Don't Forget Me Tomorrow(70)

How powerful and broken he looked.

He ate another and she turned and forced herself to look ahead while they floated in the unsettled silence.

How much time had passed while they sat like that, she didn’t know, the two of them drifting on the night, like they were suspended on a cloud, lifted above all the pain and circumstances and questions littered below them while Ryder ate half the brownies in the container like he was never going to get the chance to taste one again.

Except Ryder wasn’t removed from the torment, and his grumbly, low voice cut into their solitude. “I’m not sorry, Dakota.”

Her attention remained focused ahead while she felt the weight of his gaze burning into the side of her face. “I’m not sorry for what I did last night.”

She finally gathered the courage to look at him.

And it was like she was looking at midnight.

Falling into it.

Getting lost in it.

A storm raged through his expression, and he scraped the back of his hand over his mouth like he was wiping away a bad taste. “I won’t apologize for hurting him when he hurt you.”

His teeth ground. “I would have ended him if that’s what it required. Gladly.” Then he blew a puff of air through his nose as he admitted, “Hell, it took everything in me not to hunt him down and do exactly that after Cody bailed me out this morning, asshole thinking he could touch you when you didn’t want him to.”

A disorder blustered through her senses.

Gratitude.

Fear.

That fluttering in her belly that had risen all the way up to infiltrate her chest.

There was hatred, too.

Hatred toward the jerk who’d ripped her dress when she’d struggled to get out of his car because he thought he could reach out and take whatever he wanted.

Hatred that her word hadn’t mattered.

Hatred that Seaton was going to get away with it since his father was a doctor in town, and it was his word against hers. His word against Ryder’s. Ryder who’d also been charged with possession and had beaten him so bloody it looked like he’d been attacked by a madman.

“It’s me who should apologize. You’re the one who got arrested for me.”

He scoffed. “A small price to pay for putting that fucker in his place. He needed to know if he ever comes around you again, things aren’t going to land in his favor.”

“I hardly think things landed in his favor last night.” Her brow lifted, her voice barely twining with a thread of lightness.

Paisley had called her this morning. Her boyfriend, Jeremy, was one of Seaton’s best friends. Paisley had told her that Seaton’s jaw had been broken and he’d lost two teeth.

Paisley had been horrified, ranting and saying she was going to kick Seaton’s ass, too.

Dakota kept studying Ryder from the side.

Carefully.

Any ease they’d found in the last few weeks was hard to find tonight.

“It didn’t land in yours, either,” she whispered.

Leaning forward, Ryder blew out a sigh. “I hate that you saw that. Who I am.”

Dread filled up the hole where he’d gone missing all those years before.

“What’s going to happen?”

Apprehension shook his head. “I don’t know. I could go to jail for a few months, but Ezra thinks I’ll most likely get probation.”

She nodded around the lump that filled her throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Dakota. I deserve it. It’s a long time coming.”

Tension strained on the breeze, and the branch groaned beneath their weight.

“Why do you do that to yourself, Ryder?” Broaching it felt insurmountable, pushing into his darkness.

He wavered in it, pain rolling through his body, shadows haunting his eyes when he finally looked at her.

“It was easier. Not feeling it. The hole my mother left.” The words hitched in his throat, and he sniffed like he was trying to hold back the grief, but Dakota felt the shockwave of suffering, anyway. “It hurt so fucking bad that I just…” His head dropped in shame. “I just couldn’t, Dakota. I couldn’t. It’s like I’ve spent the last six years terrified of loving and terrified of never feeling it again.”

Sorrow drenched her heart, and she wanted to reach out and touch him so badly. Wrap her arms around him. Promise him it would be okay.

“But that has a way of spinning out of control, you know?” he continued. “Running from something you don’t think you can face, but the only thing you do is end up running straight into the grips of something so much worse. And before you know it, those claws are so deep in you, you can’t get free.”

“I would have been here for you. I…I waited here for you. For years, I waited out here for you.” She refused the embarrassment at the admission.

Low-pitched anguish vibrated from his chest, and he scrubbed both hands over the top of his head as he bent over. “It was better I didn’t come, Dakota. You couldn’t reach me then, and the last person you should have been around is someone like me.”

Contempt huffed from his nose. “You still shouldn’t be. You learned the proof of that last night.”

“I don’t care.”

He laughed a hollow sound, and he looked up through the branches at the star-speckled night. “You should, Dakota. You should.”