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“Yeah, and it hit you.”
“Yep.” He takes a breath and pushes his hair from his face, looking all levels of disgusted. “It did.”
Like that, I know it’s over. Just like that.
“You got all caught up in it all, Ryder,” I say, a terrible weariness weighing down my words as I grip the painted iron handrail because if I don’t my knees might buckle. “You slept with me because I was the only one you could access during this. Just like I said before.”
I turn and push open the exit door to the floor and go to my office, unlocking the door.
“That’s not true.”
Of course he’s still there. Ryder’s tenacious and stubborn and even if I hate him, he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Funny, I thought once the gloss of him came off I’d see him differently. But he’s still him.
He just doesn’t really want me and he went all ham fisted about ending it.
At least we’ll have Paris. I almost laugh at the clichéd line. But I can’t because this isn’t funny at all.
“It is and we both know it.”
“I don’t know why I flirted with her, I wasn’t into her at all, Elliot.”
I suck in a breath. “You said. And yet, you did. And I got the message, loud and clear.”
He closes the door to the office and in the semidarkness of my closed offices, he leans back against the wall, hands behind his back, eyes shut.
Tired.
Tired and beautiful, a fallen angel, like something from his tattoos on his back. Except that’s me putting it on him. Because this isn’t real conflict. It’s him being his version of decent. He thinks he’s conflicted because he isn’t someone who doesn’t care. He isn’t someone who’s indifferent or worse, likes to cause pain.
Ryder doesn’t want me, but he wants me to feel better. And that, I think might make it all worse.
“I get it,” I say. “Like I’ve said, I get it.”
His eyes snap open and he looks at me steadily, but doesn’t say a word. There’s something there in his eyes I don’t quite get, but if it was a thing for me to hold on to, a thing to give me hope, he’d tell me. He’d fight.
And in that tiny moment I want that. I want a man to fight for me. To prove he wants me.
“You don’t.”
“Ryder…” I go to the desk where Lena sits and open a drawer. “I was easy access for a man like you.”
“No, you were difficult, are difficult. I fucked up. I know that. I thought—it doesn’t matter what I thought. I just figured you should have better.”
I nod. “Because you’ll fuck up? You won’t change?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Ryder, what is that meant to mean? Are you offering yourself to me as some kind of experiment? To see if you can keep sleeping with one woman, maybe see if you can form a relationship?”
“I think I might be. Elliot—”
“Because that’s a really half-assed, one foot out the door, selfish jerk move. I deserve better than that. I was easy access, but that access is gone. You go do you, Ryder. Really. I’m sure there are other women out there you can run your little experiment or trial on.”
“So you’re done? That it?” He straightens, frowning.
And I dig in the drawer for the keys I keep in a small box in there. I wrap my fingers around it and look down. “I think so. With you and me.”
There’s a silence but then he moves. I feel more than hear him approach. “No one else…no one out there is you, Elliot. I might want to fuck someone else, but I don’t want to hang out with them like I do you.”
