I turned and rushed back down the hall, needing to get the hell out of there before I did something stupid like fight my best friend to get to her.
I’d already caused enough grief. I couldn’t keep doing it.
But I couldn’t stop the swelling inside me. The one that promised that I would. That I would fight for her with everything I had.
I rounded the corner, out the double doors, and into the lobby. I was out in the parking lot, trudging through the night when the voice hit me from behind. “Ryder.”
I slowly turned to find Dakota’s mother standing ten feet away. Her face was mottled and reddened with tears. She twisted her fingers, hesitant before she said, “They’re both fine. Dakota’s injuries were only minimal, but they are taking her for a CT scan just to be sure. Kayden is unharmed and Paisley took him to the ranch.”
Relief slammed me, and I bent in two, all the strain I’d been holding coming out of me in a whoosh. I gathered it and forced myself to look at her. “Thank you for letting me know.”
Another tear streamed down her cheek. “I’m so angry with you, Ryder. Angry that my daughter and grandson got stuck in your mess. But I also know you, and I know you would never purposefully or carelessly put them in danger. I know you had your fears. Your losses. Your mistakes. But I also know you were brave enough to set Dakota free of it, so for that, I thank you.”
Without saying anything else, she turned and hurried back into the emergency room.
Leaving me standing there alone.
FORTY-NINE
DAKOTA
In the bare light glowing from the oven vent, night covering the house in a shroud, I stood in my mother’s kitchen slowly whisking the mixture in a metal bowl.
Sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla.
Butter, brown sugar, baking powder.
I added the chunks of the candy bars I’d already cut up, blending them into the gooey mix. I heaped the balls onto the cookie sheet, put them into the oven, and waited while the timer counted down until they were done, then transferred them onto the cooling rack.
I always thought of baking as therapeutic.
The way you could get absorbed in the motions. Your thoughts and fears still alive and plaguing you, but it was like you could churn through them as you churned through the ingredients. Process each one until they were diluted and reshaped, meshing to become a part of something greater.
Because the pain would always be a part of me, but it became a piece of the bigger picture. A piece of the whole. Every experience we had shaped us into who we were, we just had to make sure the bitter parts came out sweeter on the other side.
Once the cookies had cooled, I used a spatula to transfer them into a tin, my chest heavy and achy when I covered it with a lid.
The house creaked in the silence as I tiptoed across the floor. My mom and Kayden had both been long asleep. I’d asked her if I could move Kayden’s portable crib into her room tonight because I had something I needed to do.
We’d been staying here while we convalesced.
While we rested.
There weren’t really any physical wounds to recover from other than a bruise on the side of my face.
It was the discovery of Ryder’s past that required some healing.
What he’d been involved in, who Trey was, the trauma Kayden and I had both been through, and the million other things that I’d had to meld into that mixture to fully see everything as a whole.
What it meant.
I held my breath as I opened the door and stepped out into the cover of night. I’d done it so many times before, slinked around the edge of the house and quietly raced down the path to the edge of the woods to the tree beneath the star-speckled skies.
Drawn because I’d always been able to feel when he was there.
Intrinsically pulled his direction in his time of need.
Meet me in the place of the forgotten.
It was overgrown now, unused, but I could never forget the path.
One that had always led me to the man who’d be waiting on our branch.
Tonight, his black hair rustled with the breeze, his energy so thick that I always felt it as the rumbling of the ground.
It trembled then, this foundation that hadn’t had the time to set.
Held, I stayed there for a long moment. My pulse thundered so wildly that it echoed through the cool air, and my breaths were shallow and hard.
Finally, he shifted to look at me from over his shoulder.
Darkness rained around him.
Midnight.
His pain was so stark and intense that it was difficult to walk through the surge of it.
But I did because I finally could see what that mixture had become on the other side.