Page 53

RYDER

I considered blocking Ashton’s number from her phone before I left, but that would’ve been too generous.

He was going to feel their separation in every aspect.

The distance. The fallout. Every inch of what he lost. Thanks to him being a fucking idiot, I didn’t have to lift a damn finger thus far to deal with him.

The night air was cold, but useless against the fire burning inside me.

Roxxi, Arianna, and Cloe were climbing out of Ari’s car when I stepped off the porch.

Their conversation tapered off the second they saw me.

Roxxi and Cloe eyed me suspiciously. Arianna offered a small wave, like it might soften whatever storm was sitting behind my eyes.

It wasn’t only Sass I was frustrated with.

None of them said anything about the bird or the rock through the window.

They could have told any of us, but since we didn’t speak up about The Hunt first, they wanted to play games.

They were lucky I wasn’t the one who found out first. If I didn’t love these girls like I did my sister, this would’ve gone much differently.

I kept my pace steady as I passed them. “Next time something like that happens, don’t let us hear about it from an outsider.” I tossed parting words over my shoulder, “Go check on her in five minutes.”

I stalked toward my truck, yanked the door open, and slammed it shut behind me hard enough to make the glass vibrate. The cab was too quiet. My hands clenched the wheel, then released, then clenched again.

I needed to chill the fuck out.

Tonight was a win in more ways than one.

Every second I just spent with her was already replaying in my head like a fever dream.

I reached for my phone, flicked open the food delivery app, and ordered her some dinner—real food.

Chicken Alfredo, garlic twists, and her favorite tiramisu from a small cafe near campus.

It’d show up after I left, but it didn’t matter.

She’d know it was from me. She deserved better than burnt toaster pastries.

Sass was a hell of a cook, but never made time for it anymore.

I made a mental note to make sure she wasn’t surviving off Hemlock & Bean, and purely processed food going forward.

The truck rumbled to life beneath my hands, headlights cutting through the dark as I peeled out of her driveway. The road ahead was empty, but my head wasn’t. I hit the hands-free button on the steering wheel to make a call. Cade picked up on the second ring.

“Everything gravy?” he asked in way of greeting.

“Are you still with Macy?” I cut straight through the noise.

There was movement on his end. A shift of fabric, the faint squeak of a mattress.

“Just finished,” he relayed. “Perfect timing. You and Little Sanj—what happened?”

“We’re working it out.” I relaxed my grip on the steering wheel before I did real damage. “This weekend sets everything in motion.”

He partially covered the mic to tell Macy to get dressed. When he came back, the boredom in his tone was obvious. If I didn’t know what his real motive was, I would have a lot to say about him fucking that devious bitch.

“What’d she say about the window?” he asked.

“Not much, but I didn’t give her a chance to. She doesn’t know how we found out. The only thing she hasn’t mentioned yet is the photo angle or any text messages.”

I dragged a hand through my hair. “Reaper should have the solution for the window soon.”

Cade let out a dry laugh. “He was probably glad to have something to do. You know how bored he’s been lately.”

“Yeah, at least he’ll be rejoining us next year.”

“God help whoever pisses him off first.”

I laughed lowly.

“And you’re sure everything is all good?” Cade asked again, quieter.

I exhaled, glancing at the dash. “I feel like me and you have gone through a role reversal. I’m fine, Cade. If anything, I have some tension to work out, but I’m not even close to slipping.” I paused. “I could eat, though.”

He chuckled. “Wanna hit up the Nest?”

“Nah. Think I’m gonna cook.”

“You almost here?”

I glanced at the time. “Five minutes out.”

“Cool. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

The call ended just as I heard him tell Macy to get out of his bed.

I knew his patience was wearing thin. If she made the mistake of asking him about Sanj again, she’d be fortunate if being told to leave was the only thing that happened.

I loosened my grip on the wheel. The turn onto our street came easily.

I didn’t even have to think about it. I parked along the curb and killed the engine, letting silence settle.

I sat there, arms crossed, my head leaned back, staring out the window with my legs spread because I was so fucking hard I could’ve cracked the gearshift if I moved wrong.

All I could see was her wearing nothing but my hoodie, and her sweet voice when she whispered, “ You’ve always been my safe place, Rye. ”

As if it were a confession.

I knew I represented safety for her. I made sure of that. So her not telling me about the window incident was all the more frustrating. But I wouldn’t let that overshadow the fact that she was finally accepting the inevitable. A realization I’d had for a long time solidified in my bones.

Therapy had worked.

That had to be the only explanation for how I kept walking away from her when I was wound this fucking tight.

Some of it stuck. Not the parts they hoped would mold me into some balanced, neutered good boy.

But enough to keep me from ripping apart anyone I felt deserved it.

Cade had gone too, his sessions separate from mine.

When our dad made us go, it wasn’t about some fantasy of fixing us. It was about preventing us from becoming the worst versions of him because he knew those intimately. Billy Voss had a nickname among his old circle—Marrow.

Not Bones.

Marrow.

Given to him because he didn’t just break people. He stripped them down to the core. Hollowed them out until nothing but the soft, vital center remained, the part that hurt the most when touched.

His hobby for breaking men and women aside, Billy Voss was a good father.

Flawed. Still unhinged at times. But he loved us, in his own violent, unwavering way.

And he tried to do right by all of us, even if it meant forcing us into chairs across from therapists who flinched when we smiled.

I remembered what one in particular told me.

Dr. Hadler. A woman with a velvet voice and knife-blade smile.

She thought she could unravel my mind with mantras and excessive eye contact.

She was the one I ruined.

I fucked her over her desk while she sobbed for more, her voice breaking on my name, and then clawed at me every session after that like a starved animal.

I filmed every second.

Then I blackmailed her into signing off on my progress reports. It got me exactly what I wanted, and her? Far less than she deserved. I made sure she’d never counsel another kid like me again. For all her sins, she’d said one thing that stuck with me.

“Your problem isn’t anger or control, Ryder. Your problem is that you mistake obsession for connection.”

She was right—and she was so, so wrong.

With Sass, it wasn’t one or the other. It was both.

A violent kind of merge. Our bond was etched into me like a scar I refused to let heal, an infection I let fester because I craved the sickness of it more than any cure.

It didn’t matter how many masks I wore now, how carefully I played the golden boy.

Beneath it all, I was still the boy who decided she was mine before he knew what it meant.

Ryder from a few years ago wouldn’t have walked away tonight.

He would’ve stayed.

He would’ve kissed her until she forgot her own fucking name. Touched every inch of her until she could never lie to either of us ever again. He would have broken her apart and had her begging for something she didn’t have the words to name.

Instead, I held back like a true gentleman who knew how to strategize, for her sake and mine, because if Ashton ever so much as looked at her again after I had split her open and filled every inch with me, I wouldn’t just end him. I’d end us all.

I dragged my hands down my face, forcing my breathing to even out.

I needed to get the image of her under me out of my fucking head before I did something catastrophic.

It was worse than that night I held her close in the driveway.

Now I had the memory of that desperate little sound she made lodged in my skull.

I knew exactly how wet she got from just my words and a fraction of my weight pressing into her.

“Logic over emotion,” I muttered under my breath, jaw flexing. I glanced down at my dick, painfully hard, like it was my sworn enemy. “Logic over emotion,” I repeated to it.

This was torture.

I prayed this would get easier after we finally fucked a few dozen times, but I knew better.

If it were just lust, maybe. This was much more than that.

She didn’t just turn me on. She unmade me.

Now that I’d seen what she looked like wanting me back, I didn’t want to fuck her to get her out of my system.

I wanted to fuck her until she became my system.

I had the same amount of time she did to get my shit straightened out, mentally, and fortunately for me, I had more than enough tasks to fill the hours in between.

I had working out at the campus gym before sunrise, followed by a Business Communications course and then my usual classes for the day.

Football practice tomorrow night. A Social Contracts paper was due next Tuesday.

Helping Nick finalize the vendors for the Soirée.

Then, finally, there would be the drive home this weekend, where it would all start to come together.

My phone lit up just as I prepared to get out of the truck. Xander. I answered before the second ring.

“I take it you’re at your place?”