Run your fingers through the color.
Paint yourself in its beauty.
I went to the back and unbuckled Kayden, careful not to wake him as I pulled him into my arms.
It would be a whole lot easier to pack our things without him running around the house demolishing it.
He mumbled a tiny sound as he snuggled into my chest, and I released a strained breath as I carried him up the walkway and onto the porch.
I nearly tripped when I got that same gross feeling again.
A sticky awareness that lifted the hairs at the nape of my neck and turned my stomach sour.
I shifted around and peered into the fading light. Into the quiet peace of Ryder’s neighborhood.
There was no movement.
Nothing other than the breeze stirring through the trees.
God, I was letting the disorder get the best of me. Letting the haunting echoes inside me turn into something they were not.
I shook it off and angled so I could get the key into the lock while keeping Kayden carefully balanced in my arms. I locked the door behind us, climbed the stairs, and went into Kayden’s room where I laid him in his crib.
My chest squeezed as I looked at his sweet face as he slept. Hating that he was going to get his heart shattered, too. This morning, it hadn’t just been my heart on the line.
I hurried into the room that I’d come to think of as mine, ignoring the bed rumpled with linens and missing a sheet.
I dragged the suitcase from under the bed and opened it on the floor, and I began tugging the dresses I’d hung in the closet from their hangers and tossing them into the case.
With each one, my movements became more frantic, a blur of desperation. A bedlam of pain and sorrow and disappointment.
By the time I moved to the dresser and opened the top drawer, I could barely see through the sheets of tears that blanketed my face.
I dragged my hand over my eyes to try to clear it, tried even harder to suppress the sob that climbed my throat, but it erupted, anyway.
Another came behind it, and another as the misery rushed me, ripping from my mouth and banging from the walls.
I had gotten to the point where I was barely able to stand beneath the weight of it when I felt the presence emerge behind me.
I froze beneath its gravity.
Held in the potency that ripped through the room and slammed into my spirit.
My hands shot to the dresser for support, unable to look at him.
He stood there for the longest time, as if he wasn’t able to move, either. Unable to speak. Trapped by this connection that had become the most painful thing I’d ever felt.
When he spoke, I nearly broke.
“Do you think I don’t love you, Dakota?”
The words were gravel, shards that sent a shiver rolling down my spine.
I gasped for the oxygen that had grown too thick, and I dug my nails into the wood of the dresser, trying to hold on, to keep from falling to my knees.
“Look at me, Cookie.” His voice scuffed the dense air. Low and desperate. “Look at me.”
Maybe I was a fool.
Maybe I shouldn’t give in.
But I slowly shuffled around to face him, drawn to a man who’d held me for so long I couldn’t recognize what not loving him looked like.
Ryder stood in the doorway.
Towering.
So tall and powerful.
Covered in all that ink.
Midnight.
Those silvered, gunmetal eyes flashed, and his throat bobbed heavily when he swallowed.
Severity crackled. The energy alive. Pulling and pressing as he stared at me from across the room.
“Do you think I’m not in love with you?”
My eyes slammed closed, and my body bowed forward with his admission.
Part of me wanted to fight it. The other wanted to savor in hearing him say it.
He didn’t speak again until I opened them.
Pain lancinated through his expression, and his head canted to the side in supplication.
“I love you, Dakota. I’m gone for you. Since I was twenty-two fucking years old, I’ve been gone for you. Since you became the one thing in this world that could soothe the ache inside me. Since you became the reason to look beyond my circumstances. Since you reminded me of the good things this world might have to offer.”
He took a step forward.
The ground trembled below my feet.
“You saved me, Dakota. Saved me when I was lost. When I’d given up. And I keep trying to push you away because I know I don’t deserve you. But I can’t do that any longer. I can’t fucking deny that you are the one thing in this life that I’ve been living for. You are the light breaking the darkness inside me. And I’m begging you, please don’t walk away.”