I settle on the sofa that looks like it’s seen better days, but it’s comfortable. The cushions are a deep purple, reminding me of the first pair of sneakers I got from my folks when I started dancing. The soles illuminated in the dark and looked amazing when I would drop to my hands and spin my feet in the air. Ryder loved them, so I did too.

“Get out of your pretty little head, Butterfly,” he says, his voice thick and heavy with emotion. His eyes—the deep green more prominent in this moment than the hazel—make them look like a darkened forest.

“I’m here.” I smile up at him, watching him move through the space and head into what I’m guessing is the kitchen.

“Do you want a drink?” he questions from the other room.

I push off the sofa and follow him into a spacious kitchen, which is empty except for the breakfast bar that separates the eating area from the work space.

“What have you got?” I ask, stepping up behind him, the heat of his body so close that I want to melt into it, into him.

“Coke, Pepsi, water, or orange juice.” He lifts the carton to his nose, giving it a sniff. He scrunches his nose, causing me to giggle. “Okay, I don’t have orange juice.”

“Coke is fine,” I tell him.

Ryder grabs a glass, pops the can open, and fills the tumbler with the dark, fizzy liquid. He pours himself one as well, and we head back into the living room.

Once I’m on the sofa, he takes the seat to my right, and the earlier lightheartedness is gone. Right now, we’ve reached the tension again, and I don’t know what’s coming. All I can tell is that it’s something terrible.

“I spent so long wondering how I’d ever tell you what I did, that now that we’re finally here I don’t have a speech mapped out. I haven’t planned the words, so you’ll have to bear with me. I haven’t spoken about it in a long time.”

“Ryder, this is me you’re talking to. I’ll never judge you for being young and stupid.” I smile, hoping it will earn me his usual dimpled grin, but it doesn’t. Instead, his eyes meet mine and I know there’ll be no smiles tonight.

“I know, Piper, I know.” He sighs. Leaning forward, he places his elbows on his thighs, then meets my gaze. “I was out partying one night. Your brother wanted to drive, but I didn’t want him to since he’d been drinking more than I had. He was being stubborn, so I took his keys and...” His voice drops lower, and I find myself glued to his every word. “I had just spoken to my father that day. He told me he was cutting me off completely, so I had a few beers during the day. That night, I had one at the party and planned to get wasted.”

“Why was your dad cutting you off?”

“He wasn’t happy with me for some reason. He didn’t need to explain. It was just how our relationship worked. He was disappointed in me and I didn’t give a shit. I’d been drinking a lot over those few weeks, more than usual.”

The guilt that drips off his every word has my body trembling, and I have a feeling he’s going to break me with his confession.

“I got behind the wheel that night after I’d had a few too many. There was a girl beside me. Your brother and his girlfriend were in the back seat.”

I attempt to swallow past the lump in my throat, from what he’s telling me, to the fact that jealousy has reared its head. He was with another girl. He was partying and getting drunk. He was enjoying his life.

“Stop.” His command has me snapping my attention back to him. His eyes are hard on me. “She was a girl I offered a lift to, nothing more.”

“I didn’t—”

“Piper, I know you. I can see the wheels turning in your head.”

Shrugging it off, I lift my drink and gulp down the rest of my Coke. He doesn’t speak until I’ve set the glass on the table.

“I didn’t see the other asshole coming toward me.” The words feel surreal, as if they’re told to me and I’m on the other side of a thick window. Muffled. Ringing in my ears deafening me at the next few words. “I swerved, but it was too late. The car rolled. I don’t know how many times. No one was killed, thankfully, but—”

“Ryder—”

He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he rises, and I watch as he moves, in slow motion. The hiss of the zipper of his hoodie is so loud I want to scuttle backward from the noise. His fingers deftly untie the string of his sweatpants. Then he eases the gray material down his muscled thighs.

“This is the so-called man you want to love,” he tells me sadly when I take in a blurry glance at the mechanical part of Ryder where half of his left leg used to be. From the knee down, there’s nothing but plastic and metal. Or something. I don’t even know.

I open my mouth to respond. To tell him I love him. But I can’t. No words form on my tongue, but they all sit like a poison, venomous in their attack on my system. On my mind.

“I fucked up that night. I hurt people because of my own stupidity, Piper. That’s not someone you want in your life. I’m no fucking man to give you a life.”

He covers himself, jerking his sweatpants up, he leaves me in the living room. I’m staring at nothing because he’s no longer standing in the spot he vacated, where my eyes are glued to. Tears drip from my chin, my body wracks with sobs. Not because he’s not the man I want, but because he’s so much more.

He is perfectly flawed.