It's the dark nothingness that surprised me. Scared me. Terrified me.

It lasted until the last moment I kept my eyes closed. Maybe it was a nightmare--I could feel the feverish race of my heartbeat in my throat, feel the slow panic clouding the edges of it all.

It's a paradox to what I remembered closing my eyes to--safety and warmth and relief--and it left me petrified.

I couldn't remember what the nightmare had been about, but it must've been something bad enough to make me inhale so sharply the moment I blinked my eyes open--scared, startled, bewildered to see the cool sunshine peeking from the curtains across the bed I was on, the unfamiliarity of it all leaving me stunned, and the heavy warm weight around my waist pulling me snug against--

"Ryder." A meek whisper that the air snatched away, but he heard it. I think he heard it.

He pressed his nose into my hair, the nape of my neck, exhaling softly. "You're fine, querida," he said, voice all sleep-soft and unfamiliar, gripping me tight and not letting go.

I squeezed my eyes close, trying to let go of the metaphorical tightness in my chest.

"It was just a dream."

I felt myself relax a little. "I...I know." And then when I couldn't stand a second longer without looking at him, I squirmed until he loosened his hold on me and turned towards him, cool sheets caressing my bare legs, and breathed out a sigh when I looked up at him. Bare inches between us but I hadn't seen him like this--sleep rumpled hair and winter blue eyes, bare-chested with all those--

I let my hand find him, his shoulder, and then fingers splayed there--an inked roaring lion, a magnificent thing at that, which covered most of his left shoulder, then across the thick tangle of black thorns and playing cards, and right where his heart lied beneath the palm of my hand, there was an empty space devoid of any ink. Only a thin white scar, old and faded, was there.

"How long have you been awake?" I asked him.

He let his hand rest at the small of my back, slipping past the hem of my--his--shirt I must've shrugged on during the night. "Long enough to see you having a nightmare." The sleep-laced lilt in his voice was new, unfamiliar--so him. It did things to me.

"Did I wake you up?"

"Did I say that?"

I sighed, pulling my hand away from him, his warm skin, even when I wished to trace every inch of embedded ink on his body. Instead, I curled my hands between us and tucked my head beneath his chin. He let me.

How long will you let me do this? I wanted to ask.

He pressed his fingers into my back. "Forever, Alice." He murmured into my hair. "As long as you want."

I smiled into his neck. "I didn't mean to say that out loud. I'm just knackered. I still feel like I could sleep for days."

He hummed. "Must've been one hell of a night you had."

I would've rolled my eyes if I hadn't been feeling so...light. Happy. Content. It was a good feeling. But still,l despite it all, I didn't understand the melancholy lacing just the outsides of my heart right then.

It was a moment of weakness. The air was just so content around us that it felt like I could ask him anything and he won't...make fun of me--would answer me anyway.

"Do you think," I asked in a sharp moment of vulnerability, "that you'll stay?"

Ryder didn't answer me right away this time. I counted the beats of my heart and wondered if it was the not knowing of what my nightmare had been about that was making me feel this way.

He nudged my head just a little gently, although his voice did come out a little mocking. "It's almost as if you want me to call you stupid."

I pulled away to look up at him, narrowing my eyes. "I'm not."

He narrowed his own right back at me. "I know." And then he pinched my chin between two fingers, angled my face up and pressed a surprisingly chaste kiss on my lips. Only when he'd pulled away did I notice the haughty glint in his eyes--so uncharacteristic of him. "Better now?"

I grinned at him.

His gaze softened.

And then my phone buzzed with a text. Not one, but two.

Startled, I sat up as Ryder reluctantly let go of me, and winced when I remembered where we were, whose room this was, whose house this was.

"This is just wrong on so many levels." I felt my ears heating up in embarrassment. "I can't believe we're at my dad's. He was sleeping downstairs last night."

Ryder stretched out all unabashedly on the bed beside me. "Pray he doesn't utter a bad word to you."

"He won't." I looked around for my phone, couldn't remember for the life of me where I'd stowed it away last night.

"Or I will have to get my hands bloodied all over again."

"I think he's as tall as you."

Ryder gave me an almost thoughtful look at that. "Do you think, querida, that he'd be up for a fist to the face?"

"No!" I exclaimed, all mortified. "You can't just say that. He's my dad." I felt fairly defensive for him--for Dad, and I think a lot of it had to do with how he'd held me in his arms so comfortingly last night in his kitchen.

You trust too easily, Alice.

"Yes. I know." As if that alone was a reason good enough for him.

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a response and grabbed my phone from where it lay near the foot of the bed, instantly switching it on to see what the buzz had been about.

It was a second, two, and I could feel the blood draining out of my body.

"What is it?" I heard Ryder ask, his voice losing all the early morning softness it'd carried just a moment ago.

I looked up from the screen and at him, swallowing past the sudden dryness in my throat.

"Who is it?" He asked me again, staring right back at me.

I gripped my phone and glanced back at the text that was now almost seared into my brain. "My mom."

•••••

Dad, to his credit, didn't seem more than a little surprised to find Ryder alongside me, though he did raise the kettle of freshly brewed black coffee--just a little taken aback--and eyed me first, seemed to come to a conclusion as he passed me a new, tentative smile, and then looked at Ryder.

"Coffee?" He asked.

Ryder, on the other hand, did not look very happy to see my dad there, even if this was his house and we were the occupiers here.

He narrowed his eyes when I nudged him subtly, brows pulling together in an almost threatening look, before he slid his hand in his back pocket and took out his phone. "I have to make a call," was his indifferent way of answering.

Only when he'd left the house--again from the back door, which Dad still didn't so much as blink at--did I make my way towards the kitchen where Dad still stood, holding the coffee pot.

"I would like some coffee." I told him, a little hesitant, but that too went away just as fast when he gave me that smile again--the one that was warm and reassuring and safe.

"And breakfast." He added, pouring steaming hot coffee in a mug, for me, before moving towards the stove. "Omelette? I make a mean one. You used to--well." He stopped, stared at the counter for a moment, then seemed to backtrack. "You're staying for breakfast, aren't you?"

I didn't have it in me to say no. He looked so sad all of a sudden. I hated it.

"No." I said, then shook my head. "I mean, I'd love breakfast. And I...I would like to try the omelette, please?"

The grin came back and it seemed to brighten all the dark corners of my heart.

I settled on one of the stools lining the kitchen island, the one I'd sat at just last night, and watched him for a moment as he whipped up the eggs, seeming at ease for a little while.

"I'm sorry about Ryder." I broke the silence, folding my arms on the cool countertop. He glanced over his shoulder at me. "He's...he didn't take it lightly when he saw the...um, gun last night. Pointed at me."

I didn't particularly want to think of Santiago, not after last night. Thinking of him, here, seemed wrong. I didn't want to taint this place, this new, safe thing I'd just found. It already felt like it'd be snatched away from me anytime soon.

Dad hummed. "I shouldn't expect any less from your boyfriend."

"He's not my..." I stopped, then started again. "He's, well, he's seen the situation back at home. Mom isn't very...nice most of the time and I think he figured it out pretty quickly. I think he was expecting you to be the same."

And so was I, I almost said. I didn't have to, though. I think Dad saw it on my face anyway.

He didn't say anything to it, though. Not until he'd placed the freshly made omelette in front of me. Then he sat down right across from me.

"Want to tell me about it?" He asked me.

It was a little unnerving to have all his undivided attention on me, especially when he was asking me about Mom? I think he was asking me to tell him about Mom.

"I..." I hesitated, glancing down at the plate in front of me.

Dad winced. "Or, eat that first. Tell me how's it. I've been a little rusty with cooking lately. "

I obliged, mainly because I was hungry and also because I didn't want to open the topic of Mom. Not when it was too complicated, like our frayed relationship, and not when there were two unanswered texts of her lying right there in my phone.

The first bite was heavenly.

"I don't think I've ever eaten an omelette before." I told him a little too eagerly.

Dad looked up from his own coffee. "How is that possible?"

"I meant, not as good as this."

He chuckled.

"Cafeteria omelettes taste raw on better days." I told him. "I almost had food poisoning once."

His smile dimmed just a little. "Where is that?"

"Sharlton University." I brought the mug closer to myself. "I...It's a little away from home."

"Hayward?" He asked softly.

I nodded, couldn't quite meet his gaze.

"I'm just finding it a little difficult to accept." He spoke after a short moment of silence. "To see you've grown so much when the last I saw you, you were so little."

I stared at him sadly, an almost--and I think it would be a little funny under normal circumstances--mirror expression of his.

"I feel relieved to see you." He admitted, looked away for just a second as if staring at me was making all the memories, good and bad both, come back. Maybe it was for him. "I'd just hoped to see you sooner than this. I'd hoped to see you grow up. I'd wished to be there for you, that last year of your high school, I think?" He asked, uncertain and sad and I felt my heart race. "They...they contacted me, Alice. Your mother didn't let me see you."

Last year of high school. He knew?

"You...knew?"

"When you went missing," he spoke gently, looking a little pale in the face, "I think I didn't sleep a single night during those few days. They--No one was telling me where you were or what had happened. I'd never regretted leaving you, even your mother, more than I did in that moment."

I exhaled shakily. "I...I'm sorry." That you had to go through that. And why hadn't Mom told me that she'd told Dad?

He shook his head. "Let's try that again, kiddo. I am sorry that I wasn't there for you."

You don't have to be sorry, I wanted to say. But I didn't know how to say it and mean it at the same time. I didn't know how different would it have been if Dad had been there. If he hadn't left, would Mom be softer? Or would Dad have hated me too, just like her?

"More coffee?" His voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I looked up and then down at the mug clutched in my hands. I let go, afraid to break it in my vice-like grip, and noticed there wasn't much left in it.

"I..." I spoke, uncertain.

"I'll make it." Ryder's voice came from somewhere behind me--from the back door probably, and I hadn't heard him making his way inside but, I noticed, Dad must have since he was already looking that way.

"Go for it." Dad shrugged, eyeing him, though he looked a little less...wary than before, I suppose. "Would you like an omelette as well?"

A beat of tense silence passed by.

"No." He stated, went to the coffee machine but only once he'd given me a swift cursory look-over. I stared back at him, noticed not much change in his appearance--still that rumpled shirt--save for his much more tamed hair. It was on the tips of my fingers--the knowing of how the dark strands of his hair felt beneath my touch.

Dad made a somewhat inquisitive noise. I snapped my gaze back at him. "He doesn't do breakfast." I told him automatically.

Dad gave me an odd, amused look.

The silence seemed to grate on my nerves, my palms suddenly sweating. "It's not...we're not..." We're not what?

"He's not your boyfriend?" Dad seemed to take pity on me.

Ryder plucked the mug from between my hands right on cue. I felt my face heating up in an almost drastic manner. "I am," were his words, but more so than answering Dad directly, his eyes were on me. A fixed, penetrating look. My eyes widened just a little as I stared back. Oh.

Believe me, I remembered him saying all of a sudden, that I have never wanted anyone, no one else but you.

"I see." Dad broke the heavy tension in the air.

I pressed my lips together, had to force my gaze away from Ryder's when he moved away, and looked back at Dad. He seemed like he was trying not to laugh.

My phone chose that exact moment to chime with an incoming call. A flinch escaped my lips, Dad raised his brows, and I dreaded to see who was calling me. I technically knew who it was. It was a common occurrence when I didn't reply fast enough to Mom's texts.

I glanced at the screen, noticed Mom's name flashing on it, and couldn't help but look up at Ryder--almost as if I, unconsciously, needed something grounding. Something as familiar as it was safe. He was there, on the other side of the kitchen, already eyeing me somewhat pensively.

"You want to get that?" Dad asked slowly.

I only gripped my phone tighter, scared now.

"Don't answer that, querida."

"It's Mom." I told him, eyes wide.

"Yes," Ryder said almost dismissively, even though I could see him curling his hands into the marble counter. "Don't answer it. Give me your phone."

"What's going on?" Dad was frowning now. I hadn't seen him frown once. It looked wrong on his face. "Alice?"

"It's--"

"Your mom, yes." He finished it off for me. "Why aren't you answering it? Does she know you're here?"

No, I shook my head. Something much worse than that. Because the two texts she'd left me had said something so much worse. Something I'd been dreading--dreading for so long now that it felt unreal.

Mom: Get here. Now.

Mom: Alyssa told me everything.

"Hey." Dad's hand was cradling my own. I hadn't noticed. I felt cold. Panicked, I looked over at Ryder and found him still standing right there near that stupid coffee machine, staring at me but not moving. Why wasn't he coming here, crossing the godawful distance between us? God, I...I think I didn't want to speak about this to Dad. "Alice, breathe."

My eyes darted back to him, trying to concentrate on his face, on those warm brown eyes I wished were familiar not just because I'd stared at them in the mirror for as long as I could remember, but because of him and him alone.

"She's...mad at me." I found myself saying, found it hard to continue but I still did. Because I think that's what Ryder wanted me to do. Because...because I think that's what I wanted--for Dad to know. "Dad, I've--I've messed up." So much.

I've messed up so much. How do I take it back? How were you to hit rewind and erase it all, erase that one awful thing you knew would shatter everything into a million little fragments?

And then I told him everything. From that first day I'd seen Michael with Alyssa, to the day I'd gotten so drunk and kissed him. I told him of all the mistakes I'd made and recounted the times I regretted if afterwards. I told him of the nails embedded in my heart, the ones I'd tried to run away from but couldn't. Couldn't because maybe...maybe I'd thought I'd deserved Michael's sick, obsessive hate towards me anyway.

Dad didn't say anything in between, only gripped my hand until he had to let go. Until the blanched horror look on his face morphed into fury, into a look I don't think I ever wanted to decipher.

And when I finished recalling the last time that I'd seen Michael, of the time both Alyssa and Ryder had barged onto us, of the time Michael had lain on the bathroom floor covered in violet bruises and crimson blood, Dad got up from the stool and then he was coming towards me, and I don't know why I flinched--I didnt know why I was expecting him to hatehatehate me--but he only pulled me close instead of pushing me away, doing the opposite, and I think he was trembling. Or maybe I was. But then I was safe in his arms. He was holding me so tight, whispering words laced with such utter pain--because he felt it for me.

He'd heard me out.

I shuddered in his arms. He kissed the side of my head. And then he did it again.

"Alice," he kept saying. And then, "No, no. Tell me this didn't--fuck. Fuck."

And I don't know how long he held me. I just didn't--I don't think I cared in that moment. I didn't care that my phone had started up with the ringing again. I didn't. I couldn't. Because the relief I felt right then--my dad was here? He was here.

After a while, when I didn't feel like I was broken into a million pieces and when I felt a little whole again, when I felt like I could breathe properly and when I felt like I wouldn't cry (I hadn't yet. This, all of this, was something I'd stopped crying about a long long time ago), I looked up, pressed my chin to dad's arm and blinked over at Ryder.

He wasn't looking at me. I didn't think he was. But he was still there, stood so still and tense--muscles locked in almost a inner battle. He fairly looked ready to murder someone ("I know when I see murder-eyes, Rhodes," I remembered Nico saying). He looked furious.

And then he looked up at me, found my bleary-eyed gaze, and it could've just been my imagination when he seemed to lean back against the counter, make up his mind about something, and soften.

He didn't say anything. He let me be in Dad's arms.

"Not again, kiddo." Dad murmured into my hair, shook his head and I felt my hair ruffle beneath his hold. It was heady--it made my heart jump in my chest."I'm not--I'm not doing it. I won't. You're my kid. How could no one..." He trailed off. "I'm sorry, Alice. God, I am so sorry."

I could only squeeze my eyes closed shut.