RYDER:
I’d always thought I knew what love looked like.
Beautiful dresses. Candlelight dinners. Words whispered in the dark.
But it turns out, real love looks like a woman in cutoffs and a paint-smeared tank top, standing barefoot in the middle of a half-built showroom with a power drill in one hand and dirt smudged across her cheek.
Phoenix.
My Phoenix.
I leaned against the frame of the big roll-up door, the morning sun cutting behind me, casting her in light that made her hair look like fire. She didn’t see me yet—too focused, too deep in the zone. Music blasted from her speaker, some gritty rock anthem that matched the snarl of the electric sander in her hand.
I didn’t interrupt.
How could I?
It would’ve been like walking into a storm—wild, unstoppable, and beautiful in a way m
