“You wrecked me a long time ago.” I didn’t mean for the confession to whisper free, and Ryder looked like I might have hit him. Regret swam through his dark, dark eyes before he pulled away and turned back to my son.
Blowing out a sigh, I hurried around him and went downstairs where I started the load of towels. By the time I’d climbed back up, Ryder had taken Kayden into his makeshift room. He had him sitting on the bed and was dressing him in a pair of pajamas printed with monster trucks.
Kayden was making a bunch of engine noises, pointing at each one. “Dis and dis and dis.”
“I like that one, but I think I like the red one even better,” Ryder told Kayden.
“I wike bwue,” Kayden told him in his sweet slur.
“Blue is super cool.” Ryder finished tugging on his pants. “Alright, little man, story time.”
Ryder grabbed a book from the stack, and he climbed up onto the mattress beside him and leaned against the headboard.
Kayden curled up at his side, tucked in the crook of his arm so he could see the pages.
And I found I couldn’t move into the space. Found I was rooted to the spot, standing there in the doorway watching Ryder read my son a story, lost to the infectious laughter that rolled from Kayden as Ryder changed his voice with the different characters. Lifting it high and dropping it low, making the sound of a racing car and the beep of a horn.
Lost to everything Ryder kept saying.
To the greed that kept surfacing and the hidden shame that would shut him down.
And I wanted to sink into it. Disappear into those hidden places. Dip my fingers in and invade.
Understand where it was coming from and why.
Show him it didn’t matter. Whatever he’d done, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the man in front of me.
When he turned the last page, he picked up Kayden and carried him over. “Tell Mommy goodnight.”
“Night-night, Mommy!”
Kayden threw his little arms around my neck, though Ryder still held him, and I squeezed him tight and whispered, “Goodnight, sweet boy. I love you so much.”
Then Ryder swooped and soared him across the room until he was laying him in his crib. “Sleep tight, K-Bear.”
“Night, my Rye-Rye.”
Love crushed into the room.
Pressing at the walls and pushing out.
Or maybe it was just a landslide of everything that had happened in the last few days when Ryder slowly turned and was facing me.
Because the air deepened, a shiver blowing through. An arrow of warmth and a quiver of need.
And a second later, Ryder was coming for me.
TWENTY-EIGHT
RYDER
Restraint wasn’t exactly my strong suit, and I had none of it then. Every ounce of it obliterated when I turned around to Dakota standing in the doorway.
Wearing black sleep shorts made of thin sweats material and a matching pajama top that kept falling off one shoulder.
Still soaked from her son’s bath.
In her expression was something I’d never dared allow myself to recognize before.
Like she was imagining what it might be like if this was our truth. If we did this every night, and I didn’t have a lifetime of garbage strewn between us.
They were obstacles that I should heed.
What should have me diverging.
Changing course.
But I didn’t think there was a goddamn thing in this world that could keep me from her right then.
“Dakota.” Her name left me like a plea, and my hand was going to the side of her face and pushing up into her hair as I backed her out of the doorway and into the dim-lit hall.
A short gasp left her, and she blinked at me. Cinnamon eyes swirled with so many things.
Confusion and need and questions I didn’t know if I had the strength to answer.
“I keep trying to stay away from you. Don’t think I know how to do it any longer. Don’t think I can.”
I spun her into the hallway wall, pinning her back to it. My nose went to the slope of her neck, breathing her in.
Sugar and vanilla. The sweetest thing.
“Cookie,” I murmured into the night.
“Who said I wanted you to stay away from me?” The challenge was back, her chin lifted.
Guilt constricted, and I let my fingertips wander the angle of her jaw. “I keep trying to do the right thing, Dakota. Keep trying to be the good guy, but I don’t want to be him right now.”
A glutton stealing more. Taking what I shouldn’t have all while knowing she should have belonged to me.
Cody’s warning kept rolling through my mind. Hitting me on a circuit. Because I knew he was right.