Ryan follows me back to the apartment in his Tahoe. I’m glad I’m not in the car with him when he realizes where we’re going, but at least the idea that I was embarrassed about where I live rings true.
He parks next to me and is out of his car in a shot. Before I get my door open, he’s at the side of my car. “You should have told me this is where you lived.” He’s scoping out the parking lot as if he’s trying to locate the danger he knows exists here.
Latching on to his belt loops, I pull him closer. “This is exactly why I didn’t tell you.” I move my right hand into his left one and he grips it tightly as I pull him toward the stairwell. He notices every busted light on the way up.
The lock gives a bit easier this time, and the second the door swings open Ryan has us inside and the door shut behind us. He paces the apartment with his hands on his hips. I hate to admit I like his growling prowl of the room, and the protective instinct vibrating through him is as foreign as it is welcome.
I drop down by the stack of books and start putting them in the empty box I left close by. “Forgot I had a few things left to pack.”
Ryan moves to the counter and picks up the closest perfume bottle. Holding it up, he inspects it from top to bottom, then does the same to the other three lined up next to it. “Do you collect these?”
I beam at him. “I do!” And then start to tell him I collect them because they reminded me of my grandmother, but the lie dies on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I say, “I saw a picture of one and I didn’t realize how gorgeous . . . and how different they could be. It stuck with me. Started collecting them after that. The purple one is my favorite.” It’s always best to keep the lie as close to the truth and say as little as possible, but this feels more than that. I don’t want to lie to him if I don’t have to.
There is no mention that his mother collects perfume bottles as well, or the fact that I have something in common with her, and I won’t analyze how it makes me feel that he doesn’t let me know this is something we share. Ryan sets the bottle back down and begins opening drawers in the kitchen and then staring at the fridge. He plucks off one of the pictures of us and studies it. It’s a selfie we took not long after we met. It was cold outside and we’re both bundled up in front of the small fire pit in his backyard. I had brought over ingredients to make s’mores and we had bits of marshmallow and chocolate on our faces. In the picture, I am sitting in his lap and we are smiling big, cheek to cheek.
“That was a good night,” he says.
“It was,” I answer. It was the first night I spent at his house. The first time I slept in his bed. He’s still staring at the picture, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going through his mind while he thinks back on that night.
Finally, he pulls down all the pics and menus and stacks them on the counter before opening the fridge. “Still have a few things in here,” he calls.
“Oh, shoot! Thought I cleaned it all out. Can you just throw it in the trash?”
I hear him gathering the containers, then opening the cabinet under the sink where the trash can hides. He dumps them on top of some take-out boxes and other items I found in one of the outdoor trash containers. Ryan pulls the can out and says, “Anything else need to go in here before I take it to the dumpster?”
I frown while I think about it. “Yeah, there may be a few things in the bathroom that need to go.”
He follows me down the hall into the bathroom. I pluck the worn-down soap out of the shower and toss it inside the can. Then I pick up the shampoo and conditioner, testing the weight as if I’m trying to decide if there is enough worth keeping, then toss them in too.
Ryan is digging around in the drawers and cabinets, checking each space. He’s more thorough than I thought he would be.
Once we’re back out in the main room, he peeks inside a few of the boxes I’d filled earlier in the day. But then it’s more than a peek. It’s almost as if he’s searching for something.
After he’s riffled through three boxes I ask, “Are you looking for something?”
His head comes up and his eyes catch mine. A small smile forces his dimples to appear. “Just trying to learn everything there is to know about you.”
The words are ones that any girl would love to hear, but they feel weighted. Heavy. And I wonder if he is choosing his words as carefully as I choose mine.
Chapter 4
There are lots of reasons why I haven’t stopped by here in the last week—the shopping, the packing, the moving—but I’ve waited as long as I can. It’s fifteen minutes until the official closing time, and even though I can log in and enter after hours, I don’t want a record of that.