Page 30 of No Good Fight

Alex: You were right. About someone being there.

I closed my eyes.

The relief should’ve been simple. She believed me now. She wasn’t alone inside the fear anymore.

Instead, it hit somewhere deeper and made a mess of my already admittedly fragile control.

Trust was dangerous. Alex trusting me was worse, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to step between her and every sharp edge in the world. I wanted her keys on my dresser and her toothbrush in my bathroom and her breathing steady against my ribs where I could count every inhale for myself.

I wanted too much.

I always had when it came to Alex.

My fingers hovered over the phone.

Ryder: I’m glad you believe yourself.

I sent that because it was the right thing to say.

The thing I wanted to say was that she could believe me instead. That I would carry the certainty for both of us if she needed me to.

That I would always come when she called.

That I’d come even when she didn’t.

At 11:58, I was parked across the street from her building again.

I told myself it was because of the shady maintenance worker.

That was partly true.

Her bedroom light was on, glowing through the first-floor window, soft and yellow behind thin curtains. I could see her shadow move once, then again, pacing near the edge of the room with her phone in her hand.

She was still awake.

I hated that.

I loved knowing that she’d been texting me, though.

The thought settled over me with enough weight to make my grip tighten on the steering wheel.

A normal man would text her to tell her to go to sleep. A better man would go home. I sat there in the dark cab of my truck with the engine off and watched the window like my attention could hold the walls around her in place.

A little after midnight, her bedroom light went out.

My entire body went alert.

Three seconds later, another light came on deeper inside the apartment.

Bathroom.

I relaxed before I understood why.

Then I did understand. I knew the layout well enough to tell where she was by the placement of the light.

The knowledge sat there between one breath and the next, plain and damning.

I had been telling myself tonight was different because someone was after her. Because the SUV was real. Because the man in the hallway was real. Because Alex had finally admitted she was scared.