“No, baby.” He curls me into his side, petting my head. “He’s okay. I’m so sorry. I should have said that first. I was just …”
“Ryker, what is it? Who was on the phone?”
We’re all the way to the penthouse elevators because his pace is that of an Olympic speed walker, the customary waves of his intensity roaring to a turbulent tsunami.
Bernard has the door open for us. He extends his traditional warm greeting, but Ryker barely acknowledges him, and my smile is taut.
As the doors close with a ping, Ryker exhales. “It was Axel. We were sent a package.”
There are those moments in life when you know the next second will wreck you, when you feel the crash before it happens, the lightning before it strikes, the burn before the fire is lit.
The blow before it knocks you down.
But time doesn’t freeze, so we have to move through it.
“What was it?” My voice is so raw that a whisper would be too strong of a descriptor.
But Ryker hears it like a scream. He looks sick.
“Do you want to know? Because I’m trying to fucking do this in a way we can both …” He rubs his jaw and tows me out of the elevator, but he doesn’t open the penthouse door. He grips my chin. “Look at me. I’m torn here between keeping your trust and protecting your sanity. I’m not sure how to do both. But I also think you may be the only one who might understand the significance of what we received and possibly have a clue as to who the fuck is doing this.”
The sight of him so untethered has the opposite effect on me than I would have anticipated. An uncanny fortitude coasts over me, swimming in my veins and bolstering me to be the resilient serenity he needs.
“I can handle it. What was the package?”
He hedges, uncertainty staining his features.
Two seconds pass, and Axel swings open the door, his ruffled grimace only enhancing both my unease and my resolve. “Did you show her?”
“Not yet … I …” Ryker stammers, holding his phone in indecision.
This is a glimpse of Ryker on that crimson-stained floor. While my memory is spotty, his is likely as vivid as ever. And I’m witnessing how cutting his own shards are.
I clutch his hand, my thumb sweeping over his skin, my gaze darting between him and Axel. “Show me. We’ll face it together.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swipes his phone on and pulls up his text thread with Axel.
And a sob lurches from my lungs when my brain makes sense of what I’m seeing. “I thought the house was … who could … what the hell does this mean?”
It’s the photograph of Dalton, Remy, and me, the one taken a few days postpartum, the one that still has the blood splattered across it from the first punch he threw at me.
“It’s a fucking message.” Rage encapsulates that reply, though Ryker doesn’t expand with all the wrathful ideas he’s clearly harboring. He wraps his arms around me and kisses my hair.
But I think we all grasp the intent. Someone wants to keep me on that damn floor.
RYKER
“Shh. Pretend like you’re sleeping.”
It’s late afternoon. Mercy, Remy, and I swam all day. When I brought Remy to our bed to take a nap, she stayed on the roof, reading a book for an hour before hopping into the shower.
He woke up twenty minutes ago, and we chatted about everything under the sun. I think he’ll like learning all he can about weird subjects, like his mom does.
When the sounds of her finishing up in the bathroom filtered through the door, I told him she was about to come out and had no idea where we were. We threw the blanket up over our heads to hide, but he can’t stop giggling.
The faint click of the door precedes her soft footfalls, and then she stops, quickly catching on to her precious boy’s laughter. “Hmm. I wonder where Remy and Ryker are.”
His giggles intensify, his hazel eyes wide and planted on me beneath the comforter as he sings, “We not under the blanket, Mama.”
