“I don’t like not knowing what angle someone’s working,” he replies.
“I know. You’ve mentioned angles.”
He almost smiles.
We reach the overlook, that wide flat rock where the valley opens up, and Coyote Glen spreads out below like it’s trying very hard to look innocent.
From up here, everything feels manageable. Even drama. Even politics. Even men in blazers who say “precaution” as a love language.
Ryder stands at the edge, hands in his pockets, scanning the horizon for answers he will never get.
“You don’t have to hold it in forever,” I say quietly.
“I’m not holding it in.”
“You’re compressing it.”
He huffs a quiet laugh at that.
The wind lifts my hair and blows it straight into my lip gloss, which is deeply unfair. Ryder reaches up automatically and brushes it back, his fingers grazing my cheek in a way that is entirely too gentle for a man who looks like he could headbutt a door open.
“I grew up in a house where control was survival,” he says suddenly, picking up a thread he’s been holding all evening.
I turn toward him.
“My father believed structure fixed everything,” he continues. “Rules. Order. Discipline. If something broke, you tightened it.”
“That sounds… exhausting.”
“It was efficient,” he replies. “Not warm.”
The understatement.
“My mother learned to move quietly,” he adds. “And I learned to anticipate.”
“Anticipate what?” I ask softly.
“Tone shifts. Tension. The moment before something turns.”
Oh.
That explains the scanning. The exits. The way he stands between doors and the people he cares about without thinking.
“You were a kid,” I say.
“I adapted.”
There’s no drama in his voice. No self-pity.
“And the club?” I ask carefully.
He doesn’t look away from me.
“The club felt structured without suffocating,” he says. “Clear roles. Clear loyalty. Protect your own.”
“And then?”
“And then loyalty got complicated.”
