19. Harley
Harley
Eventually Ryder stretches out on my floor like an exhausted bear who’s finally decided maybe nobody in the room is actively trying to kill him, while Val leans back carefully against the couch cushions beside me with one arm stretched along the back behind my shoulders.
The apartment’s gone warm and quiet around us after the food, the kind of late-night stillness that only happens after emotional disasters burn themselves out. Or pause temporarily.
Ryder keeps glancing around the apartment like he’s trying to reconcile the place with the version of me he carries around in his head.
Honestly, I understand that feeling.
Half the time I still look around these rooms and see the aftermath of who I became after Dobson got hold of me. Isolation. Fear. Too many nights spent trying not to think.
Then Val arrived and somehow turned my entire life upside down in less than twenty-four hours.
Again, fair.
“You really stayed here alone after what happened?” Ryder asks quietly after a while.
I shrug one shoulder, though the movement feels uncomfortable under the weight of the question. “Nathan and Marcus set the place up for me and honestly, I wasn’t exactly great company for anybody.”
Ryder looks down at his hands. “Still shouldn’t’ve been alone.”
Something in his voice makes me study him more carefully.
Shame sits all over him now that the rage has worn off completely.
Not just shame over tonight either. Years of it.
Ryder’s always carried himself like somebody expecting a fight eventually, but this feels different.
He looks tired in a bone-deep way that has nothing to do with sleep.
“You were alone too,” I point out softly.
Ryder huffs once. “Different.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is when you’re a six-foot-four accidental murder machine.”
Val snorts softly from the kitchen. “That description actually covers a surprising number of rogues.”
Ryder glances toward him immediately. “You make it sound like I’m already one.”
Val’s expression sobers. “You’re not.” He pauses briefly before continuing. “But if nobody teaches you control, survival gets ugly fast for wolves.”
I curl my legs up beneath me on the couch and lean more fully against Val’s side while thinking about everything Ryder said earlier.
Criminal. Drugs. Staying away because he thought he’d poison my life somehow.
The more I look back, the more pieces fit together in ways that hurt more than I can say.
I wish I’d known more about his life earlier.
So much could have been different between us.
“Mom knew, didn’t she?” I ask suddenly.
Ryder freezes.
Oh.
“Oh my God.” I sit upright slightly. “She knew you were in trouble.”
“She knew I was using,” Ryder admits quietly without looking at me. “Not all of it. Just enough to worry.”
“She worried about everybody.”
“Yeah.” Ryder laughs softly without humor. “Mostly herself.”
That stings, mainly because it’s true.
Our mother loved us in the messy inconsistent way some people love when they’ve never properly learned how.
Sometimes she was wonderful. Sometimes she vanished for days with men neither Ryder nor I ever met twice.
Ryder got the worst of it because he was old enough to understand the instability long before I was.
“You practically raised me,” I say quietly.
Ryder looks genuinely startled.
“You did,” I continue before he can argue. “You made me dinner when Mom disappeared. Walked me to school. Beat up Trevor Mullins for stealing my backpack in fifth grade.”
“He deserved it.”
“He absolutely deserved it,” I agree with a chuckle. “You always took care of me.”
Ryder scrubs one hand hard over his scruffy beard, suddenly looking dangerously emotional. “I wasn’t good at it.”
“You stayed.”
The simple truth of that settles heavily between us.
Because he did.
Even at his worst, Ryder always came back eventually. Bruised or broke or strung out or angry at the world, but back. Meanwhile our mother drifted in and out like weather nobody could predict.
Beside me, Val stays quiet through all of it, but his hand keeps moving slowly against my shoulder in absent comforting strokes that ground me more than I want to admit aloud.
“You got lucky with him,” Ryder mutters eventually, glancing toward Val again.
My stomach does a weird happy little flip.
“I know.”
Val looks mildly alarmed by the softness in my voice.
Good.
He should be alarmed.
I’m getting attached at catastrophic speed over here.
Ryder notices the expression crossing Val’s face and groans dramatically. “There’s the creepy eye thing again.”
“We do not have a creepy eye thing!”
“You absolutely do. It’s like watching emotional telepathy happen in real time.”
Val coughs suspiciously into one hand. “There may be some actual telepathy involved eventually.”
Ryder stares at him.
“What?”
Val shifts slightly beneath me with obvious regret. “Mate bonds can strengthen over time.”
“How much telepathy are we talking?” I ask carefully.
Val looks thoughtful. “Depends on the pair. Emotions mostly at first. Sometimes thoughts. Location awareness.”
Ryder makes a strangled sound. “Oh hell no. That is horrifying.”
Honestly?
Maybe it should horrify me too.
Instead, I find myself weirdly fascinated by the idea. The bond already feels warm and alive under my skin now that I recognize it. Every so often I catch flickers from Val—not words exactly, more impressions. Concern. Amusement. Heat every time I shift too much in his lap.
That last one especially is becoming easy to recognize.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Ryder accuses.
“What thing?”
“The staring-like-you-want-to-climb-inside-his-skin thing.”
Heat floods my face instantly while Val abruptly looks fascinated by the far wall.
“Maybe I just appreciate aesthetically pleasing men,” I mutter.
“You appreciate him like he personally invented orgasms.”
Val makes a choking sound and I turn bright red all the way to my ears because the worst part is Ryder isn’t wrong. The shower alone nearly rewrote my understanding of religion.
“Okay,” Ryder says immediately, holding up both hands. “Nope. I changed my mind. I don’t need details.”
“You started it!”
“I really didn’t think through the consequences of visiting tonight.”
Val’s still quietly dying beside me, shoulders shaking slightly with suppressed laughter.
Traitorous wolf.
I elbow him lightly in the ribs. “You could help me out here.”
“You’re doing great,” he manages.
“Oh, now he’s funny and supportive,” Ryder mutters darkly. “Fantastic.”
Despite everything, despite the exhaustion and emotional whiplash and the fact my life’s become objectively insane in record time, laughter bubbles up in my chest again.
Real laughter this time. Warm and easy and startling enough that I almost stop myself out of habit.
I turn toward Val with a grin and he’s already looking at me, visible eye dark and intent and slightly startled, like he feels it too.
Home.
The word lingers warm between us.
Across the room Ryder looks back and forth between us once, groans loudly, and pushes himself to his feet. “That’s it. I’m sleeping literally anywhere else in this apartment before the emotional eye contact kills me.”
I burst out laughing while Val finally gives up and laughs too, low rough sounds that wrap around my chest warmly enough to ache.
And somehow, for the first time in a very long while, the apartment no longer feels haunted.