Chapter 67
RYKER
“Are you ready?” I laced my fingers through Sloane’s as we stood in my front yard and looked at my house.
Since Nate was doing better, we’d spent more time at my place.
It was quieter. We had more hours that didn’t feel stolen.
I watched Sloane come back to herself in small ways that mattered.
She slept without jerking awake. She took naps in the middle of the day and didn’t apologize for it.
She started reading again, a real book, pages bent at the corners from her fingers holding tight.
When she curled up on the couch, I threw her favorite blanket over her and set hot tea within reach. The look she gave me was soft and wordless, and it did something to my chest every time. She wasn’t used to being taken care of. She wasn’t used to letting her guard down long enough to breathe.
We’d started working out together too, and I loved that she wanted in on that part of me.
I cooked high-protein meals for us, and I taught Nate a few tricks in the kitchen.
I learned his tells fast. The way certain sounds pulled him out of the room without moving his feet.
The faraway look when something in the air reminded him of a day he didn’t want to remember.
I recognized it because it lived in me too.
At least the headaches and the flashbacks had eased after the Pied Piper had finally told me why they were there. The answer didn’t fix the damage, but it stopped my brain from clawing at the dark. It gave everything a shape. Something I could hunt.
Sloane squeezed my hand. “You’re really doing it.”
I glanced at her. “I’m doing it.”
She studied me, searching for the crack, the hesitation. There wasn’t one.
I leaned in and kissed her, slow, deliberate. Not a promise. A claim. Then I walked up onto the porch, grabbed the hammer and the sign, and stepped back down into the yard.
The stake hit the dirt with a dull thud. I drove it down with a few hard strikes until it held. When I stepped back, the FOR SALE sign sat in my yard like a warning and a dare.
It was time. Not to pretend the past hadn’t happened, but to stop living inside it.
To build something that fit all of us. A place with property and a small house for Nate that was on the same acreage, but not in Sloane’s and my new place.
That was the goal. Safety and a new beginning for all of us.
Sloane’s mouth curved in a beautiful smile. “Well, here we go.”
Her phone buzzed. She pulled it from the back pocket of her jeans, stared at the screen, then tapped it.
Her grip on the phone tightened. Her eyes moved across the screen once, then again.
Her mouth parted slightly, and she went still in the way she did when something was trying to get through her walls.
My shoulders locked. I didn’t know if I’d ever stop waiting for the next hit. I didn’t know if paranoia ever fully burned out of a man who’d been hunted.
“Everything okay?”
Her nose twitched, her tell that something wasn’t right. I braced for the words that were about to come out of her mouth.
“Oh.” Her brows knit. “Huh.”
She glanced up at me, and a strange little smile started to form. The kind that didn’t match the sound she’d just made.
“What is it, little fox?”
“With everything that’s happened my mind’s been super occupied.” She looked back down at the phone. “This explains some things.”
My pulse jumped. “Explains what?”
She exhaled. “I went to the doctor for some blood work. I wanted to check my cortisol, see if I was anemic, see if there was anything else messing with me.”
“And? Are you okay?” I heard the edge in my voice. I hated it. I couldn’t control it.
She reached for my hand again, fingers firm. Grounding. Steady. “He didn’t win, Ryker.”
My brow furrowed. “Who?”
“The Pied Piper.” She held her phone out to me. “He didn’t fucking win.”
I took it, but my attention stayed on her face until she tipped her chin once. A silent command.
I looked.
For a second, the words didn’t land. They blurred and snapped and blurred again, my brain refusing to accept them.
Pregnant.
The world narrowed. Air thickened. My mouth moved, but nothing came out clean.
My mouth opened and closed once before I found my voice. “You’re sure?”
I didn’t mean it as doubt. I meant it as desperation. I needed it to be real. I needed it to be ours. I needed the universe to give me this one thing after all the blood and lies and hands that had been around my throat.
“Yeah.” Her grin broke wide. “Look under the result. With everything that was going on, I forgot a few birth control pills and then we had sex without a condom. I was so distracted I didn’t even realize I’d missed my period.”
I read it again, then the laugh tore out of me. Raw. Uncontrolled. The first real one I’d felt in ages.
“Twelve weeks.” I looked up, and my vision sharpened on her. “You were pregnant when the Pied Piper and Hamilton took me.”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a giggle. “Jokes on them, huh?”
I lowered the phone and caught her chin, thumb pressing at the corner of her mouth. I held her because I needed her still.
Not because I doubted her, but because the feeling in my chest was too big for my ribs.
“You’re mine,” I murmured. “Both of you.”
Her eyes flashed. Heat. Pride. No fear. She leaned into my touch, then rose onto her toes and kissed me. Harder than the first. As if she was stamping her name into my mouth.
“I want you,” she whispered against me. “I want this baby with you. I want us.”
My hands slid to her waist and locked there. I rested my forehead against hers for a beat, letting it sink into every part of me that still felt bruised.
Then the reality of it struck hard enough to turn my stomach.
“We keep this quiet,” I told her. “Only the ones closest to us.” I suspected the Pied Piper had already taken Gavin and Evelyn. I’d be goddamned if he took Sloane and my baby too.
Her smile didn’t fade. “He won’t win, Ryker.”
“No.” The word came out flat. Final. “He won’t.”
I kissed the tip of her nose, then her mouth, then I lifted her off the ground and spun her once, twice, until her laugh broke free and filled the yard.
For one suspended moment, it felt safe. It felt ours.
I set her down, kept my hands on her waist, kept her close.
The woman who’d found me half-dead and refused to let me go had brought me back in ways I didn’t have words for.
And now she was carrying my child.
My voice dropped, rough as gravel. “I’ll burn the world down before I let him touch you.”
She stared at me. “I know.”
The sign stood behind us in the dirt, a line in the sand.
And in my chest, something ruthless and bright took hold.
One way or the other, the Pied Piper and everything he’d built was going down.
**You thought Ryker’s story was over. Ryker and Sloane found their way home.