Page 60 of No Good Fight

The answer slips under my defenses before I can stop it. I look at the girl in the picture, trying to remember whether that laugh belonged to a good day or whether I was already getting good at performing even around my friends and my family. Maybe Ryder knows. Maybe that’s part of the problem that I don’t want to think about.

“How long?” I ask, my hand falling from the frame. “The coffee, the food, this picture. They all paint a picture, Ryder. How long have you been keeping pieces of me for yourself?”

He looks tired enough to tell me the truth instead of covering for what we both can see is a lot of attention, which might be the only reason I trust what comes next.

“You have always been a part of me,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was paying too much attention, and noticing everything.”

“That still sounds like an evasion.”

“It is.” Ryder rubs a hand over the back of his neck, his eyes briefly dropping to the floor before he makes himself look at me again. “I don’t have a clean answer that won’t sound obsessive.”

My breath catches, because there it is. Not a polished lie or something he’s trying to gloss over. Just the ugly word sitting between us where both of us can see it.

Obsession.

I step away from the photo and turn fully toward him. “Say it anyway.”

Ryder’s hands fall to his sides. He keeps them open, visible, and carefully still. “It was always you,” he says. “It will always be you.”

The room and space narrows until all I see is him, all I hear is his voice and the rain against the windows, and all I can feel is the ache of those words moving through me. I don’t know how to answer him. Every response I can think of feels too small for what he just gave me, and silence feels cruel when he just cut a piece of himself open and let me in.

So I make my move.

Ryder doesn’t meet me halfway. He waits with his jaw tight and his shoulders held rigid, giving me one more chance to change my mind. I walk straight into the space he leaves open and place my hands against his chest. His heart beats hard beneath my palms, faster than I expected from a man who looks so controlled.

“You should probably tell me not to do this,” I whisper.

His gaze drops to my mouth. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

“That’s a terrible answer.”

“I know,” he says, and the roughness in his voice sends heat down my spine. “But I’m never going to lie to you, Allycat.”

I rise onto my toes and kiss him.

This kiss does not have the frantic edge of the one outside Lucy’s. I’m not shaking on a wet sidewalk with Preston’s voice still crawling over my skin. I’m in Ryder’s living room, under warm light, with rain striking the windows and a photograph of me laughing on the shelf behind us. I know exactly who I’m touching. I know what I’m choosing.

Ryder’s hand lifts to my cheek, slow enough that I could turn away. I don’t. His thumb brushes my skin, and he kisses me back with a restraint that feels almost reverent. It should calm me. Instead, it makes me ache because I can feel what he’s holding back. It lives in the tension of his shoulders, the low sound he makes when I press closer and slide my hands up to the back of his neck so that I can drag my fingers through the hair there.

His other hand settles at my waist. Firm, careful, warm through the layers of my clothes.

I part my lips, and he stops being quite so careful.

Only for a second.

Long enough for the kiss to deepen organically, for his fingers to slide into my hair, for my back to brush the edge of the couch when he guides me one step behind me. He moves slowly, giving me room to stop him, but I don’t want room. I want his mouth and his hands and the heavy, shaking breath he takes when my fingers tighten in his shirt.

“Allycat,” he says against my mouth, and the warning in it makes my knees weak.

“I’m okay,” I whisper back.

His forehead drops to mine. His hand at my waist tightens, then loosens. “I know you are.”

“Then why do you look like you’re in physical pain?”

A strained laugh leaves him, warm against my cheek. “Because I want to touch you everywhere, and that is a bad idea tonight.”

My face heats so fast that I’m grateful he’s close enough to make hiding pointless. “Oh.”