Don't Forget Me Tomorrow(78)

I didn’t believe that, though.

Never once in all the years after I’d returned from Boulder had I ever thought he’d been messed up like that. The drugs that numbed him into oblivion.

No.

Not when those eyes had always remained so vigilant.

So raw and real.

His head shook against my chest. “No, baby, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” I drew back so I could see his face, and he reached up and threaded his fingers through my hair at the side of my head.

I leaned into his touch.

“It’s the one thing I can’t give you, Dakota.”

Hurt stabbed into my chest. “You don’t trust me?”

He only hesitated for a beat before the words began to flood, quiet and hard and riddled with a torment that I didn’t understand.

“No. Because it’s dangerous, and I can’t involve you in it. It’s why I’m going to have to go on pretending like you’re not mine when we’re in public because I can’t risk someone knowing who you are to me or what you mean to me. Just for a little while, until I find a way to get out from under this.”

Terror must have slashed through my expression. I doubted there would have been any missing it with the chill that slipped down my spine. An ice slick that froze everything in its path.

Because he framed my jaw in both of his big hands, angling up so he brought us face to face.

His breaths mine.

His promise was gravel. “I will never let anything happen to you or Kayden, Dakota. I won’t. I will protect you with everything I have. Fight for you, but in that, I have to fight this. I have to finally put it behind me, and I don’t know what that looks like, but I promise you that everything I’m going to do is for you. For us. For this family. The family that should have been mine from the beginning.”

Surprise widened my eyes. Was he implying what I thought he was? Had he felt it then, too?

I’d thought I’d been a fool for putting my heart on the chopping block that day. When I’d garnered the courage to finally tell him what I’d felt.

But then why would he have said what he’d said? Why had he been so devastated when he’d told me Amelia was dead?

I’d thought he’d been…heartbroken.

That question locked in my throat, a gnarl of old pain, and Ryder tightened his hold like he’d heard every question on the current of our connection.

“It stole our chance, Dakota, and I succumbed to the belief that I was never going to get to have you, and I refuse to believe it for any longer.”

“You told me you loved me…but not like that.” An accusation slipped into the confusion.

He’d told me.

Had gently destroyed me as he’d murmured the words.

I’d thought he was trying to save my feelings. Let me down easy.

Shame crested through his features, words so aggrieved they cut through the air. “It was the greatest lie I’ve ever told, Dakota. Seeing your face when I told you that? It fucking killed me. Breaking your heart while I was breaking mine, too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know, and that’s on me, and I promise one day I will explain it, but not until I know it’s safe. Please trust me on this.”

My attention dropped to the broken clock on his chest. The fractured hands stuck at five o’ four. I’d always thought it’d marked the moment he’d lost Amelia.

I’d witnessed his pain that day.

I’d thought he’d been devastated over Amelia’s death.

I’d thought he’d lost the one he’d been in love with.

He suddenly gripped my hand and spread my palm over the tattoo, pressing it hard, like his soul was desperate to tell me something but his tongue was locked.

“Give me time to make it right.”

Alarms were going off somewhere in my mind. They should have been deafening, but it was only faint, blotted out by the sincerity of his eyes.

“Okay,” I agreed, and he sighed then leaned forward and kissed me hard.

Kissed me into a puddle, until I was on my back on the bed and his hand was smoothing up the sheet, over my hip and up my side, though he paused when he was pressing his palm over my trembling stomach.

He edged back and looked down at me. “I nearly lost my mind when I found out you were pregnant. Destroyed me to think of you with somebody else.”

It wasn’t regret that I felt. It was the vestiges of the pain that had driven me that night.

How I’d felt so raw, and the only thing I could do was seek some kind of comfort. Unfortunately, it’d only left me feeling worse. Like I’d used myself up, trying to cover what I really felt with something else.

“Watching you with other women destroyed me, too.”

Remorse dimmed his eyes, and he brushed his thumb under the hollow of my eye. “I did my best to put as much space and history between us. Thinking one day, it would finally kill what I really felt for you. That one day I’d look at you and we’d really just be friends. But I don’t think that’s even possible, Dakota. There’s no chance of not feeling this.”

He curled his fingers deeper into my stomach. Clinging to me. Like he was terrified I might get away.

“Why don’t we know anything about Kayden’s father?” he pressed.