Chapter 2
Ryan
Ryan lingered outside the café longer than he meant to.
The night air was cool against his face, carrying the smell of roasted beans and the faint vanilla syrup that seemed to cling to the café walls.
He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, glancing back through the glass as Taylor flicked off the lights inside.
She hadn’t changed. Not really. She still moved with that brisk determination, still smiled at people like she meant it, even when he could see exhaustion at the corners of her eyes.
But she had changed too.
There was a weight about her now, a quiet resilience that hadn’t been there when she was seventeen. She carried herself like someone who had been holding up the world alone for far too long.
And that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He told himself to walk away. To head home, let her lock up, mind his own business. She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t need him.
Except the thought of her walking alone through dark streets gnawed at him.
Maybe it was the job still clinging to his bones.
Maybe it was the failure that never left him, the one that had sent him back to this small town in the first place.
He had sworn not to let anyone else slip through his fingers.
Taylor’s voice echoed in his head. My mom has been gone a long time. I’ve been on my own since then.
He hadn’t known that. Not the full truth of it, anyway. He remembered her mom vaguely, remembered polite conversations when he picked Emma up, remembered a woman who smiled brightly in public. He hadn’t realized Taylor had been left to fend for herself so completely.
That knowledge sat in his chest like a stone.
The café door opened. Taylor stepped out, jacket pulled tight around her, bag slung over her shoulder. She locked the door with quick, practiced movements and turned down the street.
Ryan followed at a distance. Not close enough for her to notice, not close enough for her to accuse him of smothering her, but close enough that if something happened, he could close the space in seconds.
Her stride was steady, confident, but he saw the way her shoulders stiffened halfway down the block. She glanced back, scanning the shadows, her hand tightening on her bag strap. For a moment, Ryan thought she had spotted him.
But she shook her head and kept walking, muttering something he couldn’t hear.
He stayed until her apartment door clicked shut behind her, the light flicking on in the window. Only then did he let himself exhale.
Ryan waited until the light in Taylor’s apartment blinked off before turning away. The night had grown colder, the air sharp against his lungs as he shoved his hands deeper into his jacket pockets and started the walk back to his rental.
The small apartment sat above a hardware store on Main Street. It smelled faintly of sawdust and mothballs, the kind of scent that clung to old buildings with drafty windows and too-thin walls. Not home, but serviceable. Temporary. That was all he needed.
He dropped his keys on the counter and flicked on the single overhead light.
The space was bare except for the essentials: a couch, a table with one chair, and his duffel bag shoved against the wall.
He had been living light for so long that the idea of decorating or settling in anywhere felt foreign.
He sat heavily on the couch, elbows braced on his knees, and pressed his palms to his face.
Images he had tried to bury surfaced with cruel clarity. The last deployment. The chaos in the dust-choked village. The intel that had been wrong. The ambush that had come too fast. The men he had not been able to get out in time.
He still woke up some nights with the ringing of gunfire in his ears, with the sight of blood-soaked sand burned into his vision. He had replayed it a thousand times, searching for what he could have done differently. He always came back to the same conclusion. He had failed them.
The fallout had been swift. He had put in his papers, left before anyone could push him out, told himself he was just tired and needed a change of pace. The truth was simpler. He had nothing left in the tank. No strength to keep carrying the weight of lives depending on him.
So here he was, back in his hometown, the place he had once been so desperate to leave behind.
The quiet was supposed to help. The stillness of small-town nights. The comfort of familiar streets. A chance to remember who he was before the world demanded too much.
But already he felt restless. Like the silence would swallow him whole.
And then there was Taylor.
He had not expected to see her like that, running the café with brisk efficiency, smiling at customers as if she belonged completely in that space.
But underneath the practiced calm, he had seen the flickers of something else.
A tiredness she tried to hide. A loneliness that clung to her in unguarded moments.
He had thought he knew her, once. He had thought he had seen enough to understand her life. Clearly, he had missed more than he realized.
Ryan leaned back against the couch, staring at the ceiling.
He needed to slow down. To stop living like every shadow held a threat. That was why he had come back, after all. He told himself he was here to breathe, to take things one day at a time, to find some kind of footing again.
But as much as he tried to push it aside, he knew the truth.
He was back in this town because he was tired of losing people.
And whether Taylor liked it or not, he was not about to let her be the next.
The apartment was too quiet. Ryan stretched out on the couch, but his body refused to relax. He stared at the ceiling until his vision blurred, and still his thoughts circled back to Taylor.
It had been almost a decade, but some memories had teeth. He could still see her as clear as if it had happened yesterday: seventeen years old, cheeks flushed, eyes shining with nervous courage as she leaned toward him.
And then she kissed him.
Just like that. No hesitation, no warning.
Her lips had been soft, unsure, but the jolt that went through him had mattered. For one insane heartbeat, he wanted nothing more than to pull her closer, to deepen the kiss, to forget the lines that made her untouchable.
But he had shut it down.
He had pulled away like she had burned him, said the cruelest thing he could think of, made it sound like she was nothing more than a silly kid.
He could still see the way her smile cracked, the way her laugh sounded brittle as she brushed it off like a joke. But her eyes had told the truth. He had hurt her.
The guilt of that moment had lingered, but he had forced himself to bury it. Because the alternative, acknowledging what he felt, was too dangerous.
She had been seventeen, on the cusp of her own life, and he had been nineteen, desperate to leave this small town behind. He had wanted more, wanted adventure, wanted to test himself in the world. The last thing he’d needed was to be tied down by feelings he wasn’t ready for.
So he’d made sure she would never try again.
And then he left.
Ryan scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaling slowly. He told himself he had done the right thing. He told himself that cutting her down quickly had spared them both something messy and impossible.
But tonight, seeing her again, hearing the strength in her voice and the loneliness underneath, he wondered if all he had really done was prove himself a coward.
He had wanted to experience the world, and he had.
He had seen more than he ever imagined, done things he never thought he would do, lost people he could never get back.
And after all of it, he was here again, sitting in an empty apartment above a hardware store, thinking about the girl he had left behind.
Ryan closed his eyes, but sleep didn’t come easily. The past pressed in on him, sharp and unrelenting.
He told himself he had come home to slow down, to rest.
But he was beginning to realize he had also come home because of her.