I glance up from the couch, the sixth or seventh shot of espresso in hand. Ryder looks well rested despite everything, his dark hair messy from sleep, sweatpants slung low on his hips.
He takes one look at me and lets out a long, slow exhale. “You haven’t slept?”
“Oh, I did... it felt like a whole five fucking minutes.”
“Fine.” He shakes his head as if scolding a misbehaving toddler. “Give me your laptop.”
Hope sparks in my chest. “You’ll dig?”
“I think either I dig, or you’ll prove it’s not just snakes who can shed their skin.”
An ounce of the weight on my chest lifts. I pass him my laptop. It’s not close to his state-of-the-art equipment, but he’ll make it work.
The sound of his fingers flying over the keyboard used to grate on my nerves. He types so fast the individual keystrokes merge into a monotone hum, but today, it’s soothing. A repetitive, grounding reminder that something is finally happening.
“This might take a while, Koby. I can’t exactly pull her entire life history out of thin air.”
“I know, just—”
“Yeah, I get it,” he cuts in. “Anything. Everything.”
I rub at the pulsing ache in my temples, counting the seconds between each inhale.
Patience has never been my virtue.
Barely twenty minutes pass before Ryder’s fingers stop with a deafening silence. I feel the shift in his demeanor before I hear what caught his attention.
Bianca’s up.
That means no more digging. At least for now.
Barefoot, she stops in the doorway, eyes flicking between us like she’s trying to piece together how the world is still spinning.
Ryder softens in a way I rarely see. He leans back against the couch, tilting his head toward her. “How are you doing, Summer?”
“Okay, I think.” She smiles small, padding across the room, and folds herself onto the couch beside him.
He immediately pulls her in, his arm banding around her shoulders, lips brushing the crown of her head, and she exhales as if that’s all she needed to breathe again.
And fuck... my chest aches at the sight.
I want that. I want Leilani in my arms. Safe. Cherished.
Except it won’t happen like this. Bianca goes to Ryder because she trusts him, because she knows she’s safe there. Leilani doesn’t even know me, and if she did, I doubt she’d see me as the personification of safety.
Details, my mind scoffs.
Yes, details. She doesn’t have to come to me soft. She doesn’t even have to trust me, not at first. She just has to be mine.
3
Leilani
My life has felt like a series of unfortunate events for a long time. One disaster bleeds into the next, every decision leading me further and further away from the girl I was.
The girl who laughed easily and believed in a happy future.
It wouldn’t be half as awful were it my decisions that led to those disasters. Had I ruined my own life, maybe I could stomach it. But the choices I faced weren’t choices at all.
