Chapter Twenty-One
“Ryan slept over,” Claire explained when she woke Maya up the next morning and brought her downstairs.
She tried to sound as casual as possible, but Maya paused with her footed pajamas on the bottom step and frowned.
Shit.
She knew she shouldn’t have let this happen. Even after he’d woken her up just as he’d promised, tonguing her to another orgasm before fucking her fast and hard again, she still could have had him steal away before Maya was up.
But they weren’t teenagers, sneaking around. And she hadn’t been willing to give up any of the precious seconds she got to keep him in her bed.
Now she was paying for her selfishness. Maya was going to start asking questions, and it was only going to lead to more confusion. Why did she think she could get away with this? Why did she think she could—
“Then where are the pancakes?” Maya asked, wrinkling up her face.
“What’s that?” Ryan, in the kitchen making coffee, popped his head around the corner.
“Pancakes,” Maya repeated. “When I have a sleepover, Mom always makes pancakes.”
Ryan’s eyes caught hers, and Claire let out the breath she’d been holding. Pancakes. Right. That was what was wrong with this picture.
“Sweetie, I don’t really have time to cook right now.”
“How about you get ready for work, and I make the pancakes?” Ryan said, giving Claire a wink. “You like ’em fluffy?” he asked Maya. “Blueberries? Banana? Warm maple syrup?”
“That’s just how Mom makes them!” Maya cried.
“I bet she learned from the best pancake maker in the world,” Ryan said, and Claire was glad he wasn’t looking at her because her face was burning. He’d rarely cooked when they were together, but he’d always made great pancakes.
They used to be for mornings after equally great sex.
Then mornings after hangovers.
Then he’d stopped making them altogether, but Claire remembered the recipe. It was how she made them for Maya.
It wasn’t conscious, exactly. Just another way he’d seeped into her life without her even realizing he was still there.
“Maya knows where the ingredients are,” Claire said, trying to focus on the task at hand. She had to get ready for work and get everyone out the door—not fall down memory lane. “But watch her around the stove. I’ll be back in a second.”
Shower, get dressed, don’t let your heart melt into an ooey gooey puddle on the floor… She couldn’t watch Ryan making pancakes with Maya. She’d probably die on the spot.
When she came back—ready for work, with Maya’s little backpack packed and clothes laid out for her to dress in once she’d been fully de-syruped—the pancakes were sizzling, and Ryan was doing his best to clean up the kitchen and the five-year-old, with limited success at both.
He made an elaborate show of flipping the pancakes onto the plate, and Claire wanted to tell him to tone it down. Things were going to be way too boring around here for Maya once he was gone. She’d start wanting Claire to do the same thing, and the pancakes would wind up on the floor.
And Claire? Claire would get too used to having someone around. Not just someone who made her whole body tremble, but someone who made breakfast and helped get Maya ready for school and gave Claire an extra moment to just…breathe.
She cleared off the table and started setting out plates, moving the piles of toys, mail, and other crap that always managed to accumulate no matter how hard she tried to stay on top of it.
Ryan took the stack of mail from her, then paused.
“What’s this?” he asked. On top of the pile was a brochure she’d set aside, American Massage Therapy Association written in bold white letters across a glossy backdrop of the Space Needle and Mt. Rainier.
“Shoot,” she said, stepping around him to grab Maya’s favorite cup for orange juice. “I forgot to cancel.”
“Cancel what?”
“It’s nothing.”
Add it to the list of things she had to do as soon as she got to the office today. Hopefully it wasn’t too late to get a partial refund, although she doubted it.
He flipped the brochure over, scanning the back. “Doesn’t look like nothing. You’re going to a massage therapy conference?”
She sighed. “I was.”
He put the brochure down. “What happened?”
Claire ushered Maya to the table. “I registered, but Maya’s regular babysitter canceled on me last week—she’s got some school trip. And my parents, who’d normally be able to take her last minute, already booked a trip to Santa Barbara with some golf buddies of theirs. I feel bad leaving Maya with friends for that long, and I can’t bring her. I thought about going down for just the day, but the whole point is that I need to take these classes they offer to complete my recertification and I—”
She remembered herself too late. She really shouldn’t be getting into all this. It wasn’t Ryan’s problem. He may have spent the night, but there were still plenty of things she needed to figure out on her own.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said firmly. “There will be other years. I just have to find another way to schedule the classes. Ready, bug?” She started stacking pancakes on Maya’s plate, desperate for the change in conversation. “These look amazing. What do we say to Ryan?”
“Thank you, Ryan!” Maya said.
“Thank you, Ryan,” Claire echoed.
His breakfast was just as good as she remembered. Which really sucked, because Maya knew it, too, and didn’t hesitate to tell Claire so. It made Ryan laugh, but of course he found it funny. He wasn’t going to be one listening to Maya beg for his fluffy blueberry-banana pancakes when he was gone.
Then it’s a good thing I’m here. His words from last night echoed in her mind—the last thing he’d said before she’d fallen asleep in his arms. Suddenly, she felt as if she’d stepped outside herself and was watching this whole scene from the outside. It looked like a family eating breakfast, being perfectly, achingly normal. For the strangest second, it almost felt that way, too.
Then she realized Maya was touching Ryan’s tattoo in curiosity as he poured more syrup onto her plate, and she couldn’t pretend that she and Ryan had just landed here with no history, no absence, no shared pain between them. She just had to look at him—his hair falling in his eyes, his shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, that ink on his muscular forearm—to know that he had a whole life far away from here, in a world she didn’t know.
“What’s that?” Maya asked, tracing the ink on his arm.
“Those are my tattoos,” he said.
“I know, but what are they?”
“They’re two rings. See how they go around my arm?”
Maya watched as he turned his forearm to show her.
“Why’d you get them?”
Ryan glanced at Claire. She had no idea why he was looking at her. It wasn’t like she had the answer.
“I wanted to remind myself of something important,” he finally said.
“Did it work?” Maya asked.
Ryan laughed. “You know what? I think it did.”
And then he looked at her again, and Claire knew, without fully understanding it, that somehow those bands had to do with her. Even if she couldn’t say how.
She downed the rest of her coffee. She had to get going. There wasn’t time to sit around asking questions, wondering who this man was who’d suddenly come into her life. Even if a morning like this one made her want to linger all day in his arms.
“Come on, bug,” she said, ushering Maya upstairs to change. When they came back down, Ryan had finished packing her lunch box as her carpool beeped. Dammit. Couldn’t he fuck up just a little bit, to make it easier on her when he left?
But as soon as they were alone, he came up behind her and put his arms around her. “I have an idea.”
“Can you tell me tonight?” she asked, hastily stacking dishes in the sink to deal with later.
“Of course. But leave the dishes. Let me clean up here while you go to work. I’m the one who made the mess, anyway.”
She laughed as he dragged her away from the sink. “Can you be here every morning?” she joked, then immediately wished she could take it back. She shouldn’t have said that. It was so not funny.
Especially not when he was looking at her that way.
“Actually,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
She took a step back so she wasn’t quite so entangled in his arms. Not that it really cleared her head. But she could pretend.
“I was thinking,” he said.
“About?”
“You should go to your conference in Seattle.”
“I can’t, Ryan.”
“No, listen. You go, and I’ll stay here and watch the bug. I promise we won’t play dinosaurs and eat ice cream until two a.m. Midnight, maybe, but no later than that.” He held up his palm.
Jesus. Was he serious? She tried to walk around him to the living room, scrambling to get her things, but he followed.
“That’s really sweet of you to offer—”
“But?”
“But you don’t have to do that.”
“Of course I don’t have to. But what if I want to?”
“I’m late for work. I’ve got an early client.”
Her purse. Where had she put her purse?
“All the more reason to let me help out,” he said.
“I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
She only said it so he’d let her out the door. But he sounded like he thought she actually meant it.
“Don’t think about it, just complete your registration and tell the conference organizers you’re going.”
Claire reached for her keys. “I can’t just leave Maya with you overnight.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because!” She threw up her hands.
“She likes me, we get along great, she’d love it, and I’m her father. So no, Claire, it’s not like you’d be leaving her with a stranger.”
The F-word. Claire stopped in her tracks. They hadn’t spoken about it in so long. It was as though they knew…but didn’t. Like they couldn’t avoid that Ryan wasn’t just any other flame, even though everything in Claire had tried to make this situation…if not normal, then as close to normal as it could be.
“But she doesn’t know that,” Claire said quietly, hating to say it but needing him to remember it all the same.
“Something I think we should talk about,” he said. “But another time. Right now, we’re talking about you going to Seattle. I’ve watched you put Maya to bed, so I know her routine. I’ve got her allergies down, and you can leave me with any emergency numbers and contact info for your friends in case something happens. Which it won’t. I may be a fuck up, Claire, but I’m more responsible than a sixteen-year-old.”
“I know,” Claire said. And she meant it. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. It wasn’t that she still saw him that way, like he was someone she needed to protect herself from.
So why was she still resisting him?
“It just feels like a lot,” she said hoarsely. “And anyway, this is next weekend we’re talking about. Don’t you have to get back to Chicago?”
“I can wait.”
She looked at him. “How long are we talking about?” she asked, trying to read him. Trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But his gray eyes were clouded over, and she couldn’t tell what was brewing underneath.
“I was thinking about as long as you’ll let me.”
“Ryan,” she said.
“Claire.”
He put his arms around her. She dropped her bag at her feet. She was going to be late. She was supposed to care about being late. She was supposed to care about making sure she was ready and on time before her first client came in.
But all she could focus on was the warmth of his body, the press of his lips on hers.
“Let me watch Maya next weekend,” he whispered. “You come first. You and Maya. You’re what matters to me.”
She rested her head against his chest. She was tall, but he was taller. Even before his shoulders had filled out like this, he’d always been able to hold her in a way that made her feel like she was his.
“But you have your life in Chicago,” she said. “You have a manager who keeps bugging you to come back, meetings that are make-or-break for your career, and I know how much you want this, Ryan. I know how much you’ve been wanting this comeback. And you deserve it.” She shook her head against his chest. “I don’t want to stand in your way.”
He hooked his first two fingers under her chin and tilted her face up to him.
“You’re never in my way. You spent our whole relationship putting me first when we were together. My music, my band, my needs. And I took advantage of how selfless you are. Just because I wanted a drink didn’t mean I had to have one. Just because I felt like staying out all night didn’t mean I was entitled to do whatever I wanted.”
She tried to protest, but the words died in her mouth. He was right. She’d given, and she’d given. And then Maya came along, and she’d given to Maya, instead. Healthier, probably, but no less of a sacrifice.
“I want to put you first, Claire,” he said. “And right now, that means making sure you can get to this conference.”
Claire touched his chest. She could feel his heart strong and steady against her fingers. She’d been looking forward to the conference, and she really did need to fit in the class hours sometime this year. Why was she automatically saying no to his help? Why was she making her life so much harder than it needed to be?
“All right,” she said, quiet enough that she might still be able to take it back if the words sounded wrong to her ears.
But he was standing so close to her, their bodies pressed together in the doorway, the smell of syrup and blueberries and lazy mornings and Maya’s beloved sleepovers in the air.
So of course he heard. And he wasn’t going to let her slide back into that safe place she’d spent five years cultivating, the one where she did everything alone and never relied on anyone else to take care of her.
Which meant she never opened herself up to get hurt.
But here was Ryan, promising her he wasn’t going to hurt her again. Showing her with more than just words.
He pressed her back against the front door, still kissing her. Her head was spinning, her heart was pounding out of control, but her hands knew exactly what they were doing. She pulled off his shirt, unzipped his jeans, and let him undo in seconds all the effort she’d put into getting dressed and smoothing down her hair before showing up on time to work, like she’d been planning to do before everything about the man carrying her back to the bedroom caught her completely off guard.