Page 10 of No Good Fight

When she disappears from sight, I’m out of the truck before I think better of it.

The cold slaps against my face as I cross the street, but I barely feel it. Smoke still clings to me from the fire, stuck in my hair and skin, and my body is exhausted enough that everything should ache. Instead, I feel focused in that dangerous way I get when there’s a problem in front of me, and I know exactly where to put my hands.

Only this problem… the biggest problem…is Alex.

And I never know where to put my hands when it comes to her. Because all I want to do is put my hands, and my mouth, on her.

I take the stairs two at a time and stop outside her door long enough to listen. No voices. No footsteps that don’t belong to her. No sound of a fight. Just quiet movement inside the apartment and the faint mechanical hum of the shitty hallway light above me.

I knock once.

The deadbolt turns after a pause that lasts long enough to tell me she’s scared and trying to decide if opening the door is better or worse than staying alone.

Then the door cracks open.

Alex peers out with one hand wrapped around the edge and the other hidden behind her back.

Good girl.

I hope she grabbed a knife since I know she doesn’t own a gun.

Then I hate myself a little because there are probably healthier reactions to seeing the woman you’ve been in love with for years holding a potential weapon while barefoot in her doorway.

“Ryder?” Her eyes widen before narrowing almost immediately. “How did you know something was wrong?”

I keep my gaze on her face because letting it move down her body right now would make me the worst kind of asshole. I still notice too much anyway. Pale face. No visible blood. No bruises. Her breathing is too shallow, and there’s still a faint smear of soot near her cheekbone from earlier.

The memory of my thumb brushing her skin comes back so fast I have to push it away before my body reacts.

“Your light was on, and I was driving by; it seemed weird.”

“At almost four in the morning?”

I shrug because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like the creep that I am. “Seemed like you needed me to check on you.”

She stares at me with the kind of look that says she knows I’m full of shit but isn’t steady enough to call me on it yet.

“I bet you don’t have people checking on you,” she finally says.

“I don’t live alone with an open window on the ground floor where anyone can just break in.”

That lands harder than I mean for it to.

Her fingers tighten around the edge of the door, and her gaze flicks over her shoulder into the apartment because she needs to remind herself nothing has moved in the last ten seconds.

“I might have left it open.”

“You didn’t.”

Her chin lifts, and the tiny flash of stubbornness on her face almost makes me breathe easier.

Almost.

“You don’t know that.”

I do.

That’s one of the biggest issues in my life, right now. The knowledge of pretty much everything that goes on in her life. But not everything… because I don’t know what caused her to freeze instead of run when she noticed that damn window open.