were so different. We didn’t want to force you to do anything or talk to anyone.”
Ryker looked at the counter where his phone sat face down. His expression held a flash of hesitation, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.
His dad’s voice softened. “If you want this, we won’t stop you now. We’ll give you his number. But you need to understand—once you pull on that thread, you might not like what comes back. He’s not …”
Ryker’s mother placed her hand on her husband’s arm, silencing him.
Ryker remained quiet. He sat there, coiled like a snake ready to strike, and I suspected that he wasn’t afraid of being wrong about his disappearance, but something much darker.
His mother reached across the table toward him, and fingers brushed his wrist.
His mouth tightened.
“We love you,” she said, voice steady even with tears in it. “No matter what you remember. No matter what you don’t. I’m sorry that we never told you. After Sebastian moved in with us, it seemed to give us all a new direction, and you settled in with him even after everything you saw.”
Saw? What did she mean by that?
Ryker’s gaze flicked to mine, and I saw the tug-of-war. The way he didn’t know what to do with warmth anymore. The way part of him wanted to lean into it and the other part wanted to crush it before it made him weak.
Under the table, my knee leaned against his again. This time he didn’t move away. A muscle jumped in his neck, like he was furious at himself.
And my heart did something traitorous.
Because sitting here at a table with people who loved him, with Sebastian’s smiling face on a shelf, with a mother who offered me orange juice because she thought I deserved to be here, I felt the shape of what Ryker could’ve been if the world hadn’t turned on him.
And the ugliest part? I wanted it. Not the house. Not the muffins.
The belonging.
The way his mother looked at him like he was still worth saving. I wanted to be looked at that way. But I wasn’t worth saving. Not when I’d …
Ryker looked at me, but his expression didn’t soften. His eyes did, though. As if he’d noticed the hunger in me and understood it. That was the moment I realized I was in deeper than chains and threats.
Because the monster had brought me to his family table, and the man underneath was starting to see me differently.
I just wasn’t sure what that meant yet.