I now knew that Meg was beautiful and Brayden was as handsome as Ryker. I knew this because every time I woke up and opened my eyes for the first two days, I immediately stared at a picture of the three of them. Ryker’s arms were around the both of them. The photo was framed and propped up on his dresser directly across from the bed. No matter where I looked in the room, I felt their happy, easy smiles mocking me.
Even after I threw a towel across the room, which knocked the photo over and covered it up, I could still feel his family’s happy smiles staring at me all hours of every day.
What hurt worse was that I hadn’t seen Ryker since he brought me to his room at the club. Every morning I woke up with decreasing hope that he’d be lying next to me, an arm wrapped around me like he first did as soon as he showed up at the hotel. But that had all changed when he saw the blood on my back. The way he flinched and looked away from me.
He hadn’t looked me in the eyes since.
He was avoiding me and the only thing I could figure out was that he might have saved me, but he had his own family. All I was to him was someone to save. A friend of Liv’s that he’d been able to help. That was it.
Gone were his promises of always coming for me. Unless he meant that only in the if-you-need-your-life-saved way.
I wanted to get the hell out of Ryker’s room except I had nowhere else to go. The only other option was Daemon’s house where Olivia now lived with him, but I also knew Ryker was staying there until he found his own place.
I couldn’t go anywhere to escape.
So I tortured myself in Ryker’s room—smelling his cologne on his sheets and bathroom towels. I tortured myself by mentally taking an exacto knife to the picture I could no longer see and erasing Ryker’s woman from his bedroom and his memory.
Mostly, I tortured myself by trying to put myself in his room like I actually belonged. If five years ago he had come inside my house when he saw Cain mauling me with his mouth and beat the shit out of him instead of turning tail and fleeing town, everything would have been different.
I hated him for not being smart enough to know I would never turn my back on him.
Yet knowing what must have been going through his mind that night, I couldn’t blame him either.
And none of it changed the fact that as much as I wanted Ryker, as much as I wanted his arms around me, soothing me, and telling me that everything would be okay and that I would eventually move passed the horrific memories that flooded my mind, I knew that some other woman owned that spot now.
My head snapped up as the door slammed open and banged against the wall behind it.
The walls shook and rattled as Ryker stomped inside his room, bloodied and battered, a shredded shirt in his fist. All my earlier anger with him vanished instantly as I threw back the sheet covering me.
I gasped. “Are you okay?” I twisted myself on the bed, placing my feet on the floor, and curled one arm around my ribs as I stood up.
“Fucking fantastic.” He stood in the doorway, chest heaving with blood everywhere, and kept his eyes trained on me. We stood across the room from one another, one bed and ten feet of space between us as we stared at each other. It felt like the space of the Grand Canyon.
Tension prickled the air. I expected him to yell at me, to shake me into finally speaking to him. My hands itched to clean the blood off him, to inspect his cuts and gashes and bruises like he had done to me when he helped Doc stitch me up.
But my feet felt paralyzed, too afraid to move and make the first step to him. Too afraid of what it would mean to put myself on the line like that—even as small as that step would be—and be rejected all over again once Meg and his kid came into the picture.
He stalked across the room, grabbing a clean shirt out of his dresser on the way, and then slammed the door to the bathroom shut.
My legs collapsed, and I plopped back down onto the edge of the bed as I heard the water running in the bathroom. My fingers fiddled with the edges of the bed as I tried to wrap my head around what possibly could have happened to him to leave him such a wreck. He was strong—the well-defined chest that I couldn’t have possibly missed as he stalked across the room before was a visual testament to his strength.
He was more beautiful than he had been when we were simply teenagers.
“Faith.” My head jerked behind me—my cheeks instantly heated as if I’d been caught with my hand in a cookie jar.
Lost in my revere of Ryker’s half-naked body, I hadn’t heard Daemon enter the room.
He stood in the doorway, his arms crossed and his shoulder propped on the frame. “Talk to him.”
I almost smiled, seeing him standing there, looking so powerful and strong. Daemon’s goatee needed a trim. When I had said that to Live earlier, she had smiled and laughed, but it didn’t reach her eye. Somehow I knew she was simply laughing for my sake, and both of us knew Daemon wouldn’t do anything he was told to do.
“There’s nothing for us to say to one another.”
Daemon laughed once. It was deep and his frustration with me showed. Everyone’s frustration with me showed clearly on their faces when I refused to tell them what had happened to me. I figured the scars and bruised ribs said it all.
“You two have a boatload of shit to figure out. Do it before the dumbass gets his brains bashed in the next time he steps into the ring.” He left, leaving me staring after him with my jaw dropped to my chest, shutting the door behind him.
I flung my head around back to the bathroom that was now quiet. Ryker came out with a towel wrapped around his waist and a white shirt on. One hand gripped the towel as the steam from his shower followed him into the room.
He glanced at me once before turning to his dresser and pulling out a pair of jeans. He didn’t look at me again when he went back to the bathroom to finish dressing or when he came back out to the bedroom, flung his new leather cut over his shoulders, and loaded up his pockets with his wallet and change.
Red scratches, lined with blood, covered the area above his eyebrows and his cheekbones. Daemon’s words bounced in my head. The thought that Ryker had that happen to him—because he was pissed something happened to me—filled me with a mixture of emotions I couldn’t place.
“Who did that to you?”
His back straightened at the first words I spoke to him in days. Not because I hadn’t wanted to, but because I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say when he didn’t want me… not in that way, at least.
He paused in his steps, looked back over my shoulder—not at me—and said, “Jaden.” Then his steps continued.
He was halfway to the door of his room before my mouth started working.
“I don’t blame you, you know.”
I looked down at the floor, unable to watch to see if anything I said mattered to him at all. And because I was looking at my feet, I didn’t hear him quietly pad back over to me until I heard his breath directly above my head. His bare feet appeared in my line of vision.
“Blame me for what?” His deep, gravelly voice rolled over my shoulders. It felt like a soothing balm to the aches on my skin and the bruises that were healing as I shivered beneath him.
I could never help my physical reaction to Ryker when he was so close to me.
It terrified me, wondering if I’d ever be able to get over the man who had meant so much to me but so clearly moved on.
I bit my tongue and shook my head. The fear of the honesty that would pour from my mouth prevented me from speaking.
His thumb was at my chin, pulling my face to his but I turned my head and only saw his dresser. Underneath the towel was a corner of the silver frame I’d knocked over.
“What don’t you blame me for?” His thumb tightened on my chin as he spoke and his words were more tightly clipped, as if he had to restrain himself from lashing out.
“None of it.” I swallowed, sandpaper lined the edges of my throat and my tongue as I tried to tell him that even when I had wished he’d come back for me, I always understood why he’d left. Not that it hadn’t hurt, it still did, but it never changed the fact that I always got why he felt the need to put Jasper Bay in the rearview mirror and never look back.
He tugged my chin so I stared directly into his eyes. His left eye was swollen, almost matching my bruised one, and the cuts above his right eye leaked a tiny trail of blood drops down the edges of his eye. My breath hitched as I stared into his black as night eyes that swirled with unspoken thoughts I couldn’t decipher.
“Would you have had to work for Black Death if I’d stayed? If I would have stayed weeks ago, do you think you would have ended up like this?” His eyes quickly scanned my body, and I watched his eyes flash in anger and horror.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
His hand fell from my chin and he took a step toward his dresser. He scoffed in disgust, his hand flying to the back of his neck and rubbing fiercely.
“Damnit, Faith!” I jumped as one of his arms swung out, and in one large swoop, all the knick knacks and towels and change that littered the top of his dresser smashed to a mess on the floor. “Don’t you fucking get it?” he yelled, facing me with his face a mask of complete and utter rage. He pointed at himself. “It’s all my fucking fault!”
Fear spread through my veins at his outburst. Never had he scared me in such a way like he did in that moment with his breath filling the room and the remains of his outburst scattered all over the floor. In an instant, I was curled into a ball on the floor up against the bed; my knees curled to my chest and my arms wrapped around them. The pain shooting from my ribs was minimal compared to the pounding in my head.
“Fuck!” He roared and stared at me wide-eyed, his hands balling and flexing into fists over and over again.
My entire body shook as tears filled my eyes. I closed them, trying to prevent them from falling, but it was no use once Ryker’s arms surrounded me and he held me, still curled into a ball, and sat us both on the bed.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Faith.”
My shoulders shook against his chest and I shook my head furiously back and forth. I swallowed and tried to tell him it wasn’t him, because it really wasn’t, but all that came out was a garbled sob.
He shushed me, and with one of his hands on the back of my head, he held me tightly and securely to him. “I’m so fucking sorry for scaring you.”
“You didn’t—”
“I did. Jesus, Faith. This is why I haven’t tried to see you since you’ve been here. All this rage in me, all the anger and disappointment with myself. I’m too much of a loose cannon to be around you. Not with you still reminding me of everything.”
I tensed in his arms and tried to pry myself out of his iron grip. Of course. Of course I would remind Ryker of all the shit in his life.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but it was too late. I understood completely.
He tried to pull me back to him, but my hands finally uncurled from my knees and I pushed him away.
Wiping my nose, I nodded. “I got it.”
I stood up, searching for new clothes to wear. I’d find a new place to stay. Maybe Jules would take me in. It would just be for a few weeks while I found a new job and a new place to live—maybe somewhere other than Jasper Bay. God knew it was time I tried to put the past behind me, even if it wasn’t in the past yet.
I was halfway through finding a new outfit to put on, something nicer than the knit shorts and Nordic Lords T-shirt Liv kept supplying me with, when Ryker’s hand wrapped around my wrist.
“Look at me.”
I shook my head. No way. He yanked on my arm again until I was standing in front of him while he spread his legs on the bed in front of me.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I looked at the door behind him. Twelve steps and I could figure out a way to start my life over. Again. “I know.”
“Is that why your pulse is pounding against my fingers and you look about two seconds from bolting.” My eyes flickered to his. I saw nothing but anger.
It shocked me.
“You’re… you’re mad at me?”
He dropped my hand as if I’d burned him and his eyebrows rose. “No… shit. I’m not mad at you.”
“Then what?” Protective instincts instantly surrounded me. Somehow, I suddenly had no idea what I was feeling when it came to Ryker, but something told me I could get hurt. And quickly.
He pushed off the bed and walked around it, immediately putting space—lots of space—between us. For some reason I was more fearful of the space than I was of his outburst.
With his hands fisted on his hips and his feet braced as if ready for the fight his life, he raked my body slowly with his eyes. Everywhere he looked heated under his narrowed and fierce eyes. “I didn’t mean that you remind of me the shitty times. I meant that every time I look at you, I’m reminded of how much I’ve failed.”
I stood there, our stances matching, hands on our hips, chests both raising and lowering, and tears fell again.
Jesus. When had I become such a damn ball of emotions? For years I had been able to bottle them all up and shove them into a corner of a room I never entered. Weeks ago Ryker entered my life and suddenly I was a bumbling mess. I swiped the tears away with my fingertips.
My lips twitched and I nodded. “I think it’s better if I go somewhere else. I think… I’m doing better. I just…”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “I think it’d be better if I did.”
“Where would you go?”
His question was sarcastic and I knew he was right—where else could I go?
“I don’t know, but you have a family and it’d be better if I wasn’t here, in this room or this place. I need to go somewhere else.”
While I talked, I watched his shoulders soften and he took a few hesitant steps toward me until the space between us was minimal.
“You’re my family.”
God I wish I could be. I shook my head. “I’m not…” My eyes glanced to the broken frame on my floor. When I glanced back to Ryker, his eyes had trailed mine and his mouth was slack.
“You did hear me in the hotel,” he nodded toward the photo on the floor, “talking to them.”
My chin shook as I willed my body to stay strong. I would not cry again. My tongue pressed against the inside of my teeth.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, looking over his shoulder and no longer at him. I couldn’t.
Quietly, he laughed once and then his hands were cupping my cheeks. “Is that why you threw that fit in the hotel? Because of Meg and Brayden?”
I stiffened in his hands. They felt too warm, too perfect, and so… not mine.
“It’s none of my business. I think that you saved me, and I appreciate it.”
“You appreciate it.” His eyes danced with a small amount of humor as I tried to look away from him.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “But really, I should go somewhere else to heal. I’ll be fine.”
His lips pulled into a full smile. I didn’t know what in the hell was so funny. “You are a stubborn, stupid girl.”
“I’m not—”
“Jesus, Faith. What did you think that kiss was for in the hotel? When I couldn’t keep my hands off you? You think I’m the kind of man to cheat on someone?”
I had asked myself those same questions. Never had I thought of an answer that made sense. One of my shoulders rose and dropped. “Old time’s sake? We have history and it was overwhelming.”
This time, Ryker’s fingers pressed into my cheeks and he threw his head back and laughed. My body felt inflamed with heat at the glorious sound and at the frustration that he was laughing at me.
“You’re fucking shitting me!” he exclaimed when he was done laughing, still wiping water off his cheeks. “Don’t you think we’ve wasted enough time with misunderstandings? Why didn’t you just fucking ask me?”
I was so lost I couldn’t find myself with a map and a compass. “I heard you—”
His eyes darkened instantly. “They’re not mine.”
“He called you daddy.”
Ryker shook his head, the damn smile still on his lips while I was mortified we were discussing this. “No.” He raised a finger and shook it at me. “Brayden probably said he missed his daddy.” The same finger moved to his chest. “Which isn’t me.”
“Oh.”
“His dad’s dead.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that. But…”
“And I had promised Brayden’s dad, and Meg’s husband, Byron that if anything happened to him I’d watch out for them.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. When he put it like that, it sounded so innocent. And somehow, so Ryker. Always the warrior—the knight even though he hated being called one just because of his last name. He was always the person people ended up leaning on for help and to protect them.
Which reminded me that that’s what I was to him—the damsel in distress.
Despite that, I still couldn’t forget the kiss. I didn’t want to, either. I simply wanted it to mean something different than it probably did. But if it meant something to him, it didn’t matter—I was way too broken inside to give anything to him.
“Faith.”
My eyes flipped to his. They were no longer angry, no longer laughing—they were pitch black and completely serious. I felt the change in the energy between us immediately. It flickered and danced along like a live wire filled with electricity.
I raised a brow, my nerves beginning to dance in anticipation. I remembered that heated look vividly.
“I didn’t kiss you in that hotel room because I was overwhelmed with remembering what it was like to be with you five years ago.”
“Oh…” I mumbled and wanted to smack myself. Or buy myself a dictionary to think of a new response to him.
His hand reached out and ran down the length of my black hair. When he reached the end, he let it drop before he took my hand and pulled me closer to him. I winced from the small pain in my ribs the sudden movement caused.
His other hand came out and cupped my cheek right before his forehead dropped to mine. I felt a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead slide against mine.
“Don’t you know, babe,” he said right as he turned his head and pressed his lips against my skin, “that you’re the only woman who’s ever been mine?”