Life was an unpredictable whiplash at times. At my lowest, I could've never imagined I'd ever find safety and warmth for myself--the kind that fills your bones and runs through your veins--the kind you could call home one day.

I hadn't ever willingly let myself imagine a life where breathing alone would feel easy and not a chore. That's just not how my life worked. I had everything, I knew I did. I had no grounds to want more. So what if I never ever felt truly at home?

But now, safely cocooned in Ryder's penthouse with the backdrop of ongoing thunder and rain, maybe I was starting to realize that I could have this forever.

Or maybe it was just the white wine hitting me after the entirety of this overwhelming day.

A soft, insistent meow broke me out of my sluggish thoughts, a warm nose pressing against my bare feet before black paws came out and tried to chew on my sweats--Ryder's, since they didn't fit me and I'd had to roll them an awful lot of times.

"Gem." I murmured, fetched a smile for her from somewhere within me, and leaned down to pick her up with my free hand--the one that didn't have a wine glass in it. I pulled my legs up on the kitchen stool, crossed them, and deposited Gem on my lap. She let out another small meow before settling. "You're growing big, baby."

And she was. I scratched her beneath her chin and looked up at Ryder, at his back--where I'd been staring for what felt like ages now--where he stood, fishing out our takeout. I didn't know what we were eating. All I knew was the glistening bottle of Chardonnay on the counter in front of me and the happy buzz inside of me. I was on my second glass and even though I didn't feel entirely intoxicated like in the bars and the clubs and the parties I went to--to forget myself and to forget everything around me--it was still a tipsy sort of feeling borne straight out happiness and...love.

"Gem's growing big." I spoke a little louder this time, not just for my kitten's ears. And then I added, just because. "Ryder."

He glanced over his shoulder at me, eyes slowly caressing my face and then dropping somewhere near the counter, to my half filled wine glass probably. He turned back around and I sighed loudly. Bringing the glass to my lips, I took a sip and then two and the wine was really good. Tart. Expensive too, by the taste of it.

Suddenly, there was a plate filled with too much Chinese food in front of me with a set of cutlery, and my wine glass was...plucked out of my hand.

"Eat, or the wine will get to your head." He told me.

I picked up the fork and rolled my eyes. "It's already gone there." Which was a lie. I felt good; I didn't feel hollow and empty. It was a stark contrast from all of my past attempts at escapades.

I knew I didn't particularly have a healthy relationship with alcohol--I relied too much on it at times. But right now, it wasn't that unhealthy intoxication. Right now, I was somewhere safe. I wasn't readying myself for self destructive mode.

Ryder settled down across from me at the counter with a plate of his own. He hadn't brought over his wine glass that sat untouched with the empty take out boxes, instead just sipped from mine. "The cat?"

"She's getting big." I answered, forgetting my food then and picking Gem up with both of my hands. I raised her up until her paws almost touched the marble counter. "How's the time moving so fast?"

He responded with a half-shrug. "She does eat all the time."

I gave Gem a kiss on the top of her head. I didn't want her to ever feel sad or lonely.

"Eat, Alice."

"I am." I rolled my eyes again, then picked up my fork. A loud boom of thunder struck outside and I would've maybe flinched if I didn't feel so settled into my bones right then. Safe and warm. The white wine. Ryder.

I glanced over at the bandage around his knuckles, his left hand--the bruises I had tended to the moment we'd stepped inside his penthouse. I'd still been shaken and cold and drenched in the rain, and the only thing that mattered right then was to erase it all. Erase some of the bad things. I'd asked for the first aid kit and he hadn't even bothered saying no.

It had felt easier to breathe after that.

I hadn't realized how hungry I actually was, not until I cleared my plate within minutes. Wine on an empty stomach was really really bad for you. I knew better. A little miffed, I got up to put the dirty dishes away in the very fancy dishwasher--which had too many fucking settings to be called normal--just as we were done eating. I pulled up my sweatshirt sleeves past my elbows on my way there.

I couldn't really help it then. It was near impossible for me to not notice the unmistakable splash of color in the otherwise black-stoned and marble kitchen. Sunflowers. In the vase I'd once--too long ago--placed on that exact spot in the middle of the marble island. These flowers were new, though.

I inhaled softly, looked away and tried concentrating on the few dishes in front of me. It was a futile attempt though when my thoughts kept going back to those goddamn pretty sunflowers--the way they just sat there. Like they belonged.

The knife in my hand slipped precariously--nearly dropped--and was plucked out of my reach before I could've made another steady grab for it. Just like my wine glass, I realized a little belatedly.

"You're way more drunk than I thought." And it was a blatant observation he was stating, stepping too close behind me, and it was too heady--the feeling I got when he was close enough to touch.

"I'm not drunk." I told him, because I really wasn't. Just loose limbed and overwhelmed--in maybe a good way for the first time in a very long time. I wiped my wet hands on my shirt, watched it stain with the water, and exhaled heavily. "Shit."

"What's the matter?" He asked, placing the knife away in the right spot.

"I've got like..." I waved my hand at the stains on my sweatshirt--his sweatshirt, and then my eyes couldn't help but fixate at the sunflowers again. It was an instinctual response by now--like my mind kept blatantly pointing at it, telling me to looklooklook. I didn't realize I was walking towards them until they were right there--in front of me. Until I could touch the yellow petals. "You've got sunflowers."

He followed me. "Yes."

"I really like them."

"I know." He was staring at me, gaze just a tiny bit inquisitive, holding his wine glass in the bandaged hand. "That's why I have them."

I smiled, hesitant, and then took the glass from him, wrapping my fingers fully around it and gulping down the leftovers. It burned just a little on its way down. Ryder's eyes found my own over the glass rim, moving to my lips, before he took the empty glass from me and placed it on the counter behind me, right near the vase. I glanced back, but then at him instantly when his hands found my waist--lower--grabbed me and lifted me up on the counter.

A tiny surprised noise formed at the base of my throat, hands finding his shoulders until he was there--right there in front of me, pushing my knees apart and stepping between my legs.

"You." I closed my eyes briefly. "You knew I would come here tonight?"

His hand found the nape of my neck, held me still with an aching need until his lips found mine. I breathed a sigh into his mouth, finding my home after all. It was all him.

I held him close, a little dizzy, letting the taste of him, the gentle scrape of his stubble, the remnants of the wine on his tongue pull me in and under the dizzying haze.

He pulled away after what felt like forever that wasn't just enough. Would never be enough. "I didn't." He told me, lips just a breath away from my own. "I just want you to be here all the time."

Want. I felt like I would burst with it, hands insistently pulling him back towards me, chasing his lips for one more kiss. One more. Just one more. Until it wasn't just one--until I couldn't breathe--until his fingers tangled into my hair, tugging my head up, his lips finding my jaw, dragging past the sensitive skin underneath, teeth scraping against my rapid, sluggish pulse--until there wasn't even air between us--until--

"Fuck." He grunted, stopped so suddenly and then pulled away. I waited a heartbeat, two--distraught at the sudden loss--and then he kissed me again. A deep, thorough one that had my heart racing and my mind blanking, before be pulled away again--not much since I had my fingers in his hair and the other fisted into his shirt, pulling at it--closerclosercloser still. His eyes were too dark to be named blue anymore. I swallowed, already missing the taste of him. How was that even possible? "Okay. No. You're drunk."

"I am not." I actually whined right then, letting him go to raise my hands in the air, exasperated, which almost ended with me losing my balance and toppling backwards. It was only Ryder's grasp on me that saved me. "Okay, maybe I'm--"

"Drunk."

"Tipsy." I corrected in a rush, pulling him close by his neck, aiming for the lips but since I was a little too tipsy--who was I even kidding--I misjudged the distance and ended with my face on his shoulder. "Fine."

I felt him inhale slowly.

"I am tipsy...and tired."

His fingers carded through my hair, the gentlest and my greatest fucking weakness apparently, and I groaned. He laughed softly and I melted into him.

"That doesn't mean we should be apart." I added, voice muffled against him, suddenly just a tiny bit scared that he would go away. "Being apart isn't necessary at all."

He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me snug against him. "Come on," he told me.

"Or we can just be here."

"Come on." He repeated like he hadn't even heard me. I perked up a little, however, when he added, "Let me take you to the library."

•••••

The room was the epitome of warmth, of peace--a solace--a sort of calm that would always so easily convince me to drift away with it. The lines of tall bookshelves and the ceiling-high glass windows and the flickering fireplace--it was all a dream.

A dream I was afraid I'd wake up from soon.

Lightning arched across the night sky, streaks visible from the glass--illuminating the peaceful dark around us. I shivered, realizing I had stopped just past the door, and searched for Ryder. It was unmistakable--natural--left me in awe, the way he looked so at home right then--the way he didn't seem tense at all--the way he didn't have any walls around him.

I looked over at the chaise couch, could suddenly remember it so vividly the night he'd brought me here the very first time--the panicked tears and the broken whispers. He'd held me and not pushed me away like everyone else in my life. He'd held all my broken parts together when he'd bared the scars on his back--the ones his own father--

"What's going to happen now?" I asked him then, voice quiet and a little scared of the future and the questions that were left unanswered. "Michael...he's..." His dead body.

My stomach twisted at just the thought of it.

"It's taken care of." Ryder answered, standing by the shelf at the end of the room, searching for something. "No one's going to miss him."

I inhaled slowly, miserably, looked over at the glass of water he'd kept on one of the shelves. For you, he'd said. I went over and picked it up, in fear of it spilling and ruining the paperback books.

"Your dad, Ryder." I frowned. "Raff was worried. He said he kept getting calls from your dad." Will he hurt you again? What if he does?

What if something so horribly went wrong?

Ryder turned towards me and he had a book in his hand. He took a moment to catalogue the expression on my face, but his didn't showcase anything in that moment. What was he thinking?

"Don't worry about it."

I scowled. "How can I not worry about it?"

He went over to big, incredibly cosy couch and sat down on it. "Because I'm telling you not to."

"That's not how worrying works."

He leaned back against the arm of the couch, legs splayed out across the entirety of it. I stared, still frowning, and squirmed a little where I stood. Too far away, in my personal opinion. He gestured at me with his book--the title of which I couldn't make the name of from where I stood. "Come here."

Since I was angry, I think, I remained where I was, which was a very difficult task. I frowned harder, looked down at the glass of water I still held in my hand and wondered where I could keep it so it wouldn't spill.

"Querida." He murmured and I looked up, saw him patting his thigh lightly, inviting me.

"Fine." I grumbled, because I was the weakest when it came to saying no to him. I sulked over to the couch. "But just know," I added, crawling over him, words trailing off when he took the glass of water from me and slid one hand past the hem of my sweatshirt, urging me up and closer. "...I was saying..."

"Yes?" He asked with a quirk of his brow, shifting just a little on the couch until I melted against him, fit just right on top of him, and his fingers spread along the base of my spine.

I pressed my face against the base of his throat, my hands lax at his sides, warm and cosy and and so tired of it all. I mumbled something even I couldn't decipher.

A few seconds, or maybe even minutes of pure silence went by, only the crackle of fire and the sound of rain interrupting it, with an occasional turn of a page from the book in his hand. I sighed and closed my eyes, tipping my head up just a little.

"I'm still worried." I told him truthfully. So much could go wrong so fast. Why had Rafael been so worried if Ryder wasn't at all? My insides itched. I squeezed my eyes close.

His fingers toyed with the hem of my sweatpants. I shivered again but it wasn't the cold.

"I just don't want..." I whispered, could feel the pain of the scars on his back beneath my fingertips. It was vivid and heartbreaking and scary. So scary.

There was a firm press of lips against the crown of my head. "It'll be okay."

His words settled over me like a warm, heated blanket. I splayed my fingers over his chest, right over his heart--felt the steady beat and wondered. "There's an empty space here." I murmured, tracing his skin from memory.

There was a quiet flip of a page. Another loud boom of thunder across the sky and the harsh pattering of rain followed.

"Why didn't you get anything tattooed there?"

I felt his shoulder moving languidly in another shrug. "Didn't feel right."

"Hm." I moved my head, traced my lips against his day-old stubble, underneath his jaw. I felt it, the slow fire beneath my skin when his hold on me tightened in response.

There wasn't a turn of a page this time. I pressed a little more into him, stifling a smile against his skin.

He grabbed me by the hips and adjusted me more firmly atop him. A soft noise escaped me.

"Behave, Alice." He grunted softly. "I'm thinking the wine was a bad idea."

"I'm not drunk." A laugh escaped me then. I felt light like the rain, dizzy like the crisp wine.

He sighed aggravatedly, but he didn't push me away. He never pushed me away anymore. "Sleep." He told--no, ordered me. Whatever.

I grumbled a response and pressed my forehead against his shoulder. It was a haze I was in then--a sleepy one--on the precipice of one. I turned my head to the side and almost made out the door not all the way closed, but slightly left ajar.

On purpose, a quiet whisper of a thought formed into my mind, for Gem.

The next time I closed my eyes, it took me a little longer to blink them back open. With Ryder's fingers on my bare skin, grounding me to this newfound happiness, and the soft warmth of it all, I felt myself whispering the words.

"Do you think...you've ever been in love?"

There was a soft pause. A daze I was in. A dream and then lips to the side of my head. A warm caress that blurred all my senses into nothing.

"Yeah, querida."

I closed my eyes, fingers holding onto his shirt--him--the one person I could truly call my home.

Me too.