Page 58 of No Good Fight

I’m pretty sure if he asked, I’d be answering more than one question anyway.

His house sits back from the road, porch light glowing against the rain and trees crowding the edges of the yard. I’ve been here for cookouts, movie nights, random family fun things when we were younger, but tonight I notice things I never cared about before. A camera tucked beneath the porch roof. Another angled from the garage toward the driveway. A third near the side gate, half-hidden beneath a part of the house.

I stop beside the truck with the McDonald’s bag in one hand and my duffel strap sliding down my shoulder. “That is a lot of cameras.”

Ryder closes his door and comes around the hood slowly, my work bag over one shoulder, his gaze flicking toward the garage camera before returning to my face. “Not really. I’ve got them on the exterior only. Front, driveway, garage, back door, side yard. Nothing inside.”

“You had that answer ready fast, Ryder.” I want to smile at him, to tell him that I see through him. But the words die on my tongue.

“I figured you’d ask.” He takes one step closer, then stops when my fingers tighten around the bag. Rain darkens his hair and runs along the collar of his shirt. “I can show you the feeds, and I can turn them off while you’re here if that helps.”

I look from him to the camera under the porch. Preston used knowledge like a hand around my throat. Passwords, receipts, location, photos, every little piece of proof that I was not allowed to exist unobserved. Ryder stands in front of me with the same kind of knowledge at his fingertips and offers to give it up if I ask. Even if we both know it would make things more dangerous and difficult.

And he’s offering to do that…just because I’m asking.

My stomach twists because the answer should be simple, but nothing about Ryder has felt simple since the night he wiped ash from my cheek and looked at me like he’d been waiting years to touch me. And I’m sitting here wanting more from him.

“Leave them on,” I say.

He nods once. “Okay.”

My throat burns because I know I need to tell him everything. “I don’t like that I want them on.”

“I know,” he says quietly.

“You’re not supposed to agree with me that fast.”

Ryder adjusts the strap of my work bag on his shoulder. “I’m not agreeing. I’m listening.”

I hate how effective that is at stopping me from wanting to argue just for the sake of arguing.

Inside, he disarms the alarm, then steps aside so I can see the keypad. The correction is small, fast, and obviously deliberate. He gives me the code without turning it into a speech, waits while I repeat it back, then sets my duffel near the hall instead of carrying it away from me.

“If you want to leave, that code gets you out,” he says, hanging his keys on a hook by the door. “You don’t have to wake me up or ask.”

The words hit hard enough that I look down at the McDonald’s bag to avoid his face. “That’s very trusting of you. I could rob you blind.”

“You’d steal the good snacks first.”

My head lifts.

His expression tells me he regrets the sentence before I say a word.

“The good snacks?” I repeat.

Ryder sighs, taking the food from my hand and setting it on the kitchen island. “I bought groceries yesterday.”

“For yourself?”

“For the house,” he says, then gives up on that answer when I only stare at him.

I open the refrigerator before either of us can pretend I won’t. The light spills over water bottles, eggs, leftovers in glass containers, oat milk, and the vanilla creamer I buy when I’m pretending my checking account isn’t screaming at me to be more frugal.

My fingers tighten on the door handle.

Ryder stands near the island, folding the top of the McDonald’s bag again with slow, careful hands. He doesn’t rush to explain. He lets me look, and somehow that makes it worse and better at the same time.

“You have my creamer,” I say.