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His shoulders relax immediately to my answer and he nods. “Cool. Where are we headed next?”
There’s another small shop that I want to visit. They’ve had this gorgeous purse on sale since last week that I’ve been dying to get, but a woman with her phone pointed at us has me pausing. She grins, looks up at us, then quickly darts the other way, and my stomach sinks.
She got a picture of us.
How happy do I look in it? Are we standing too close to each other? Were we looking at each other like a therapist and client would?
Everything is spinning as I try to catch my breath and thoughts, so I glance around to see if there’s a secluded area that Ryker and I can escape to. There’s a few food trucks cluttered together, with an opening between them that leads to the back, and I pull Ryker in the direction of it before someone else decides to take a picture.
Ryker’s breathing heavily when we come to a stop and he frowns at me. “Wren, what’s wrong?”
I rub my fingers against my temple, wishing I could turn back time and tell Ryker that going out in public together would be a bad idea – that’s not an option in this universe, though.
“They saw us,” I whisper.
“What are you talking about?”
“There was a woman. She looked right at us after holding her phone up, and then she ran in the opposite direction when she caught me staring at her.” I shake my head. Ryker saw us. She captured us standing together.”
This is bad.
“Wren, baby, I’m gonna need you to take a deep breath and calm down.”
“Calm down?” I ask. “How could I possibly calm down when there’s a chance everything I’ve worked for is going to be jeopardized?”
“You’re right, but that still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t taken a breath, and your face is turning red. I need you to breathe.”
He’s right.
The damage is done; there’s no reason for me to freak out when the inevitable happens—exactly what I pictured happening as soon as we started this thing together.
“How can we make sure the picture doesn’t get spread? Surely, you’ve got someone on stand-by for stuff like this.”
Ryker frowns. “That would only bring more attention to us, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” I say with a heavy sigh, then slowly let my head fall into my hands. “I don’t know.”
I’m thrown off when he reaches forward and pulls me against his chest, a strong arm circling around my frame and into a warm hug. He doesn’t say anything; he just holds me while I let all the negative thoughts slowly disappear. Only when he’s sure I’m better does he pull away and look into my eyes.
Even knowing how tough things are about to get for us, I can’t help but fall harder for him at this moment. His calmness is a testament to how much he’s changed since coming here, and I’m proud of him.
He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine. It’s soft at first, like one of those kisses that feel as though you’ve been doing it with the person all your life, but it quickly turns into something more as he pushes me back against the food truck behind me.
It steals the breath from my lungs and has my head growing fuzzy. Although I shouldn’t let him, Ryker presses his hands into my hips and drags them up the length of my stomach beneath the shirt I’m wearing. I suck in a breath when he brings it around my waist, at the small of my back, then grazes it over my thigh before pulling that leg tight around his waist.
This is not a position I want to be caught in with him, yet I can’t seem to stop the moment even if I know it’s what I should be doing.
Everything has gotten out of control with him. He’s burrowing himself deeper and deeper into my system, and I know there’s no escaping it. Somehow, I know that if I would even try, he’d be right there to pull me back to where I belong – at his side.
No, I can’t be at his side. I’m his wellness coach. That’s all I should be.
I’m hearing myself but not making a move to get away from him as he trails his lips down to my jawline and along the curve of my throat. Tingles skate their way down my spine, and I shift my hips into him, feeling his hard length against me, before closing my eyes.
Before things get too heated, Ryker pulls away and looks at me with heat in his eyes. “This is no place for what I want to do to you. I want you all to myself, but there are too many people who can catch us.”
My brain is still short-circuiting from the kiss as I let him pull me in the direction of where we parked, already eager to finish what we started.
I shouldn’t be eager. We should be having a very necessary conversation where we talk about how we will slow things down and put distance between us. The moment he threads his fingers through mine, though, after we both get into the car, I know distance is going to be nearly impossible when it comes to him.
