Page 26 of Branded Mine

Something broke open in my chest. It wasn’t horror or fear. Relief. Pure, sweet relief. But it was thick and shameful and so strong it made my knees weak. I was glad when my father was dead. I was glad Ryder had been the one to do it. And that truth scared me more than the murder itself.

I stared at him, the pieces starting to shift in my head.

Ryder must have seen how raw I felt in that moment because he stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a near whisper, laced with determination and possessiveness.

“I checked on you,” he admitted. “Not every day like it was some sick game. But every few months, I’d go to the city and sit outside your apartment just long enough to see you walk to your car or come home from work.” He took another step closer, and I moved one back on instinct. “Long enough to know you were safe. Long enough to leave things when you needed them…Then I’d turn around and come back.”

I wracked my brain, trying to recall anything I might have noticed in all the years I was away. Then the small, unexplained things started lining up.

Extra cash that showed up in my coat pocket right when rent was due. The battery I’d been meaning to replace for weeks that somehow never died after one particularly cold morning. Fresh tires I only noticed months later when a mechanic commented on how new they looked. A fridge that was emptier than I remembered one week and then somehow had milk, bread, and eggs again… They were all things I shrugged off as luck or billing errors.

“You never said anything,” I whispered.

“Wasn’t about sayin’ anything.” His eyes stayed locked on mine, dark and unflinching. “It was about makin’ sure that bastard never got another chance at you and makin’ sure you were okay.”

The morning air felt thin, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I should have been horrified. Terrified of everything Ryder was admitting. The years of watching, the quiet interference, the way he had moved through my life without me ever knowing. He stalked me. He was a murderer.

He'd done it to protect me.

Instead, all I felt was the same thick, shameful relief from earlier now tangled with something even harder to name. I didn’t say anything else, but I did turn around and walk back inside. I sensed Ryder behind me and knew he wasn’t going to let me run away again.

But I needed space, needed to figure out what it meant that the man I was in love with had not only killed my father… but had spent fourteen years making sure I survived without ever once letting me know he was there.

14

Ibarely made it three steps into the kitchen before the front door opened behind me.

Ryder walked in like the house already belonged to him, shut the door hard enough to rattle the frame, and stood there watching me with those dark, unblinking eyes.

“Don’t,” I said, voice shaking. “I need?—”

“No.”

One word. That was all it took for me to snap my mouth shut and seethe at him.

He crossed the room in three long strides, and I backed up until my hips hit the counter. He didn’t stop until his boots were on either side of my feet, and the heat of his body was all I could feel.

“You’re not runnin’ from this,” he said, voice low and rough. “Not from me and sure as hell not from what I told you.”

My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. “You killed him,” I said, the words coming out quieter than I expected. “You actually killed him.”

Ryder didn’t look away. His voice stayed low and even when he said, “I did.”

I swallowed hard. “And the rest of it… the years you watched me. The things you left. All of it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All of it.”

“You moved through my life like a ghost and never once asked if I wanted any of it.”

Ryder’s mouth twitched. He lifted one hand and braced it on the counter beside my hip, caging me in without quite touching me. The other hand came up and gripped my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes.

“You left without a goodbye,” he said, voice barely restrained. “Know it wasn’t your fault. Know your fucking father pushed you away. But you never called, Lila. Never wrote. Nothin’. I figured that meant you didn’t want to see me. Kept my distance the only way I knew how—close enough to make sure you were still breathin’ but far enough that you never had to look at me and remember everything you were healin’ from.”

I felt his thumb brush the edge of my hip.

“Did what I had to because the alternative was not knowin’ if you were okay. And I couldn’t live with that.”

I swallowed. “I thought about you. More than I should have. But every time I did, you just… reminded me of everything I didn’t have, everything I lost, and all the shit maybe I could have had one day.”