After exhaustion set in, I got up and started pacing. Questions flooded my mind.
What the hell happened?
Look, I wasn’t exactly a Disney princess. I was rough around the edges, had a sharp tongue, and I didn’t back down from a fight. But murder? Taking someone’s life? I would never do that. Ever.
Would I?
Maybe I was being attacked. Maybe I fought back. Hell, maybe the guy was some serial killer, and had I not stopped him, he’d have ended the lives of many other women. The possibility felt fragile, but I clung to it anyway.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes. Time moved differently when you were caged.
Then I heard it. Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy boots on linoleum.
My heart kicked up again, but this time with something other than fear. Hope maybe. Or desperation for any human contact that wasn’t shouted through bars.
The boots stopped outside my cell. Keys jangled.
“Lawyer’s here,” the guard said, his voice flat and bored, like he’d said those same two words a thousand times before.
Relief flooded through me so fast, I felt dizzy. Ryker. He’d come.
The guard unlocked the door, and I stood, smoothing down my wrinkled jail-appointed clothes even though it was pointless. He led me down a corridor that seemed to stretch forever, my shoes squeaking against the floor with each step. Another small room waited at the end.
But this room had a metal table. Two metal chairs. Dingy white walls with the same spiderweb cracks as my cell. I heard him before I saw him. That confident stride, the kind that said he owned whatever space he walked into. The door swung open, and there he was.
Ryker.
Still in those same dark jeans and black T-shirt from earlier, but now he also wore a leather jacket. Hours had passed since my arrest, but clearly, he’d been working through the night. For me. His shirt was wrinkled, and his hair fell messily across his forehead like he’d been running his hands through it over and over.
The jacket he’d thrown on did nothing to hide the tension coiled in his shoulders, and I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on his forearm when he moved.
He looked like strength wrapped in tenderness, a combination that made my heartbeat accelerate for entirely different reasons than fear.
But it was his eyes that got me. The way they locked on to mine the second he entered, like he needed to see with his own eyes that I was still whole, still breathing, still here.
He moved into the room with that confident stride, making sure the door shut behind us. Never taking his eyes off me, he crossed the room. His hands came up to frame my face, thumbs brushing along my cheekbones, as if checking I was real, unbroken. The touch was so gentle, it made my throat close up.
“Small room.” His eyes flicked to the corners, taking in the dimensions, the lack of windows, the single door. Then back to my face, searching. “You okay?”
Of course he’d remember what I’d told him in Axel’s stuck elevator about the police station, about Blake, about how small spaces made my skin crawl. The fact that he’d thought about it, that he’d walked in here and his first concern was my claustrophobia—not the murder charge—made my eyes burn.
“You okay?” he whispered again, his thumb tracing the curve of my cheek.
I forced my spine straight, lifted my chin. “I’m fine. Truly, it’s not that bad.” The lie tasted bitter, but I couldn’t fall apart. Not now. Not when he was looking at me like I might shatter. And I didn’t feel like I had a right to either. If I ended the life of another person, I deserved to be stuck in a claustrophobic-inducing cell for the rest of my life. “The cell is actually bigger than I expected.And the orange jumpsuit is warmer than it looks.” Heavier, too, despite the cheap poly-cotton blend being thin enough to see my arm hairs through. It held the smell of industrial soap and women’s fears.
At least paper scrubs had been neutral. Anonymous. Orange announced what you were before you opened your mouth.
His lips thinned.
And in that instant, with the lie dissipating into the air like smoke in the wind, my body continued betraying my truth. My fingers trembled, the cuffs rattling softly. The walls felt like they were expanding and contracting, and I knew if I looked at them too long, I’d start counting cracks again.
Ryker’s gaze dropped. To my hands. Back to my face.
He knew.
“Breathe with me.” He placed his hand over mine, his palm warm and solid against my trembling fingers. “In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.”
I did as he asked, my heartbeat slowing to match the rhythm of his breathing, and slowly, the walls stopped moving. The air felt thinner, easier to pull into my lungs.
