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He held her foot, his hand strong and warm.
“Huh,” he grunted. “Good detail work. So you’re really committed to this place.”
“I guess so. Committed to what it stands for,” she clarified, sliding her foot back under the covers and pulling them up again. “The same way you’re committed to your Watchmen.”
“Well, Iwascommitted. I quit that. I took a few guys with me into my company, but my riding and partying days are long gone,” he explained. “In fact, this is going to be my last job. I’m retiring after this.”
“Why?”
“Because of this,” he said, and leaned back, looking down at his chest.
“Because of Blaze?” she asked, knowing from the look in his eyes what he was about to say.
“My son,” he said with a nod. “You won’t understand, but once you have a kid, nothing else matters. At least that’s how it is for me.”
She looked at him, seeing a loyalty so strong it made her feel like an outsider. She backed away slightly, a chill running through her. To be the focus of feeling that strong… it felt like a fairy tale. One she suddenly wanted to be in. One she felt had been robbed from her all those years ago.
She wiggled farther away from him, but he took her hand and put it on his hip, shaking her out of her reverie.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That… I’m glad he’s got a dad like you. Someone who’ll keep him safe from everything,” she said, the lie coming easily. While it hadn’t been what she’d been thinking, it was something that was true. Something to envy, even.
“Not everything,” he said, and she heard a vulnerability in his voice.
“I can’t imagine it was anything so serious that it could get past you. You’re not just tough, you’re smart,” she said, but the line between his eyes deepened and the lump that blocked her throat came back. Not because of her own pain, but because of the raw hurt she felt bleeding off him.
“I’m not smart,” he grunted, his voice more grating sounds than words. “I let the worst thing imaginable happen.”
23
Ryder felt like he was hovering over the bed, watching the two people below as they held each other and whispered.
He thought… if he could just stay floating while his physical self told Nita his worst secret, he wouldn’t have to replay it in his mind. But of course, that was impossible.
He looked into her wide eyes, greener than moss. Nonjudgmental, patient, caring. He shouldn’t be telling heranysecrets, let alone this one. It went against his motto of non-attachment. Of nothing coming between the connection he had with his son, especially a woman.
But the need to say this horrible thing out loud pressed on him like a pus-filled wound.
“Last year, at my son’s birthday party,” he started, his breathing interfering with the words, making them saw in and out like a shitty harmonica player. He stopped, waiting for his body to realize that yes, he was going to speak these words out loud to another human being. “At his birthday party, my son’s best friend accidentally shot himself. With my gun. With my fucking loaded gun I thought nobody knew about.”
There. He’d done it.
He waited for the world to end, or at the very least, a Ryder-shaped portion of the cement ceiling to fall on him. It didn’t. Nita gripped his hands tightly, her face unchanged from its nonjudgmental expression.
“Jesus,” she murmured. “That’s just… I can’t even imagine.”
Ryder pressed his lips together. And then the memories flooded back.
The gunshot. The disbelief. Lynne asking what the fuck that was, later finding out she thought some gigantic piece of furniture had tipped over.
I know what that is, he’d thought, but didn’t say aloud. He’d sprinted into the house with those words tattooing themselves all over his body, followed byDon’t let it be Blaze. Anybody but Blaze.
And ithadbeen someone else.
“Scotty. He was Blaze’s best friend. Scotty had been telling Blaze how his dad was teaching him how to use a gun, and was I doing that? They both thought it would be fun to look around in my bedroom to see if I had a gun, and they found it,” he explained. His mind flashed on finding his bedside drawer open, the small gun safe lid open. Scotty’s body was on the floor, his eyes looking up. Although he’d never see anything again.
Why did I wish that it had been anybody but Blaze?he questioned himself yet again.Why didn’t I wish the gun had just fired into the ceiling?
