Don't Forget Me Tomorrow(41)

A new shock of lust burst in my blood, so intense I could hardly think or see. I wanted to answer but was terrified at the same time. Another text came in before I could fathom how in the world I was supposed to reply.

Ryder



Did you touch yourself thinking of me when you got back to your room? With those sweet hands that are way too clean to get dirty with me?





Ryder



You were a fucking vision standing in my door.





Ryder



Like you’d been manifested in my dreams.





I blinked, staring at the words.

Sure I had to be reading them all wrong.

Or maybe I was just dreaming.

Maybe I’d been knocked dumb by the sight of the man jerking himself on his bed.

The more likely possibility was that I’d made up the entire thing.

Except another text came through.

Ryder



Think it’d be a good idea for you to start locking your door, Dakota.





My heart clattered against my ribs, and I strained to hear any movement or sound.

My breaths shallow.

This confusion so thick the room was filled with a haze.

Everything enclosed, the air and this tension that expanded in the space.

A whirring hum that echoed in the room.

Or maybe it was seeping in from the outside.

In it was this lingering need.

A call from down the hall.

If I followed it, I knew it would lead to his door.

A lure.

A trap.

My spirit ached to give it heed.

To give into the tugging that pulled at the center of me.

To see if this was real or if it was all a figment of my imagination.

Self-preservation kicked in.

I knew better than that.

Ryder would never really want me. Not the way I wanted him.

He’d told me, and I was a fool to believe anything else.

A fool to respond and beg him to make good on the last text.

So I forced myself to lie back in bed and ignore his messages.

Both terrified and thrilled by the exchange.

But I needed to remember that just looking at Ryder broke my heart.

And I could only imagine what would happen if he touched me—even if it was only once.





TWENTY





DAKOTA





“Mom, it’s only a dinner date. You’re acting like the man asked me to marry him.” My voice was hushed as I spoke to her on the phone and hurried around the kitchen getting Kayden’s things ready, trying not to second-guess the choice I’d made to agree to this.

It was for the best.

Getting the heck out of this house before I completely lost my mind seemed like a really good idea right then.

“Well, he might not have asked you yet, but he seems like the kind of guy who is looking to settle down.” My mom was as caring as they came, and there wasn’t a mean or vapid bone in her body, but she also seemed to know all the gossip that made it through town. When Brad had moved into Time River, he’d been quite the topic of interest.

Suffice it to say my mother was most definitely interested now.

I sighed. “It’s one date. That’s all, so don’t you start planning any weddings.”

My nerves were rattled as it was.

My insides shredded from whatever had happened with Ryder two nights ago. All my edges frayed.

I didn’t need her feeding anything else into the chaos.

Yesterday morning, neither Ryder nor I had mentioned the night before. We’d gone about our routine like everything was normal while a sticky tension had strained between us.

Not that I’d seen him all that much.

Once he’d gone into work, he hadn’t returned. He had been gone long into the late-night hours doing God knew what. Things I didn’t want to know about, that was for sure. Things that had kept me up tossing in bed, still awake when he’d come creeping up the stairs at close to three in the morning.

And that—that was the exact reason I couldn’t allow myself to contemplate it.

If it weren’t for the text messages that had still been sitting on my phone, I would have chalked the whole thing up to a dream.

But there they were.

Glaring and real.

The problem was, I had no idea what they meant, and deciphering them was a fool’s game.

Ryder Nash could demolish me, and the last thing I needed was to get my heart shattered.

Mom huffed like I was ridiculous. “I’m not planning any weddings, Dakota. I’m excited that my daughter is going out. Is that such a bad thing?”

Affection swelled in my chest, and a soft smile pulled to my mouth. “No. It’s not such a bad thing. I just don’t want you getting ahead of yourself.”

“I think the real question is if you want to go there?” She drew it out like life’s most important question.

“I don’t even really know him,” I said as I poured milk into a sippy cup.

“Which is the whole point of a date,” she reminded me, her easy encouragement knitted into the words. “It could be the beginning of something great.”

“It’s honestly not that big of a deal, Mom. He came into the café for lunch, and he asked me to dinner.”