Chapter 32 Ryder #2
I drag a hand down my face and feel every year of my life in the movement. “I’m going to do it without letting him turn this town into collateral.”
“And if he forces it?”
I look at him, and he already knows my answer.
Zane nods anyway, once, accepting it without approving. “I’ll tighten the rear cameras when we get back to The Hollow tomorrow. Motion sensors too.”
“Good. We leave first thing in the morning. Talking to Cole face-to-face isn’t possible now. But I do know his plan, so that’s a start.”
I know I should sleep. We've got so much on tomorrow, but I can’t. My brain is buzzing way too fast. I can’t shut this shit down.
“Ryder.”
I jump at the sound of my name, at the sight of Aurora looking at me with those big, beautiful, albeit sleepy, eyes.
“You should be asleep,” I say.
“You should stop saying that to people who have eyes.”
I almost tell her I’m fine, but her gaze moves over my face, reading too much, too well.
“What happened?”
I should give her the clean version.
The useful version.
The version that protects.
Instead, I hear myself say, “I was right.”
“About what?”
“Cole.” My throat feels scraped out. “Benjamin Wren. The pressure campaign. The fire. All of it.” I laugh once, short and ugly. “They’ve got a deal in place. Wren gets The Hollow cheap when the licenses go under. Cole gets paid and gets to watch me lose it in public.”
Her expression hardens in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times. Soft girl, kind heart, but there’s steel in her when something matters. “He’s being paid to ruin you.”
“Yes.”
“And the town.”
“Yes.”
She goes quiet, absorbing that, then asks the more important question. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough.”
I don’t realize I’m rubbing my thumb over my ring until she looks down at the movement.
Angry enough to lose control.
My leash.
Aurora moves closer, giving me time to stop her.
I don’t.
“Talk to me,” she says softly.
I stare at the floor because if I look at her too soon, the wrong things in me are going to break. “I brought the trouble to Coyote Glen.”
“No.”
“Yes.” The word comes out sharper than I mean it to. “This is my past. My decisions. My people. My mess. I left thinking distance fixed the rot, and all I did was give it a new address.”
“Ryder—”
“One of my men died because I thought I could manage Cole.” There. It’s out now, harsh and irreversible. “I thought if I kept things controlled, if I gave him enough rope to feel respected, he’d stay inside the lines. He didn’t. And a good man paid for my miscalculation. Marcus paid for it.”
I keep going because I’ve already cut the thing open.
“He was young,” I say. “Too young for any of it. Trusted me. Trusted the structure. Trusted that if I said a meet was contained, it was contained.” My jaw locks. “Cole used the opening. Wanted to send a message. Sent it through him instead.”
Aurora’s eyes shine immediately, not with pity.
Worse.
Understanding.
“I left after that,” I say. “Bought The Hollow. Tried to make something clean. A life that didn’t ask blood for loyalty.” I finally look at her. “And now Finn’s bleeding in a storage unit. You were almost used as leverage. Tell me how exactly I’m supposed to pretend that isn’t on me.”
She steps into my space and puts both hands on me, one at my chest, one at my jaw, making it impossible to look anywhere but at her. “You don’t get to take responsibility for every cruel choice another man makes.”
My laugh is hollow. “That sounds nice.”
“It’s true.”
“I recruited him.”
“You didn’t make him become this.”
“I gave him access. Years of it.”
“And then you left.”
“Too late.”
She tips her chin up, green eyes fierce enough to stop a better man than me. “No. Not too late. If it were too late, you wouldn’t be here trying this hard to do it differently.”
I want to believe her.
That’s the dangerous part.
“You think intent changes outcome?” I ask quietly.
“No.” Her thumb moves once against my jaw. “I think choice does. Repeatedly. Over and over. Every day. And you keep choosing.”
I close my eyes.
Her hands stay where they are.
“I’m so tired,” I admit, the confession slipping out before I can kill it.
When I open my eyes again, her expression breaks me cleaner than anger ever could.
“Come here,” she whispers.
I should refuse.
Should keep the distance.
Should remember what I do to things I can’t bear to lose.
Instead, I go.
She pulls me down just enough that my forehead rests against hers, and for one long second, I don’t move at all because I’m too busy surviving the fact that someone is holding me while I’m this way.
“I see why you feel guilty,” she says softly. “I do. But guilt isn’t the same as blame.”
My hands come to her waist because I need somewhere to put them that isn’t around a throat or through a wall.
“It should’ve been me,” I say.
She goes rigid. “Don’t.”
“The man we lost—”
“Don’t,” she repeats, stronger now. “I mean it.”
I swallow the next words because she’s looking at me with the glint suggesting she’ll physically fight the sentence if I finish it.
“You don’t get to decide his life meant anything more than yours,” she says. “And you don’t get to turn surviving into a moral failure.”
I stare at her.
She stares back without blinking.
“Do you know what I see?” she asks.
“What?”
“A man who is trying so hard not to become the thing that hurt people before.” Her hand slides from my jaw to my neck, fingers warm against the chain there.
“A man who built a place instead of a trap. A man who stood in front of a room full of people and let them question him because burning it down would have been easier.” Her voice drops.
“A man who’s terrifying when he wants to be, and still chooses restraint. ”
The restraint is fraying.
Not because of her.
Because I want to deserve the way she says that.
“He’s going to keep coming,” I say.
“Then we face that.”
“You say we like you’ve already decided.”
Her mouth softens, sad and beautiful all at once. “Maybe part of me has.”
The words hit somewhere under the sternum and stay there.
I let my head drop, and she gathers me closer without making a show of it. One hand at the back of my neck now. The other splayed over my chest, right above the damage.
I don’t know how long we stand there.
Long enough for the worst of the pressure in my lungs to ease.
Long enough for the room to feel less like a cage.
When I finally speak, my voice is rough. “I don’t know how to carry this and keep you out of it.”
She leans back enough to look at me fully. “Maybe stop trying to do those as the same thing.”
I frown slightly.
“You can protect me,” she says. “But you don’t have to shut me out to do it.”
“That sounds good in theory.”
“It sounds necessary in practice.”
I almost smile.
Almost.
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
I slide one hand up, cup the side of her neck, and let myself feel the pulse there.
She’s still choosing to stand here after everything my world has thrown at her.
“You should run,” I say, though there’s no conviction left in it.
Aurora’s hand covers mine at her throat. “I’m getting a little tired of you deciding that for me.”
Then I bend and kiss her.
Not because desire disappears when a man is wrecked.
Because sometimes it’s the only language left that doesn’t lie.
She meets me immediately, soft and warm, and there’s comfort in it, yes, but more than that, there’s recognition. She kisses me because she knows I’m not asking to be absolved. Just held together for one more night.