AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You did.” I stop in the entrance way as he shuts the door behind me. “I’m leaving. I’ve a vacation planned and I moved it up. I can’t be here anymore. Not for a while. Any loose ends, Andre will handle them.”
“I’m paying you.”
“You have paid me,” I corrected. “And I’m delegating. I know you’re getting your necklace, which will look very pretty on you. And you saved the company. So, Andre can handle the loose ends, if there are any.”
He nods, and he rubs the back of his neck. “It would look better on you, Elliot.”
My body starts to tingle. Not for some jewel, but what he’s saying behind it. “It’s not mine.”
“I fucked up, big time. I didn’t fight for you. I wasn’t honest. This is all new for me. You are like nothing I’ve ever known in my life. You’re my friend, and someone I want to spend weeks on end in bed with. You make me so angry and happy and unsure of myself. You make me secure and you make me feel like I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t get how that happens. Except, maybe it’s to do with how you just make me feel, Elliot.”
I keep the hope that’s trying to get free from escaping, because these aren’t the words I want to hear. Not completely. “Why did you ask her to Murray Hill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“She sounded sad? She kept calling? I wanted…maybe I wanted to see what would happen. Maybe I was so fucking angry you rejected me I thought I’d do it.”
The words slap me, hard. “I see.”
“I thought maybe I could, but that wasn’t why. I don’t know why. Shit, I wasn’t even interested in her at all. Elliot, I think you broke me.”
I start laughing even as tears burn my eyes and I’m not sure if they’re happy or sad. “I didn’t break you.”
Ryder wipes a finger under my eye. “Don’t cry, Elliot. I’m not worth it.”
“You are to me. That’s the problem. Maybe I came here because I wanted to see…to see you, to see why you called.”
“Maybe deep down it was a test,” he says, sounding a little dazed.
“Maybe.”
“To see if I could change, not for you to save me.” Ryder takes my face in his hands. “I actually was so fucking gobsmacked when she walked out naked—I’d been sitting there thinking about you, obsessing might be the word, and I had that text out…I wrote it as an SOS right back at the beginning. And maybe I wanted to see if you’d turn up—I just hit send.”
“And I show up.”
“You’re not a crutch, not like that. I want you to be a lot of things with me. All of them. And I want to be all those with you.”
Now I reach up, and run my fingers over those soft lips of his, the ones I dream about. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you can change, I think you have.”
“Because of you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “And maybe because of you, too. I see you, Ryder. All of you. You’re more than this ridiculously beautiful face of yours. You’re more than being amazing in bed. You’re more than charm and magnetism. You can be awkward. I know I am, and I like that you can be, too. It’s charming if we’re not arguing over you putting your foot in it. Your fucking up like that is what people do. It might cause you grief, make you feel like you’re in Dante’s hell—”
“Seventh circle, usually.”
I start to smile because I can’t contain the hope, it’s blooming like it’s got a life of its own. “It makes you human, Ryder.”
“So what’s your excuse for your perfection?”
“I’m not perfect.”
“To me, how you are is. You might frustrate the fuck out of me, but I don’t want you to be anything other than you are, Elliot.”
“That’s good, because I can’t be. I’m not great with the limelight. I hate half the events we went to. Except…except they weren’t so bad with you. And I like being in your light.”
“It’s the other way around. I’m better in yours.”
