Page 114 of No Good Fight

Dad comes around the island and wraps one arm around Mom’s shoulders, but his eyes are on me. “Tell us what you need.”

The simplicity of it nearly takes my knees out. Not where are you staying. Not what are we doing. Not what did Ryder do. Just need.

I look at Ryder first, waiting to see if there’s some cosmic sign telling me that I’m making a mistake, but none comes. He’s still just out of reach, hands loose at his sides, face wrecked in a quiet way. He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t encourage. Doesn’t take the choice away from me or make it something easier. He’s just here. For me.

“I’m staying here,” I say.

Josh’s eyes cut to Ryder again, but Nia steps into his line of sight with a muffin in hand and murder in her expression.

“Eat,” she tells him.

“I don’t want a muffin.”

“Then hold it and imagine a world where you don’t interrupt your sister when she is explicitly telling you what she needs in the way you didn’t listen to me when we went through this shit.”

He takes the muffin, and tears an angry bite out of it while glaring at his best friend.

Ryder looks like he might laugh and die from tension at the same time.

“I’m staying here,” I repeat, stronger now. “Not because Ryder decided it or forced me to or convinced me. I don’t want to go back to my apartment. I don’t want my clothes from there. I don’t want to sleep anywhere Preston has touched. Ryder’s house has cameras, locks, and a man who looks at me like he’d burn the world down for me. So for right now, this is where I feel safest.”

Dad nods. Mom squeezes my hand once and lets go before I have to pull away.

Josh stares at the muffin like Nia handed him a live grenade. “I hate this.”

“I know,” I say.

“I hate that he gets to be the place where you feel safe.”

Feeling Ryder shift, I point at him without looking. “No.”

He closes his mouth.

Josh sees it, and some of the fight drains out of his face. Maybe because Ryder listened. Maybe because I didn’t even have to turn around for him to do it.

“I’m still your sister,” I tell Josh. “I still need you. But I need you as my brother, not as another man deciding my life works better when he’s louder than me.”

Nia’s face softens. Josh’s does too, though he fights it because Harmon stubbornness is a genetic curse.

He sets the muffin down untouched and crosses the kitchen. Slowly. Carefully. Like he’s approaching a bridge he doesn’t know is safe or a deer about to bolt.

I meet him halfway.

His arms wrap around me, tight at first, then gentler when Nia makes a warning noise behind him. I bury my face against his chest, and for a second I am six years old again, hiding from thunder while Josh tells me that storms are just clouds being dramatic.

“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair.

“I know.”

“I’m still mad.”

“I know that too.”

“At you. At him. At Preston. At myself. At the whole goddamn universe.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”