And then there was Ryan. If I sneezed, he flew the smartest doctors with him to make sure I had the best care. If someone looked at me wrong, they were instantly put on their knees before me and made to apologize. If someone bullied me, they no longer had a life to be turned upside down because they had a bullet in their skull.
It was because of those facts that my father had no problem with my friendship with Ryan. Even if he’d groused and grumbled for years over it in the past, he knew that next to himself, no man in the world would protect me more fiercely than my best friend.
As Ryan took a step in Garret’s direction, Dad took a seat beside me on the couch, getting comfortable—and putting himself between me and the chaos that was about to ensue.
Garret laughed. “Why is everyone hung up on where I was? Jesus, people, I was out with friends.”
The distance between the two was gone in a blink. Ryan grabbed Garret by the throat and dragged him to his feet. “You were with friends while Nova was being attacked by hired killers? You left your sister at school to get high and party, while Ramirez’s men tried to take her from me?”
Understanding finally filled Garret’s eyes, but it was coming too late. Ryan’s hold was so tight, my brother’s air supply was completely cut off, and his face was quickly turning purple from the lack of oxygen.
The men in my family were wide-shouldered giants. Garret was no different, but he was on the leaner side. My male cousins spent about as much time working out and lifting weights as my brother did messing around and getting high. He may have been a few inches taller than Ryan, but he sure as hell didn’t have the muscles Ryan spent hours every day perfecting in the gym.
Ryan held Garret an inch off the ground, his entire body vibrating from his rage. “You are supposed to protect her, with your life if necessary,” he snarled viciously. “I have told you, repeatedly, that her life is more precious than anyone else’s in this world. She is worth a hundred of you. A million. And you just left her there. Alone. With no one to help her. No one to protect her. No one to—”
Dad didn’t seem worried that Ryan was choking the life out of his only son, and I knew in that moment that he’d been waiting for Ryan to react just like this. To punish Garret without Dad having to lay a single finger on his firstborn. I’d been worried about how calm he’d been, but really, he’d been expecting this all along. He knew how explosive Ryan was. How my well-being meant everything to my friend and he would be just as filled with rage as my parents were. But I couldn’t just sit there and let Ryan kill my brother. Tears in my eyes, I jumped to my feet and did the only thing I knew would calm him.
As small as I was, it was easy for me to dip under his arm and squeeze between their bodies. Lifting my hands, I cupped each side of Ryan’s face. “Ryan, please let him go. Please. You’re going to kill him. Please stop. For me. Please, for me, let him go.”
The touch of my fingers on his skin made him jerk, his hands tightening around Garret’s throat, but his gaze dropped to mine.
“Tears?” he choked out, his hold slowly slackening before he dropped Garret and pushed him away. Hands free, he brushed them over my hair before pulling my face to his chest. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of my head, his body shaking as he inhaled deeply then laid his cheek where his lips had touched. I could hear his heart thundering in his chest, knew that he was trying to regain some semblance of control. “I’m sorry, my heart.”
Garret was coughing and trying to gulp in air from where he’d fallen to his knees behind me. Mentally, I begged him to go, to run, to not be there when Ryan regained full control of himself. And for once, the dumbass was smart enough to realize that I was trying to save him. I heard him moving and then his feet pounding on the stairs as he ran up to his room. Moments later, his door slammed shut, and I nearly sobbed in relief. But I quickly stopped myself before the noise could leave my throat.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan whispered again, remorse thick in his voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I would never hurt you.”
“I know,” I mumbled against his chest, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist. “I’m not scared of you.”
It was the truth. There was nothing Ryan could say or do that would make me scared of him. Scared for others? Yes, definitely. But never for myself.
Ryan was more than just my best friend. He was the other half of my soul. It had been that way since I was three and he was eight. The moment I set eyes on him, something had shifted. I could still remember how funny my chest had felt. I was too young to understand it then, but I did now. It was as if something had tied itself around my heart, connecting me to him in a way that should have scared me.
But what really scared me was losing that connection.
With each year that he grew older, it felt as if I still stayed a little girl. I was already surprised he hadn’t pulled away from me, found someone else to be his best friend. But even more so, I was surprised he hadn’t found a girlfriend. Ryan was the most beautiful boy I’d ever set eyes on, and that was saying a hell of a lot. Girls and women twice his age stopped and took notice of him when he entered a room.
Yet he didn’t seem to see a single one of them.
There was no interest in his eyes, no hunger, no lust. It confused me, because I’d seen those looks in my brother’s and cousins’ eyes when they saw a girl who interested them. But Ryan never responded. His body never reacted. And that made me irrationally happy.
But what scared me to death was how badly it was going to hurt when he finally did find someone he wanted to be with like that.
11
Ryan
My gut churned as everyone ate their breakfast. I’d been in Creswell Springs for a week, helping the MC and the sheriff get the extra security measures in place so that the schools would be safer—so that Nova would be safer since no one would permit me to put two of my own personal guards on her twenty-four seven.
But this was the last morning I could spend there before I flew back to New York. Things were piling up, and I had responsibilities that needed my attention. Which meant I had to get back, and I couldn’t take Nova with me. I didn’t like it, but I had to trust that her family would keep her safe until the end of the school year. Then she would be in New York with me, where she belonged, where I could watch over her myself.
Mom’s hand touched my back as she sat beside me at the Hannigans’ kitchen table, the look she gave me letting me know that she understood all the chaos that was storming around in my head. The truth was, she might guess how bad it was for me, but she didn’t fully understand the misery I was in. No one did, not even Nova.
And that was the way I wanted to keep it. It would freak her out if she knew that my every waking thought was about how to keep her safe. Now more than ever since Ramirez had sent two of his men to kill her. To make a statement to Pop and, more specifically, to me.
Ramirez was basically shouting at us that no one we loved and cared about was safe. What had once been a lucrative business arrangement between our families had grown sour over the past two years, but other than a few disagreements since our falling-out, no real trouble had followed the end of our partnership.