Only when its us, p.28
Only When It's Us, page 28
“Well, we used to spend lots of time here. There are seven of us and all of us play or, in my case, played…”
She smacks my shin. “You still play. Maybe not how you once did, but you still play.”
I nod, my eyes holding hers. Silence stretches comfortably between us as Willa sips her wine. The fire pops intermittently and casts her face in a warm, blazing glow.
“I want to know about your dad.”
Willa stiffens and her jaw sets. “My dad was a local who pumped and dumped my mom during a stretch of R and R. He didn’t want anything to do with her pregnancy, and I’ve never known who he was.”
I squeeze her leg. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Whatever? You never had a daddy, Sunshine.”
“Yeah, thanks. Never figured that one out.”
I sigh. “Willa, I’m just trying to empathize.”
“Well, don’t. I don’t need pity.” She tips her wine back and takes a hefty gulp.
“I don’t pity you, and you know it.”
She lifts a shoulder. “Okay, fine.”
“You know it’s okay to hate his guts for being the biggest idiot to miss out on your life, right?”
“Jesus.” She throws my legs off hers and stands up. “I really don’t need the shrink session.”
“Willa, wait.” I stand from the couch slowly. “I’m trying to talk to you about this. About the fact that the first man in your life was a complete disappointment and you’re inclined to see most men that way. You’ve said that to me. I’m not putting words in your mouth.”
Willa stares at me. “That’s because most men I’ve met are complete disappointments. They’re all pretty words and promises until real life hits. Then they’re gone.”
She spins away, dragging a blanket from the sofa with her as she heads for the stairs. “I’m tired and I’m aware I’m being defensive. I want to talk more but I can’t, okay? Not right now. I’ll say something I’ll regret.”
I stare at her, deciphering her face. She looks vulnerable and sad. She looks like she feels guilty, but she doesn’t need to. She’s telling me her limit. She’s not running away. She’s postponing.
“Okay. I’m sorry I pushed, Sunshine.”
She looks at me with thinly veiled surprise. “You’re not mad?”
“No, Willa. Not at all.”
Her shoulders drop in relief. “Okay, well…I’m just going to bed, then.” Wading toward me with the blanket swallowing her up, Willa presses a kiss to my sternum and whispers, “Good night.”
I watch her ascend the steps. She stops at the landing and pauses to look at me curiously, before taking the stairs the rest of the way up.
Staring into the fire, I let my thoughts settle. I think about how much I want to curl around her in sleep tonight, but how much more important it is that I show Willa that I can respect her process.
Baby steps, I told her. This is what I want her to see. That I won’t bolt when she bristles, that I won’t punish her when she tells me her boundaries. That I won’t resent her when she says this is all I can do, especially when every word I read between the lines says, but I want to do more.
The hearth’s flames dim and Willa’s footsteps quiet upstairs. I break up the embers, lock the doors, and trek upstairs. When I check on her, she’s just how I found her months ago, after Joy died. Burrowed under blankets, pretending to be asleep. And just like last time, I hold my hand on her back, then slide my fingers through her hair. I keep my promise.
I don’t give up on Willa. Just like Willa, even scared and scarred, has never given up on me.
28
Willa
Playlist: “The Lotto,” Ingrid Michaelson, AJR
“Good morning, Sunshine.” His voice is raspy in the morning and my nipples peak in response. See? they say. That rough mouth could have been directed on us all night long. Licking, biting, sucking, whispering against us as he does that thing with his tongue—
“Shut up, boobies.”
Ryder stills on the other side of the counter. “Did you just talk to your tits?”
“Don’t mind me. Coffee.” I slide onto a stool at the breakfast bar and accept the mug he places in front of me with a weak smile.
“Thank you,” I manage after the first sip. Peering into my cup, I realize it’s exactly how I like it. “You know how I drink my coffee?”
“I value my life.” Ryder tops off his mug and smiles at me. “I’ve seen you enough mornings to figure it out. Brewed strong. Splash of milk.”
My belly does a summersault. “Ryder, about last night…” I slide my finger along the rim of the cup, staring into my coffee. Wouldn’t it be nice if the words were spelled out in those swirls of milk? Talking about this stuff is so hard. “I’m sorry.” I meet his eyes. They’re warm and kind as always. He’s so damn calm. Unshakeable.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I went thermonuclear.” A heavy sigh leaves me. “Yesterday and last night felt as fantastic as they did frightening. I’ve been trying to work through my emotions with the counselor, but my relationship and trust issues are…deep-seated. It’s about the anger and resentment I feel toward the sperm donor. It’s about having a ton of upheaval throughout my childhood, constantly relocating, making friends, then losing them. I threw everything into loving my mom because where she went, I went. She was my mom, my dad, my best friend, my everything. Then, when she was sick, I spent years worried and stressed and heartbroken that I was going to lose the one person I had let myself love with all my heart.
“I…I started to adopt this habit of never letting myself get attached so I could avoid getting hurt. That’s not a behavior that’s just going to disappear overnight.”
“I know,” he says quietly.
And like last night, another lock on my heart pops open and falls away. Like last night, he’s not mad or impatient or unimpressed that this is the best that I can do for now.
My voice is thin but I need to send the message home. I need him to understand what he’s getting himself into. “Pretending like doing this kind of thing doesn’t really, really scare me is impossible. I’m not good at it. I’ve never done it before.”
Ryder stares at me. He sets his hand on the counter, palm up. I give it to him without hesitating, then sigh as his fingers softly stroke my hand. “That’s tough stuff to say, Sunshine.”
My eyes tear up as I nod.
“Thank you,” he says quietly as he squeezes my hand.
I bite my lip and squeeze back. When he lets go, I cup my coffee to warm myself. Heat comes quickly enough, though. It shoots up my spine as I watch Ryder drink from his mug, and take in his whole adorable morning appearance. He has great bedhead and a distracting line of skin peeking between his shirt and his pajama bottoms.
“So.” Ryder sips his coffee, then sets it down. “This kind of thing. It. What are we talking about?”
“Didn’t I use enough feeling words this morning?”
Ryder just stares at me and smiles.
I swear under my breath and gulp some coffee. “You and me, Lumberjack. What we are.”
He bends far enough to lean his elbows on the counter. He’s wearing a gray thermal shirt that’s worn and fitted in all the right places. It hugs the cut muscles of his shoulders and arms, running snug along his trim waist. I’m scared to see what’s below that point. I’m pretty sure it’s plaid flannel, and I’m not sure I’m prepared for that much lumbersexual hotness.
“What we are,” he repeats. “Which is…?”
I open my mouth, but no words come out. I want to be courageous, I want to say what Ryder means me to, what I want us to try to be, but my courage sticks somewhere between my throat and my tongue.
His phone shatters the silence as it buzzes, skittering along the quartz countertop. Ryder silences his cell without looking at it, but stupidly, my eyes travel to the screen. Emma.
Red tints my vision. Emma? Who the everloving fuck is Emma?
“No one important,” Ryder says evenly.
My eyes snap up to his. “I said that out loud?”
“You did, Willa.” Ryder smiles and gently brushes one of my curls off of my forehead. “Seriously, she’s no one to me.”
I stare at him, blinking rapidly. Very strange things are happening in my chest. It feels like someone beat it with a crowbar, cracks rapidly forming. My skin is hot, my head pounding. I think…I think I’m jealous?
Ryder slides the phone my way. “Don’t believe me, see for yourself.”
The phone screams at me to swipe it open, to deep-sea dive into Ryder’s texts. Who else has been texting him? What other chicks with pretty contemporary names instead of ones inspired by Prairie-obsessed twentieth-century authors are blowing up his phone?
I shut my eyes and exhale slowly. “I trust you.”
“You can still look through it.”
My eyes open and narrow at him. “Do you want me to?”
Ryder shrugs. “I don’t care if you do. I’d be a little curious if some guy was blowing up your phone. I trust you implicitly, but I wouldn’t mind knowing what he was saying, I think. Go ahead, Sunshine.”
Swiping his coffee off the counter, Ryder backs away. Dammit, my worst fears are confirmed. Ryder Bergman wears flannel on his fantastic ass and mountain man legs as well as he wears it over his tree-felling upper body. “I’m going to freshen up. Have at it.”
He’s gone without another word, leaving me with his phone burning in my hand.
I tap my fingers on the counter. The clock ticks. My coffee gets cold.
“Oh, what the hell.” I swipe open his phone because yes, I know his password by now.
It starts off innocuous, this perusal of Ryder’s cell. He texts his siblings a lot, and that warms my heart. I’m both jealous of and wildly happy for him that he has such close family. He texts his mom every morning. That twists my gut. I deliberately avoid texts from Sadie, Emma, Haley, and Olivia.
Until I don’t.
Fuckety fuckersons. These chicks are not subtle. Coffee invites, long-time-no-sees. Let’s grab dinner sometime. Presumably, they’re former conquests of his. One-night stands. Not girlfriends, because Ryder’s been clear he hasn’t dated since high school—why he was so emphatic about that, who knows. What I do know is all of these texts begin roughly around the time of the attack on Fort Ryder’s Face, when Becks and Tucker forced his hand by shaving the middle of his beard.
I’m not surprised. I’ve always found Ryder hot, truly handsome. There’s a quiet sexiness to a man who doesn’t flaunt all he has to offer, and while I didn’t realize it’s my catnip, it clearly is. I might have wanted to throttle him from the first moment we met, but it didn’t take me long to realize I also found him deeply attractive.
Without the beard, though, Ryder’s like…well, he’s model material. He has classically beautiful features, roughened with enough masculinity and hard edges, the wear and tear of sunshine and years outside, to make him look mature and even older than he actually is. Ryder is a man among a sea of boys. When the beard got nixed, that fact went on full display.
My heart pounds. Ryder didn’t respond to a single one of them. He left his read receipts on to make it clear he’d both seen them and was ignoring them. He sent a very clear message. But I’m still shaking with this new itchy feeling under my skin. I have the ridiculous impulse to sprint after and tackle him, to bite his warm, taut skin, head to toe, kiss him senseless, and then ride that lumberjack’s wood all morning. I want every square inch of Ryder to say Willa’s. I want everyone to know he’s mine, I’m his, and we’re the only one the other wants.
Holy shit. Hooooly shit.
Reality slaps me upside the head. If I saw him with any of those women, if he’d as much as agreed to get a cup of fucking tea, I’d have felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest.
It’s not possessiveness. This isn’t some petty female game I’m allowing myself to be sucked into. When I try to picture him with anybody else, another woman holding his hand, tugging his hair, another woman kissing or touching him, burrowing into his warm grasp, rubbing his head when a migraine hits, it feels like standing in front of one of those distorted mirrors at the funhouse. It’s the wrong image. Instinctively, positively, I know it’s not right. That’s not how it should be, ever.
Why? The answer beats louder and louder inside me until the truth is jarring my bones, rattling the cage I locked it in. Because I lo—
“Sunshine?”
His voice echoes from upstairs. The affection and familiarity in my nickname is a warm blanket of reassurance, wrapping around me. It’s the audible version of his hugs, those big arm squeezes that incite a feeling I’ve had for months. That when I’m with Ryder Bergman, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
“What?”
“Rain looks like it’s coming sooner rather than later. If I’m going to kick your ass on the field, we better get moving.”
Sureness settles with a terrifying weight in my chest. It sinks into my stomach and lands heavy, solid, unquestionable. I can’t believe what I’m about to do, and yet I’m determined to do it, now that I understand. Now that it’s singing in my ears, filling my heart, demanding to be spoken.
“Coming!”
Ryder’s quiet on the walk down the winding path. Close to the bottom, my feet catch on loose stones. His hand juts out immediately, wrapping around my elbow.
“Yeesh, do you have eyes in the back of your head? You have freakish reflexes.”
Ryder grins, his eyes ahead. “Reflexes you will soon see schooling you on the field.”
I shove him playfully, and he doesn’t even budge. He really did muscle up while I was hibernating in my grief cave.
“You’re quiet, Brawny.”
“I’m always quiet, Willa.”
“No, you’re not. I mean, sometimes you are but, generally, you talk to me plenty.”
Ryder stops on the trail, making me bump into him. Slowly, he turns and peers down at me. “I guess I do. But that’s different. That’s only when it’s us.”
There’s my grinch heart again, growing another size larger. Only when it’s us.
I blink up at him. Ryder’s eyes are deep, serene green, surrounded by the trees. His features are guarded, imbued with something bursting at the seams of his expression. I want to grab his arms and shake it loose, like a goodie jammed in the vending machine.
Two birds chitter in the tree above us and shatter our quiet when they shoot up into the sky. They arc and swoop, their flight a dancing chase and tease until finally they flatten on the wind and soar away in tandem.
“Only when it’s us?”
Ryder stares at me. “Have you seen me speak to another woman besides my sisters or mother, since I met you?”
I shake my head slowly.
“Have I looked at one?”
I give my bottom lip a rough tug between my teeth. My heart rate trips and takes off at a dead sprint. “No,” I whisper.
His eyes burn, and a flush crawls up his neck. “Since I got these”—he points to the hardware behind his ears—“has any of that changed?”
“N-no.”
Ryder’s jaw ticks. Without another word, he spins away, resuming our walk down the trail. I more or less tumble after him, catching up the moment we break through the woods into a clearing.
Turning, Ryder walks toward a shed, swiping the numbers on a lock until it pops open. He disappears inside, then quickly drags out a mid-size net and a few balls. I notice he’s without his auditory gear now. Must have stashed it in the shed for safe-keeping. I pick up a ball, then a pump, and inflate it, watching Ryder as he straightens the net from a distance.
Dropping the ball, I touch it forward. Something about the brisk wind, the smell of mowed grass, reminds me of childhood. I’m transported to my first days with a soccer ball, that carefree happiness I felt, as autumn air sucked my shirt against my wiry body, and sent the ball rolling just off course. I remember orange slices and secondhand cleats, Grandma Rose braiding my hair and Mama’s mantra whispered over me as she rubbed sunscreen into my cheeks.
You are strong. You are brave. You can do anything you set your heart and mind to.
I still tell myself those words before every game I play. I’m telling myself those words right now.
Ryder glances up from the net and watches me as I dribble. I show off a little, flicking the ball easily in a rainbow and catching it on the top of my foot. I spin my foot around, never losing the ball, and scoop it up again, bracing it across my shoulder blades. Then I roll it to my shoulder and pop it off. It flies through the air and lands directly at Ryder’s feet.
He struggles and fails to hide his amusement. “Hotdogger.”
Like last night in the shower, he talked, without the aid of his implants. I’m caught off guard, and my heart twists with that scary big feeling I almost said to myself in the kitchen.
His voice is different without his implants. Skewed around the vowels. I didn’t think it would mean this much to me, for him to speak to me without them, but it does. Such an immense vulnerability. I clear my throat, trying not to look like I’m making anything of it since Ryder is acting like it isn’t a big deal at all.
I make sure he can see my mouth when I say, “If you got it, flaunt it.”
“Did you just quote Bey—” His voice catches. He swallows, then tries again. “Beyoncé?”
I shoulder him and steal the ball from his feet, spinning so he can see me talk. “You say that like I should be embarrassed when you’re the grown man who recognizes old-school ’Yoncé.”
Ryder grins. “Two sisters, Sunshine. I went deaf too late in life.”
I stop with the ball and feel a frown tug at my mouth. “That’s not funny. I don’t like it when you joke about it.”
His grin falters. “Why?”
“Because…” I juggle the ball, hiding my feelings behind my movements. “I don’t know. You’re making fun of someone who means a lot to me. Tease me all you want, but don’t joke at your own expense.”
