I was shocked that I was joking with him as he leaned down to help me back into them.
He stood, and he hooked his index finger under my chin, one of those grins playing all over those red, red lips. “Guess I’m just going to have to take a peek every now and again so we can be sure of that.”
Butterflies went wild, flapping in my belly, way too excited by the prospect that we might do this again.
Only it made all those questions swirl to the surface.
Ryder’s expression went soft, like he could read every one of them. “Would love you every day of my life if I could, Dakota.”
“Why can’t you?”
Dragging his fingers through his hair, he looked to the floor. His words were close to a mumble. “Your brother would kill me for one.”
“My brother doesn’t get to say who I can date or love or how I spend a single day of my life.”
“No, but he will do everything he can to protect you from the monsters in this world.”
Confusion drew my brow together.
Ryder dragged me back to him again, his arm around my waist and his heart banging at my chest. It wasn’t tender that time, though. It was rough and powerful and filled with his grief. “Mean it when I tell you I’m not good enough for you.”
“How could you ever say that?”
“Because it’s the truth. You don’t know the things I’ve done.”
“I don’t care.”
Disbelief puffed from his nose, and he stared at me through the wisping darkness that curled through the kitchen. Right then, I wished all the lights were on so I could fully make out his expression.
“You would if you knew what they were.”
Before I could assure him that he could tell me, trust me with it, he dragged me closer and mumbled at my neck, “And I’m the bastard who doesn’t know if he can stay away from you.”
“Then don’t.”
He pulled back, and his hand cinched down on my hip. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dakota.”
He seemed to swallow back whatever he was going to say before he turned to grab the rest of his clothes from the floor. “Come on, we’d better get some sleep. That tiny tornado is going to be up before you know it, and you have a long day at work tomorrow.”
He took my hand.
A buzz rushed up my arm, and he squeezed like he’d felt it, too.
Slowly, he led me upstairs, through the shadows that played like ghosts on the walls of his house. Silence washed and shivered around us, an understanding without comprehension waving through the night.
He walked me to my bedroom door. He paused there, uncertainty in his eyes. “I don’t want you to regret what happened tonight.”
“I couldn’t.”
There was no chance.
“I should, but I don’t think I can, either,” he said.
“Maybe we should have been doing this for a long time.”
That sweet wickedness gleamed in his eyes. “You are playing with fire, Dakota Cooper.”
“Maybe I want to burn.”
Greed hardened his features to stone, and he wavered before he brushed his fingertips down the edge of my face. “Go to bed, Dakota.”
I couldn’t say anything as he moved to his door, though I finally found my voice when he was turning the latch. “Your past doesn’t define you, Ryder. No, I don’t know the full circumstances, but I know you lost yourself after your mom died. I would never blame you or judge you for that.”
I knew he’d gotten mixed up in some bad things.
When I’d been afraid he would forget me that night of her funeral, he had. Everything had changed after that.
For years, he’d detached himself from our family.
Had become reclusive.
A ghost.
The rumors had run rampant. The poor orphan who’d lost himself. The one who’d started hanging out with a rough crowd in the next town over.
I had seen it in the demons that had played in his eyes the few times I’d seen him during that time. The way his stare was too distant.
I had been certain of it when he’d started coming into the bakery where I’d worked during my senior year. When things had started to change between us again.
Plus, I’d known it for a fact when he’d been arrested for possession the night he’d stood for me.
The night he’d fought for me.
I’d left for college right after that, and by the time I’d returned, he had become so much more like the boy I’d once known back when we were kids.
Whole and happy.
He’d gone through a rough patch, but he’d made it through.