The bitter smell of coffee and burnt toast woke me from my sleep. I sat up, wondering what my mother was doing downstairs. Shouldn’t she be at work? My bedroom door opened, and in walked an almost naked Ryder carrying a tray of food and drink.
“You’re awake, love.” He smiled at me when he saw me sitting up, bringing the tray over to the small table beside my bed. I suddenly became all too aware of the fact that I was completely naked with nothing covering me but a blanket. I pulled it up around my shoulders, trying to save some of my modesty.
“Uhm…what?” I started to ask Ryder what had happened and why we lacked clothes when a clap of thunder boomed over the house, making me jump almost out of my skin. The blanket I’d been using to cover up slipped down to my waist. I felt my cheeks warm as I realised everything was on display for him and quickly pulled the cover up again.
Ryder let out a soft chuckle. “No need to be embarrassed. I’ve seen it all before, yeah?” His tone wasn’t mocking but was calm and reassuring because he was right. He had seen it all before, just that morning in fact. But perhaps it was because we were in a different situation to the one we were in that morning that I felt more exposed and awkward. Vulnerable.
“You need to eat and drink. Build your strength back up.” He handed me the coffee and brushed a stray strand of hair from my face. “You scared me earlier. You were so out of it.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, bringing the mug to my mouth and inhaling the comforting scent. I wasn’t even sure what had happened earlier. The events were all a little fuzzy.
“I got you some warm clothes, and I hope you don’t mind that I put mine in the dryer.” Ryder watched me as I sipped on the coffee, allowing it to warm my veins. I nibbled at the toast, not realising how I hungry I had been until then.
“That’s fine. Thank you.” We sat in silence a while longer while I ate the toast and drank the coffee.
“So we have a lot to discuss then.” He winced as he spoke. We did? I raised my eyebrow at him, unsure of what he was talking about.
“Chace, this morning. The fight. Last night. The…the…b…baby.” Ryder closed his eyes as he tried to jog my memory. It all came rushing back in like a flood of information. My brain suddenly cleared, and I remembered everything from that morning. Chace and Christina telling me Ryder had a secret family, leaving school in the rain, Chace driving me home, him and Ryder fighting in the front yard, me almost contracting hypothermia, and Ryder drying me off and keeping me warm, practically saving my life.
“Do you have a kid?” I blurted out without thinking. Ryder looked taken aback briefly but quickly managed to compose himself.
“No. Well, sort of, I guess. He’s not mine, though.” He ran a hand through his curls and closed his eyes. “Uhm, I think it’s best if I start from the beginning.” He knotted his hands together. I felt so confused. How could he have a kid but not at the same time? It made no sense.
“Okay. Uhm, do you think, maybe you can let me dress first? I’m kind of cold,” I said. He nodded and walked out of the room, leaving me alone to gather my thoughts and my clothes. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say, but at the same time, I couldn’t keep guessing and trying to work out what he was hiding. I needed to know but was scared of what the truth could be. I quickly pulled on the clothes that Ryder had set out for me on my bed and waited for him to return. It seemed like hours later when the door finally creaked open slowly and Ryder’s head poked through.
“Good?” he asked, making sure he was okay to come in.
“Yeah.” I watched as the door opened to reveal a completely dried and dressed Ryder. He smiled a half smile and nervously ran his hands through his hair as he came to sit beside me on my bed.
“I need you to remember one thing,” he said, watching and waiting for me to answer. Unsure if my voice would even work now, I felt a lump forming in my throat. I nodded instead. “This thing between you and me.” He gestured between us. “It’s real. No matter what I’m about to tell you, just remember that it’s you, Bailey. It’s always been you.”
My heart stuttered at his words, at the confirmation I’d wanted to hear for weeks, that it wasn’t just me, and he felt it too. But with those words came a feeling of dread. Like whatever he was about to say would overshadow those few words and rip everything apart.
“How much do you remember of me before you and Chace started dating?” he asked. It was an entirely random question and not what I was expecting at all.
“Uhm, a little, I guess. It’s kind of a blur. I don’t really remember much of you until after you came back.”
“I thought so. We’ve been going to school together since third grade, but I was always just a shadow. I never really made much of an impression on anyone.” He looked down, sad. I felt terrible and confused as to how I could have overlooked someone as amazing as Ryder all those years.
“I wasn’t always the bad boy. I hate that people label me that. I’m not a bad boy. You know that. You’ve seen that. I’ve just been dealing with a lot of stuff the past couple of years. But I’m not bad.
“The baby you asked me about is my nephew. My twin sister’s son. That’s what I’ve been dealing with. Helping her raise him. Not a secret family of my own and not a string of girls climbing in and out of my bed every other night. That reputation is all lies. One some girls made up to make themselves look better. I never stopped it because I never cared what people thought of me.”
His nephew? My mouth dropped open in shock. I knew he wasn’t a bad boy. But I had no idea he had a twin sister. Or nephew. She must have been so young and terrified. I couldn’t imagine going through that. So that was what Ryder had been doing. He’d been looking after his sister and her son. But I still didn’t understand how I could have known him since third grade and only started paying attention to him the last couple of years.
“Your nephew? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, feeling hurt that he thought he should hide it from me.
“This is where it gets complicated and messy.” He sighed as he reached out for my hand. I let him twist our fingers together and waited for him to speak. “My sister had been with her boyfriend since they were thirteen. He was my best mate. We’d grown up together riding bikes and playing football in the street. He was charming. He outshone everyone. I couldn’t compare next to him. He was the golden boy, and I was nobody. No one ever saw me.”
I found it hard to believe that anyone could overlook Ryder with his bright green eyes and those beautiful dimples when he smiled. He just had this air about him that commanded attention. I remembered him throughout the years but as nothing more than a fellow student. I wracked my brains to try to remember anything—who he was friends with, what classes we had together—but I couldn’t remember. He was always just there. Just a presence but never of any significance. And I felt horrible the more I thought about it.
“It was inevitable that my sister would fall for his charm. Every girl did. She was fifteen when she fell pregnant, and terrified of it. How could she raise a baby? Termination wasn’t an option for her because she could never take an innocent life like that. But she was terrified all the same. I sat with her while she told our mum, who cried for days but eventually came round. She was a fantastic support for my sister. Without her, I don’t think my sister or I would have been able to handle everything that followed. I was with her the day she told her boyfriend too.”
I was listening intensely. Ryder’s grip on my hand tightened to the point I was sure he would crush my fingers. His jaw was tense, and there was a fury in his eyes I didn’t understand.
“Ouch, Ryder. You’re hurting me,” I whispered, trying to wiggle my fingers.
“Oh sorry, love. I didn’t mean to.” He quickly released his grip on my fingers, rubbing them gently to ease the pain.
“It’s okay.” I rested my head on his shoulder and let him continue.
“I thought everything would be okay and that he would be there for my sister and support her. He was a good guy like that. But I was wrong. He accused her of sleeping with someone else and saying the baby wasn’t his. She was fifteen, for God’s sake. She wasn’t sleeping around. Eventually he came to realise that he really was the father. I thought that he’d finally step up and be a man, but I was wrong again. He had money. A lot of it. His family offered my sister a ridiculous amount of money to get rid of it, but like I said before, that wasn’t an option for her.”
“They tried to pay your sister off to terminate the baby?” I asked, in complete shock that anyone could be so cruel and heartless.
“Yes, but she refused their money. Needless to say, she and her boyfriend broke up, and I lost my best mate. But that was the best thing that could have happened to either of us. Things got worse for a while. His family had a lot of influence in this town. The slander began, shaming my sister, making her feel worthless. It was horrible to watch my vibrant, outgoing sister turn into a hermit who was too afraid to leave the house. So my mum decided the best thing for her was to go and live with our aunt until after the baby was born. She wanted to get her away from this town and the jerks that live here.”
I didn’t remember any of it. Surely if I went to school with Ryder, I would have known his sister. A pregnant fifteen year old in a town this small was hard to keep secret. Yet somehow, I had managed to miss that too.
“And it worked. I went with her for a few months to help her settle in. I was with her for every appointment and ultrasound. I didn’t leave her side until I was sure she was going to be okay. When I started to see her old self return, I came home. But I came back a different person. Before all of that happened, I’d always just blended into the shadows. Into the crowd. I never really fit in. When I returned, I wanted to put as much distance between me and that asshole as possible. And that’s how the bad boy rep started. It began with an eyebrow piercing and new clothes. Just like you did over the summer.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Ryder went through exactly what I did, except worse. His sister became a single mother at sixteen. He lost his best friend. His reputation and his family’s reputation had been tarnished by some jerk. But he’d reinvented himself and came out the other side a better person.
“It all sort of escalated from there. The ditching school and being late for class was not really my fault. It usually had to do with me travelling three hours back to my sister whenever she needed me, which became more frequent once Cole was born.”
“Cole?”
“Cole Ryder Jones.” He smiled proudly. “The greatest kid in the world.”
“Wow, Ryder. I don’t know what to say. You’ve been through so much. And your sister. She’s amazing to get through all of that. You’re a wonderful brother, and Cole is lucky to have you for an uncle.” I reached down and squeezed his hand in mine.
“Thanks, Bailey, but I think I’m lucky to have them, not the other way around. Anyway, that was what I was doing while I was away. Moving Kenzie and Cole home again. It took a lot of time and a lot of begging, pleading, and persuading on my part, but I eventually convinced her enough was enough and she shouldn’t be ashamed anymore. She should be proud and should come home. But last night, when I ran out of here, he’d found out she was back and that she’d kept the baby. His family had led him to believe that she’d terminated the baby and left town out of embarrassment when they’d really been paying her to keep quiet.”
“What happened?” I asked as a sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I suddenly felt nervous and afraid for the sister and nephew I hadn’t even met. Her ex-boyfriend was a real tool.
“He came round to the house yelling and screaming and throwing things, calling her names and demanding that she take the kid and leave town again. By the time I got there, he’d already left, and it took all of my willpower not to go to his house and beat the life out of him.”
“Why didn’t you? He deserved it.” I was surprised he was able to control himself after all that. His poor sister. I hoped Cole hadn’t witnessed it.
“The look on Cole’s face stopped me. He was scared and crying and curled up in Kenzie’s arms. I decided it was more important to make sure they were okay than to beat the douche’s head in. I can do that anytime,” he said, mumbling something else under his breath that I couldn’t quite catch.
“So I took them both for ice cream and then sat up all night while Kenzie cried. We talked until the early hours and decided that everyone should know the truth. What he did. What his family did. The hell they put my family through. Everyone is going to know.”
“Anything you need, I’m here. I’m sorry for doubting you this morning.” I turned to face him, guilt washing over me as I looked at his sad face. I was so ready to believe that he had been with another girl the night after he’d surprised me at the dance. I was a horrible person for even considering it a possibility.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you. But now that you know, can we go back to the way things were this morning before you went to school?”
“You still want to be my fake boyfriend even after Christina practically announced to the whole school that you were cheating on me?” Hopefully he would still want to continue the way we had been. I couldn’t lose him completely.
“No, Bailey. I don’t want to be your fake boyfriend,” he said. My heart dropped. That was it. He was actually ending it. “I don’t really think either of us has been pretending for a long time. Do you?” He smiled.
I felt my cheeks heat up as I realised he had known for a while that I liked him. “No, I don’t think so, either. So what are you saying?”
Butterflies were erupting in my stomach as I waited for his answer, hoping like hell I hadn’t read the situation entirely wrong.
“Like I said before, it’s always been you. Before I left with Kenz to go to our aunt’s, it was you. You never noticed me, but I sure as hell saw you, Bailey.” He brought his hand up to cup my cheek, slowly leaning closer.
“You did?” My heart skipped a beat or three hearing him admit that. “Why did you never say anything?” I whispered, leaning in closer to him too, breathing in his scent. He always smelled the same. So distinctly Ryder. And I loved it.
“I came back, and you were with Chace. I lost my chance then, but I’m not losing it this time. Say you’ll be mine, Bailey,” he demanded, brushing his lips softly across mine and then down toward my jaw.
“Yes,” I breathed. A jolt of electricity went coursing through my veins as his hand came to rest on my hip.
“For real this time, Bailey. Tell me you’re mine. I need you.”
“Yours,” I mumbled, unable to form a coherent sentence while Ryder’s lips worked their way down my throat and my fingers threaded into his hair. “All yours, Jones.”