Page 132 of No Good Fight

Ryder locks the door after them, then stands with his hand on the deadbolt until their headlights wash across the front window and disappear down the drive. The house is still bright from every exterior light he installed, monitors glowing softly from the living room, the security app open on the tablet beside the couch. Porch Witness. Garage Goblin. Bad Vibes Side Yard. Home Base. Murder Maple. Back Door Drama.

All of it is meant to keep me here. Keep me safe.

But none of it can reach Mrs. Vance.

My phone buzzes against my thigh again.

Ryder turns.

I hold it still, screen hidden, and make myself look as tired as I feel. It isn’t difficult. My skull is pounding. My throat feels torn from whatever meds and ash and everything else that it’s gone through in the last few days. Every breath drags rough through my chest, and the blanket around my shoulders is suddenly too warm.

“The paper,” I rasp before he can ask. “Probably Marcy checking on me.”

He watches me for one second too long. Then he crosses the room and crouches in front of me, giving me his hands without taking mine. “Upstairs.”

The second I put my fingers in his, his expression changes. Not much. Just enough to show me how badly he has wanted to touch me since I woke up strapped to that bed. He helps me stand like I’m a porcelain doll, one hand hovering near my waist, the other ready at my elbow.

I hate how slowly I have to move. I hate that Preston’s message is burning through the cotton of my sweats pocket while Ryder guides me past the kitchen, past the locked doors and warm soup and all the evidence that people are trying very hard to keep me alive.

The bedroom smells like clean sheets, cedar, and smoke that has sunk too deep into him to wash away in one shower, but it’s not a bad smell. Ryder turns on the bedside lamp instead of the overhead light, then sets my water on the table, lines up the medication bottles, and checks the charger near the bed like the correct placement of a cord might hold the world together.

And honestly, in this moment, I think he’s right. It’s the tiny small things that are keeping me from falling apart, and every single one of them starts with him.

I sit on the edge of the mattress and finally look at the message on my phone.

Unknown: You have until dawn now. Old Mason Ridge maintenance building. Service road. No phone. No Ryder. No police. Every minute you’re late is one she feels.

A video follows.

I press play with my thumb half covering the screen, as though hiding part of it will make any of it less real. Mrs. Vance is in the same chair, chin lifted, mouth uncovered now but tight with pain or fury. Someone off camera says my name. Her eyes sharpen. She spits toward the floor, and the video cuts off before the sound lands.

My hand shakes so hard the phone slips against my palm.

Ryder’s footsteps stop behind me.

I lock the screen before he can see and turn, already reaching for him because I have no time left to be a better person. “Stay with me.”

The words hit him wrong. I see it in the way his face drains of all the careful restraint he has been using since the hospital. He looks at the bed, at me, at the water on the nightstand, then back at my face.

I know what I’m asking him. What I’m doing. But he still pushes back. Because he cares. “You need sleep.”

“I know.” But I need him more. I need this more.

“Alex.”

I stand before he can finish whatever half-hearted rejection is on the edge of his tongue, which is a mistake because the room tips hard enough that his hands close around my waist on instinct. He steadies me, then tries to put space between us, but I grip the front of his shirt and hold on.

“I almost died before I could tell you,” I say.

Everything in him goes still.

My throat burns, and the headache behind my eyes pulses in warning, but this is the one thing I can give him that doesn’t belong to anyone else. Not Preston. Not the truth about Mrs. Vance. Not the promise that I’ll stay. Just this.

“I love you, Ryder.”

His fingers flex against my waist like he loses control for half a second and has to find it again by touch. His eyes move over my face, searching for fever, confusion, injury, any medical reason to doubt me, and the fact that he feels like he has to check almost undoes me.

“Don’t look at me like it’s the concussion talking,” I whisper.