Chapter Thirteen
Silence pressed in around Juliet as she gaped at Ryder. Her heart gave a wild leap at his stunning admission, but she quashed it ruthlessly. She’d quit looking at his reflection and was staring straight at him.
No. No, no, no. This could not be happening. She’d been clear—crystal clear—about this.
He held up his hands in front of him in a placatory way as if he knew he’d overstepped the mark. “I’m not asking you to love me back, Juliet. I’m not asking you to stay behind for me, or not go to Italy.”
Juliet almost choked. “I fucking hope not.”
Hot acid lashed her oesophagus. She’d given up her dream for love once before and she’d told him she wouldn’t do it again. She’d told him no man was going to keep her from her dream.
How dare he fall in love with her.
“I’m just saying how it is. I can’t pretend that this is just sex. To be perfectly honest, this has never been just sex for me.”
Juliet wondered absently if some alien force had rappelled down from their ship and replaced her brain. Or his brain, for that matter. “I said no love. I was very specific.”
“I know. But hell, Juliet, it’s not something we have much control over, is it? I didn’t plan it. It just…happened, and I’m sorry but I don’t want this to be just sex. I’m sorry I changed my mind.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So…this is my fault, is it? I’m the…bitch who wants only sex? Who won’t change her mind? Who rejects love? Oh no—”
She pushed away from the vanity. She couldn’t stand being this close to him. Not when there was a tiny traitorous thing unfurling inside at his admission, like a petal opening, pushing up and out, searching for sunshine.
She had to squash that thing dead.
Juliet strode to the doorway and turned. “I’m not going to be the bad guy here, Ryder, because you can’t be like every other man out there and think with your dick.”
He turned, leaning his ass on the edge of the vanity. Even from a few metres away she could see the whitening at the angle of his jaw. “I’m not asking you for anything, Juliet. I’m not asking you to stay.” His voice was like gravel. “I would never do that.”
“Then why would you even say those words in the first place?” Did he want her to go to the other side of the world feeling shitty and crappy about leaving him behind brokenhearted?
If he did love her, why would he do that?
“Maybe because…” He folded his arms across his naked chest and for a moment or two he looked like he wasn’t going to say what was on his mind. But then, jaw set, he ploughed on. “I was hoping you might feel the same way?”
Juliet gasped at his audacity. She did not love Ryder Davis. She. Did. Not.
A cynical smile touched his mouth. “Is it so hard to believe that you could let me into your heart as well as your body?”
“That wasn’t what this was about,” she yelled.
“You honestly think you get any choice in these matters?” He gave a dismissive snort. “Wake up. What the hell do you think we’ve been doing for the last six weeks?”
“Fucking.” She took the word and hurled it at him with as much force as she could. She would not romanticise this.
He shoved a hand on his hip. “It’s just been fucking to you?”
“I told you that was all it could be.”
“Yeah, you did.” He strode two paces forward until he was close enough for her to touch him. “And we fucked. A lot. And then we went out places and you met my friends and we got to know each other and we laughed and talked into the night and I gave you a key to my place and you gave me a key to yours and, stupidly, I thought I might be starting to mean more to you than some life support for a dick.”
He threw the word back at her with such contempt it puffed her fringe against her forehead.
The crazy thing was, he did. He did mean more than that to her. So much more. She liked and respected him. He was a great guy, who was good with dogs and drag queens and a good friend. She had no doubt one day he’d make a great junior coach.
But love…?
“How do you even know something like this after six weeks?”
She searched his face—his sexy, gorgeous face—for answers because it seemed utterly implausible. Sure, she’d fallen for her ex pretty quickly, but she’d been young and grieving and vulnerable.
She and Ryder were emotionally stable grown-ups.
He shook his head like it was obvious. “When you’ve been with a lot of women, you know when one is different, Juliet.”
The conviction in his voice rang like a bell.
God…this was her own stupid fault. She should have known better than to get involved with Ryder when she was leaving in two months. Apart from her brief period of revenge sex, she wasn’t someone who picked men up and discarded them.
Why on earth did she think she could do that with a man who had consumed her every waking and sleeping thought since he’d skidded into the shelter looking for help with Tiny?
God. Tiny…
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I’m leaving, Ryder.”
“I know.”
“Then how did you think this was going to play out?”
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought that far. Maybe we could…do a long distance thing?”
“What?” Juliet blinked. Very, very long distance. “Are you going to…wait for me, Ryder?”
He shrugged. “It could work. I can’t take off to Italy right now, we’re not even halfway through the season yet. But I could come after. For a while.”
So he could come. For a while. After the season was over. Maybe. And then her whole trip she’d dreamed about forever would suddenly revolve around him and when he could make it over for a visit.
“And you could be celibate, faithful, true only to me, in that time?”
He frowned at her, clearly affronted by the implication he couldn’t. “Yes. Absolutely.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “And what’s the longest you’ve gone without having sex since you pulled on that blue and silver jersey?” His gaze didn’t leave hers, but the calculations going on behind his eyes weren’t coming out in his favour. “A few days? A week? Two?”
He didn’t answer and frankly Juliet didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to think about the women who would come after her. She hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the ones before her, but the ones who would walk through this apartment and share Ryder’s bed after she’d gone?
Her chest ached at the thought.
She needed something to kill this long distance fantasy off. They’d both be miserable living that out. Her planning her movements around him. Ryder’s game performance suffering until he got benched or booted from the team. Every Sydney Smoke fan in the country making voodoo dolls in her image and sticking pins in her.
She didn’t need that kind of karma.
“I don’t think I could be celibate.” His eyebrows pulled down like big black wings. He was clearly shocked by her announcement, which annoyed her even more. “What?” she demanded. “I have appetites.”
Except the thought of taking an Italian lover—any lover—left a yawning emptiness in her belly. Like a stone freefalling into an abyss.
God damn him, she was supposed to be taking Italian lovers.
His mouth had flattened into a grim line. “I know all about your appetites, Juliet. I also know that I’m the only one who can feed them.”
It was an arrogantly preposterous statement, but Juliet very much feared it was true. That he’d ruined her for all other men. And it panicked the hell out of her.
She knew what she had to do now.
Should have done two weeks ago after their argument and before the subsequent angry sex. They only had two weeks left anyway. Might as well go cold turkey and be over the worst of it when she walked onto that plane.
“We’re done here.”
He didn’t try to argue or plead for more time. He just nodded and said, “Yeah, we are,” his lips a grim slash in the mask of his face, his jaw clenched tight.
It was his game face, stoic, staring down his enemy, not giving anything away.
A swell of emotion lodged in her throat and Juliet swallowed hard against it. He looked untouchable, a far cry from the fun guy she’d fallen into bed with, and it clawed at her, tugging at her conscience, making it impossible to walk away.
“I’m sorry. This is my fault. I should have said no to you that first time.”
His mouth cracked into a ghost of a smile. “I’m a hard guy to say no to.”
Juliet almost laughed. Wasn’t that the truth? “Good-bye, Ryder. It’s been fun.”
He inclined his head, his jaw still hard enough to break stone. “Bon voyage.”
She turned on her heel, unable to bear the stiffness of his frame, the frostiness of his response, or the heaviness of her heart a moment longer.
It wasn’t how she’d planned on saying good-bye to Ryder. But it was probably for the best. Leaving the country with her feelings for Ryder still tangled up in his bed sheets would have been hard, leaving with those feelings severed with all the force of an axe would make it easy to fly into the wild blue yonder.
Or at least that’s what she told herself as she walked away.
…
Juliet refused to spend the last two weeks of her time in Australia crying over Ryder. She’d made her decision and she refused to look back, to dwell. Sure, she didn’t change her sheets because she couldn’t bear to erase his spicy passionfruit scent, and ordering Chinese for one made her want to bawl like a baby, but she didn’t. If she gave in to tears she’d get nothing done and she had lots of things to do—people to say good-bye to, farewell parties to attend. She had to finish up at work and sort through her stuff and pack her bags.
She was busy. And grateful for it.
Too busy to think about Ryder and what he was up to. To think about his ankle or his training schedule or his game performance. Way too busy to think about how he looked in a tux, or his jersey, or bare-assed naked.
Too busy to remember how he laughed. How he kissed. How he fucked. Or his arrogant assertion that only he could feed her appetites.
She made two concessions—besides the sheets—to this deliberate denial of Ryder’s existence. The first was calling the vet and checking on Tiny. He’d stayed for three days after his operation, and she rang every day until he was discharged straight into the care of his owners who’d returned from their travels.
The second was boxing up all the crap he’d left behind in her apartment and dumping it on his front doorstep one morning when he was at training. She’d literally dumped and run on the impossibly rare chance that he was somehow inside the apartment at ten in the morning, lying in wait for her.
Seeing him again would not be helpful. In fact, seeing him again could well be catastrophic to her equilibrium. She’d made a clean break and she was fine with it. She’d even convinced herself she was over him. Congratulated herself on such a swift recovery.
She did not want to call that into account or test the theory by coming face to face with him. She was happy living in her state of denial.
And that was it. The box was delivered and her hands were washed of Ryder Davis. He’d live on in her memory and no doubt her dreams—probably forever—but she’d closed the book on him.
And closed it stayed. Right up until the moment she was standing in the line to board her flight trying to ignore the heavy ache in her chest.
Damn it. She was supposed to be elated, euphoric. Happy-excited adrenaline was supposed to be flowing, not the impending-sense-of-doom adrenaline washing dread through her system.
The line was long and slow and she desperately tried to distract herself from the ludicrous squall of emotions battering her. She read the advertising posters around her, all glossy and slick, selling perfume and watches and luxury car models.
And rugby.
Juliet blinked. Was this some kind of sick joke? But no. There he was, just behind the airline staff checking boarding passes. Ryder Davis, in full Technicolour, staring back at her from a poster, arm in arm with four of his fellow Sydney Smoke teammates. His jersey hugged his chest and biceps and his shorts clung to his thighs and his mouth glinted in the light, his lips curving up into a smile that hinted at all the wicked things they could do to a woman’s body.
Her heart skipped a beat, then sped up, then fell apart, crumbling in her chest.
Oh crap.
She loved him. She loved Ryder Davis.
She loved his stupid face and his dumb smile and his idiotic biceps. Ever since he’d begged her for help with Tiny—that had been the moment she’d fallen for him. So big and capable and so damn confounded by an animal.
And leaving him would tear her in two.
The ache in her chest intensified. God fucking damn it. Why couldn’t she have this? Why couldn’t she just have Italy?
Juliet’s brain raced as the line inched forward, trying to figure out how she could have both—Ryder and Italy—while her heart haemorrhaged in her chest.
She could just go for a few months. Or even a few weeks. Have a short holiday. Rome and Florence and Venice. Head to Verona and spread her mother’s ashes. Then come home and hope like hell he hadn’t taken up with someone else. Or she could ring him from Italy and tell him she’d changed her mind, that she wanted a long distance relationship.
That they could make it work.
A dozen other scenarios presented themselves as she stared at his gorgeous face but none of them stopped her heart from bleeding. None of them made her want to get on that plane.
“Are you okay?”
The gate official, a brunette with immaculate makeup and kind eyes, looked at her with a wrinkled brow. It was only then Juliet realised there were tears tracking down her face and a sob hovering at the back of her throat.
She shook her head and said, “No. I love him.”
“Oh dear.” The woman nodded sagely. She was older, maybe forty, and probably seen her share of tears at departure gates. “Your…boyfriend?”
“Him.” Juliet pointed at Ryder, his face bigger now the poster was a couple of metres away.
So close and yet so far away.
The woman looked over her shoulder and laughed. “Well yes.” She turned back with a big smile. “All the women love him.”
Yes. They did. But he was hers. A hot spike of jealousy ripped through her. Ryder was hers.
“So…you’ve changed your mind?” She indicated toward the boarding pass that Juliet was currently scrunching into a ball in her hand.
Juliet blinked at it. “Oh. I…”
Yes. No. Had she?
The woman, obviously sensing the impatience from the people behind, smiled kindly. “How about you just step over this way?” Gently, she guided Juliet by the elbow off to the side and another step closer to Ryder. “Have a little think?”
Think? What was there to think about with Ryder’s smug smile and his ridiculous muscles taunting her from the picture?
She loved him. She couldn’t leave the country knowing that. Keep it from him for weeks or months. Hell, her vocal chords were straining against the urge to yell it out right now. And not over the phone, either. Not when he’d ripped his heart out of his chest and lain it down between them that night.
He deserved the truth and she couldn’t cop out that way.
Maybe rejecting him the way she did had hurt him too much to expect anything to come of it—but she had to try. Had to lay her heart before him, too.
And there was always Italy…
Christ. Since when had Italy become her back up plan? She couldn’t believe she was even thinking it.
She was still staring at the poster, tears leaking from her eyes, gathering the courage to do what had to be done, when the woman approached again fifteen minutes later. “Should I print you out another boarding pass?” she asked, her voice soothing and unruffled.
Juliet absently wondered if she learned it in airline college. “I love him,” she repeated, as if it was explanation enough, her gaze eating Ryder up.
The woman glanced at the poster with a perfectly arched eyebrow, then back at Juliet. “Well then go get him, honey.”
Juliet was pretty sure the woman thought she was a little delusional, but it was the best damn piece of advice she’d ever received.
“Thank you.” Juliet grabbed her and hugged hard. “I will.”
The woman laughed as she extracted herself. “Invite me to the wedding.”
God…wedding. Juliet didn’t even dare hope. First things first.
Go get Ryder back.