Page 159 of No Good Fight

Preston laughs under his breath.

Ryder’s hand tightens in his shirt.

“There he is,” Preston says, his voice wet around the blood in his mouth. He lifts his head enough to look past Ryder toward me before returning his attention to him. “I told her eventually she’d see you.”

Ryder hits him again.

I flinch before I can stop myself.

Preston’s head snaps sideways, but when he looks back, he’s still smiling.

“Do it.” His voice drops low enough that Ryder has to be the one closest to hear it, but the room has gone quiet around them. “Let her see.”

Ryder grabs him with both hands.

Something about the way he does it makes my stomach twist.

There’s no hesitation left in him.

I know Ryder could kill him.

More terrifyingly, I know Ryder has decided he’s willing to.

“Ryder.”

He doesn’t look at me.

I push myself higher against Josh’s arm, and pain cuts through my ribs hard enough to blur my vision. Josh reaches for me automatically, trying to keep me from moving, but I shake him off because Ryder is standing ten feet away from me and somehow that distance feels more dangerous than anything Preston has done since I woke up in this building.

“Ryder, look at me.”

His body stills.

Preston sees it happen and gives another quiet laugh. “Go ahead. Look at her.”

Ryder’s head turns.

The expression on his face hurts worse than I’m prepared for.

There’s blood on him that isn’t his, his breathing is hard, and every line of his body is pulled tight around the need to finish what he started. But underneath all of that, I can still see him.

The man who fixed my window and stepped back when I asked for space. The man who built an absurd security system around his house and still let me decide which cameras stayed on. The man who has spent this entire relationship wanting to put himself between me and everything dangerous while learning, sometimes painfully, that loving me doesn’t mean deciding for me.

Preston is trying to take that choice away from him now.

And if Ryder kills him like this, Preston gets what he wanted.

Not because Preston will have been right about Ryder. He isn’t. But he will have managed to reach into Ryder and leave something behind.

I refuse to let him have that.

I lift my hand toward Ryder. It shakes so badly that I barely get it away from my body, but his eyes drop to it immediately.

I don’t ask him to spare Preston. I don’t care what Preston deserves.

“Come here.”

Ryder’s gaze comes back to mine.