Show Me the Way (Fight for Me #1)(5)

My teeth ground together, and the smile slid from her face when she saw what must have been my irritated expression, and I swore I heard the slight catch of her breath when she met my glare. Could see a slight quiver in her throat when she straightened and took a step back.

Still, she stood her ground.

There was something unwavering about her. Like she had something to prove. To herself or me, I wasn’t sure.

“Hi. I’m Rynna Dayne. Was named after my grandmother,” she managed, though the words were rough as she stuck her hand out toward me like she’d done to my daughter.

I just stood there staring at it like it held the venom of a viper bite. Finally, I lifted my chin at her and gathered all the pleasantness I could summon. It wasn’t much. “Rex Gunner. I’m sorry about your grandmother. And we’re late . . . so if you could excuse us.”

I gave Frankie a gentle tug of her hand. “Come on, Frankie Leigh. We’ve got to get you to dance.”

Frankie trotted along at my side, looking back over her shoulder with what I knew had to be one of those adorable grins.

“What a jerk,” I heard Rynna mumble behind my back when I turned and led my daughter to the passenger side of my truck.

Bitterness burned.

Yeah.

I was a jerk.

An asshole.

Whatever.

Better to burn bridges before anyone had a chance to cross them.

Shaking it off, I hoisted Frankie into the high cabin, making her squeal and pretend like she was flying. I strapped her in her car seat and jogged around to the front. I hopped into the driver’s seat, wondering if it were possible for the roar of the engine to cover the hurt that sagged Rynna’s shoulders as I took to the street.

Wondering why I felt like a complete piece of shit when I caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror. She just stood there in the twilight like she was caught in a dream.

Watching us go with disappointment on her face.

Befriending a sweet old lady was one thing.

Allowing a girl like Rynna Dayne into our lives—a girl that made my body react the way it did? Now that was pure stupidity.





3





Rynna





Why am I doing this?

Anxiety convulsed through my nerves as I waited for my computer to fire up. The truth was, I couldn’t not know. I connected to my hotspot and logged on to Facebook. It felt like forever while I sat there, the screen churning, lighting up like a window to the past. I could almost feel it stretching its fingers out to touch me. To tease me with the control it’d held over me for so long.

For too long.

Fingers trembling, I managed to type the name into the search bar. A task I’d attempted at least twenty times before I’d set out on my journey back home. I had never found the courage to press enter.

Today, I did.

She was the third listing. A grainy picture. Almost indistinguishable. But I knew it was her.

Missouri.

She lived in Missouri.

I slammed the lid down.

That was all I needed to know.

As long as she wasn’t here? I could totally manage staying in this town.



“Tell me you’re miserable without me.”

Laughing quietly, I flitted around the kitchen on my bare feet. My cell was pressed between my ear and shoulder as I slowly unpacked the few things I’d brought. I hadn’t needed much since my grandmother had left everything she owned to me.

“Completely miserable,” I told Macy, letting the tease wind into my tone as I hiked onto my toes to set my favorite Christmas mug on a high cupboard shelf.

“Huh. That’s weird. I haven’t even noticed you’re gone,” she deadpanned.

“Says the girl who’s called me like ten times today,” I ribbed.

She giggled. “Okay, okay, I might have kind of noticed.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s just that I think the apartment is haunted.”

“The apartment is haunted? And this happened sometime in the last three days?” Skepticism rolled from my tongue.

“You know how these things work. Ghost girl has been stalking me, and the second she felt your absence, she slid right in to take your place.”

“You know you’re absolutely ridiculous, right?”

“Which is precisely why you love me.”

Affection pulsed. How was I ever going to live without seeing her every day?

“Honestly, though, Ryn. How are you doing there by yourself? It must be weird to be alone in that old house. God knows it’s weird around here without you.”

I paused to look around at my dated surroundings—the floors linoleum, the cupboards hailing from the early eighties, the beige Formica countertops dingy and faded to a dreary yellow. The décor was mainly all the trinkets my grandmother had collected over the years, and the same two floral placemats I remembered from my childhood were still on the small round table.

It was as if she’d been waiting for me to return all this time. Next to nothing had changed since I left eleven years ago.

The house needed a full renovation. That was when, or if, I ever had the money to do it. Honestly, I still didn’t know how I was going to manage to hold on to all these frayed threads, if I could come back here and take over where my grandmother had left off. If I had what it would take to breathe life back into everything she had built.