Page 78 of Slapshot Bride

He looks at the house. “Is she here?”

I don’t respond. A part of me wants to affirm what he already knows.

Tell him she’s with me, she’s safe, and she’s mine. That his hold on her has expired, and she’s flourishing. But I stay quiet. I wouldn’t give him anything to work with.

“If I could just—”

The front door opens.

I hear it before he turns. Riley is in the doorway.

She has a book in one hand, bare feet, and she has clearly come to the door because she heard the car and wanted to check, and now she's standing very still in the frame of my front door with the light behind her, looking at the man on my driveway.

The color has left her face.

All at once, like something warm has been put under cold water. Her hand tightens on the doorframe, and the book drops a half-inch in her other hand without her noticing.

Something in me goes very cold and very quiet.

Something lower than anger, and more useful.

I step sideways until I’m between the doorway and Preston.

Preston still looks over my shoulder.

“Riley.” His voice changes. Softens. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

She doesn't answer.

“I know things have been hard. I understand why you needed space. I just want you to know that I'm here. Whatever you need.”

She still doesn't answer.

Preston looks at me briefly. A look that says we are two reasonable men dealing with an unreasonable situation, and he trusts me to understand that.

“She’s been through a lot,” he says, quietly to me. Like she's not standing ten feet behind us. “She needs people around her who can give her stability. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take her home. To her family. To the home where she’s grown in love.”

There it is.

Gentle on the surface. Possessive underneath.

I think about the news alert on the afternoon she got into my car, the three lines of carefully worded concern about her wellbeing and mental health, issued forty minutes after she ran. I think about the texts her father sent; I think about Riley on the couch two weeks ago with a hundred and forty-eight notifications, and her hands shaking. Then I think about her life in these past few weeks. How she’s been carefree and has started slowly embracing the life she wants without trying to fit it into another person’s definition of what she should be and what’s expected of her.

I think about her face right now, behind me.

I turn toward the door.

She's looking at me. Not at Preston. At me. And the expression on her face is the one I have been watching for three weeks, the one she wears when she's holding herself together with both hands and running the calculation of how long she can keep doing it.

I hold her gaze for exactly one second.

Then I turn back to Preston.

“Riley will return home when she’s ready,” I say.

“Oh, you know it’s been long enough. It’s been almost a month. You can’t keep hiding her from her family. She needs…”

“She isn’t available,” I say again, my voice dropping lower. “And you’re not coming to this address again. Riley is safe here, and I intend to keep it that way.”