“Do you want me to lie to you, or do you want the truth?”
“The truth, Cookie, always the truth.”
Only we had never really given that to each other, had we? It was time, though. Time to come out from behind the veils where we’d kept our feelings secreted.
“Then I’d have to say that you can have me any time and any way that you want.”
A growl rolled through the room, and those dark eyes gleamed with greed. “That’s a dangerous proposition to make to a man like me.”
Even though I shivered, I cocked my head. “I think you might underestimate me.”
Ryder chuckled a low, disbelieving sound, and that grin cracked at the edge of his mouth. “Get over here.”
Biting down hard on my bottom lip, I shuffled toward him, the worn, wooden planks cool on my bare feet. I attempted not to trip on the fabric that draped around my legs and brushed the floor.
I made it to the side of the bed then yelped when he suddenly reached out, grabbed me around the waist, and hauled me onto his lap. It left me straddling him with only the thin sheet separating us.
“You’re ridiculously strong, Ryder.” It came out sounding like I was scolding him for picking me up.
He leaned forward, buried his face at the side of my neck, and murmured, “Nah, baby, these arms were just made for you.”
I might as well have been melting in those arms as he wound them around me and pulled me tight against his chest.
My own looped around his neck, and I played with a short lock of his hair as we stayed like that for the longest time, both of us just breathing in the moment.
“Then why did you wait so long to hold me with them?” My question broke into the stillness that had descended, a whisper that fell in sync with the ghosts that played along the walls of the room.
Ryder barely tensed, the muscles on his back going rigid, and he slowly eased back. Enough that he was leaning fully against the headboard. Enough that he could lay the full intent of his gaze on me. “I knew I wasn’t close to being worthy of you when you were going away to college, Dakota. I was barely finding myself, thanks to you, but I had a lot of shit to work out in my life. Problem is, when you live a life like mine, working that shit out isn’t so easy.”
Dread dripped into my bloodstream.
I’d always known there was something that Ryder was hiding beneath the easiness. The way he walked into a room so casually, tossing out smiles and grins, all while he always seemed to be looking over his shoulder.
I’d turned a blind eye to it, no doubt because I didn’t want to see.
Didn’t want to know.
I wanted to go on happily delusional that my friend was just fine. That he’d overcome the demons of his past.
I knew better now.
I just prayed they weren’t the kind that could destroy him.
The kind that could destroy us.
I had to curl my arms back around his neck and press my mouth to his ear because I was too terrified to look at him when I got the answer. “Are you still…using?”
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.”