Chapter Forty-Five
Lindsay
I pulled into the parking lot of the paintball field and looked for Whitney’s car. I spotted it up front and maneuvered into the space next to hers.
As I climbed out of my car, my gaze moved to the field where I’d played paintball with Ryder, my friends, and the rest of the hockey team. The same pang that’d gone through me when Whitney told me they’d had a paintball war this afternoon to celebrate last night’s win hit me again, a sharp smack to my heart. As if it wasn’t already beat up enough.
They were all celebrating together while I was home alone, trying not to cry as I studied stupid, confusing math. I’d managed a barely B on my last test, so if I could just get one on the final exam, I’d pass with flying colors—or maybe like dull, floppy colors, but passing was passing.
Whitney had called and said she needed a huge favor. She explained that Hudson left to go to some victory dinner with the guys while she, Lyla, and Megan had stayed behind to gather the gear. Only when they came outside to leave, they discovered the car had a flat tire. None of them could get the lug nuts to so much as budge, so they were going to wait until their boyfriends could come take care of it, but in the meantime, they needed a ride home.
Since I didn’t see them, I called out their names. “Whitney? Megan? Lyla?”
The two tires I could see were fine. I started to circle around the car, but then the door to the gray square building opened and Whitney stepped out.
“Thanks so much for coming to get us.” She grimaced. “I hate to ask another favor, but can you help us lift this box of gear?”
“Sure, no problem.” It wasn’t like I had anything else to do today. Besides catch shade from my roommates while doing that studying I was in no hurry to get back to, even though I probably should be.
Going from outside to inside left my vision dark, and the shapes in front of me were hard to make out. I swore a few of them moved, creeping across the space like shadowed people, and I blinked.
Great, I’ve gone from talking to myself to seeing things.
“Is the indoor arena through there?” I gestured toward the open double doors, where a glowing square of white illuminated the floor and shed a bit of light on the booth with the cash register and row of rentable paintball guns.
“Yeah. It’s a little too small for when everyone on the team plays, but it could work for two people.” Whitney raised her voice super loud when she said the last words, like I’d suddenly become deaf. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
She walked behind me, urging me forward with a hand on my back. I registered the fact that Lyla and Megan were off to the side, but my attention went to the dimly lit arena, and how the black light made the paint glow.
A splattering of neon colors stood out on a tall, gray tower off to the right, and the height and small hole just big enough for a peek and the barrel of a gun near the top made me think it must serve as a lookout post. Junkie, paint-splattered cars with missing windows were situated among big wooden barrels and pallets, and several tires hung suspended from the ceiling with ropes, completing the rainbow, post-apocalyptic look.
“I think that more than two people could play. Maybe not the entire team, but—” I froze when I saw Ryder in the center of the room. A table sat in front of him, but I couldn’t quite make out what was on top of it.
“The target’s in place,” Lyla said from behind me. “Wait. Is that the phrase we decided on? It sounds kind of darker-intentioned than I remembered when we discussed it.”
I turned to my friends, eyes wide.
The three of them wore matching apologetic expressions tinged with a bizarre excitement, and I wondered if I’d accidentally made friends with crazy people—that’d be just my luck.
A few of Ryder’s teammates came out of the woodwork. Beck, Hudson, Dane, and Daniel.
Daniel tossed Ryder the keys, and Ryder gave him a nod before turning back to me.
A tight band formed around my chest and my thoughts whirred, not finding anything logical enough to actually land on. “What the hell’s going on?”
“We’re sorry about this,” Whitney said as she, Megan, and Lyla slowly backed away, “and I hope you don’t hate us afterward, but just remember that we all think you’re awesome, and if you want to leave after he says what he needs to, we’ll be right outside.”
Their boyfriends, along with Daniel, who gave me a shrug, melted back toward the door.
“And if you decide you’d like to be left in here alone for an hour or so, text us and we’ll make sure no one interrupts,” Megan added.
Then they rushed out the doors we’d entered through, pulling them closed.
Way too late, I thought about making a run for the exit. That’d probably require the use of my feet, though, and they didn’t seem to be working.
“You’re not locked in,” Ryder said, holding up his hands. “But you might experience some resistance if you try to leave right now. Those friends of ours are hella meddlesome.” He cracked a nervous smile that made me think he’d tried to make a joke.
Every emotion I’d experienced this past week swirled through me, a tangled mess of sorrow, pain, and anger.
Mobility returned to my limbs and I walked straight for him, not sure what I was going to say or do, but my body was very determined to make some kind of action happen, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was in control of what it’d be.
The items on the table sharpened into relief. A picnic basket sat by a vase of red roses, and a paintball gun rested between the two.
Confusion set in, throwing a wrench in my unplanned plan. I glanced from the weapon to Ryder, smothering the thought about how sexy he looked, because sexy hadn’t done my any favors before. “What’s the gun for?”
Ryder hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. Of course the gesture made his strong shoulders and the muscles on his arms stand out, because life so wasn’t fair. Damn muscles and their ability to make me lose my head. “I figured you’d be mad,” he said.
“And your first thought was to arm me?” Sexiness and math smarts aside, he must be missing a few screws. Clearly he had no idea how pissed off I was at him. If he thought he could just come in, throw me a picnic, and I’d forgive him for everything, he was wrong.
He shrugged. “You’re always a bit more understanding after you work out some of your aggression.”
That aggression he mentioned flared and took over. He’d made me fall in love with him, then he’d made me feel like shit for my past. I picked up the gun and fired it right at the center of his chest.
His steady expression remained, eyes fixed on mine, lips pressed together. My breaths came too fast, and I worried if I let go of my anger, I’d fall to my knees and cry.
Love is a weakness, love is a weakness, love is a weakness…
Ryder took a step closer to me, rounding the table.
I fired again, hitting him in the thigh this time, and he flinched.
“I’m sorry, Lindsay. Sorry for everything. I’ve been completely miserable without you.” He took another step toward me. Being this close to him hurt as much as being away from him had, maybe more.
Don’t let him see you cry, don’t you dare let him see you cry.
I clenched my jaw and invoked the bitch, begging her to help me keep my too-weak emotions in check. “I told you everything. I trusted you with my past, and you threw it in my face.”
“You’re right,” he said. “That stuff with our parents messed with my head and when I saw you with Daniel… All I can say is that I momentarily lost my mind because of how crazy I am about you, and I’m sorry.”
“Momentarily lost your mind? That’s not good enough, Ryder. Is that really all you’ve got?”
“No, I’ve also got…” He reached for the roses, and I shot them, sending them off the table coated in an explosion of red petals and blue splatters. It’s not like roses would heal my broken heart and it only showed that he had no idea how badly he’d hurt me.
I swiveled the barrel back toward him, no longer fighting back the grief tearing me apart inside but letting it take over. “I tried so hard to keep you away, but you insisted on breaking down every one of my walls. I let you in—like, all the way in, something I’ve never done before—thinking it made me strong to brush off my past, push away my fears over getting close to someone, and try again. But it didn’t. It made me just weak enough for you to break me. And you did, you broke me.” My voice cracked, so apparently the bitch wasn’t as strong as I hoped she’d be, and that only pissed me off more.
“Shit, Lindsay. I never meant to—”
“Oh, you didn’t mean to? What difference does that make? It doesn’t put me back together. You broke me and then you just walked away like it was nothing. You didn’t even call or text for over a week.” A tear slipped free and more were on the horizon. “And what’s even worse is, I no longer feel like a whole person without you, and I fucking hate it.”
I moved the barrel so it pointed at his crotch, the way I had when we’d first played, but there was no teasing about it this time. For all my talk about not being vindictive or wishing him harm, I suddenly…well, I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t want him hurt, but I hurt everywhere, and I wanted to do something to take away the pain.
“That part of me certainly loves you,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. He swallowed and his gaze latched onto mine again, the intensity swimming in the blue so strong that it made my breath catch in my throat. “But the rest of me loves you even more.”
He cupped my cheek, the move making the barrel press harder against his crotch. “So do whatever you feel like you need to in order to be able to forgive me. I hate myself for hurting you, and I’ve regretted letting you walk away that night without a fight every second of every day, and I should’ve called.”
He brushed his thumb across my cheekbone, making everything inside of me start unraveling even as I worked to hold it together. “What I should’ve done was go to your apartment, beg for forgiveness for being such an asshole, and tell you how crazy I am about you. Tell you that not only are you beautiful inside and out, you make me happy, and you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, and I don’t feel like a whole person without you, either.”
I shook my head, too scared to believe it, and curled my finger tighter around the trigger to remind me that I was hurt and mad and that I could only rely on me.
“It’s true. I’m so used to keeping everything bottled up, but it’s not even an option when I’m with you, because you make me feel too much. But because I’m also an idiot, instead of just telling you I’d fallen hard for you and that I was scared of losing you, I fucked it all up and tried to bottle everything up again. But it didn’t work. The past several days have shown me that I can’t go back to the way my life was before I had you in it. And I don’t want to. I’ll take feeling everything, even if it’s harder and takes more work, over feeling empty inside.”
My heart squeezed and now I was conflicted all over again. Regardless of how hard I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt that same, consuming emptiness. But feeling everything also sucked, and I didn’t know if I could do it much longer without causing some permanent damage.
“Even though this apology is about a week too late and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, I’m begging you to give me another chance.” He wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger, the slight tug sending tingles across my scalp and making it hard for me to focus. “Please say you’ll give me another chance, baby. I’ll do anything to make it right. Just tell me what to do…”
My finger twitched on the trigger of the paintball gun still pressed against his crotch, and he tensed, but he didn’t step away or make a move to block the impending shot.
“I love you, Lindsay Rivera. I’m in love with you, and I need you, and I wish I had more to give you, but you already have all of me.”
My resolve broke, along with something else inside me, and the dam holding back my tears cracked open. I lowered the gun a couple of inches. “You love me?”
He nodded and pulled me into his arms. The gun clattered to the ground, and I hugged him back. There might’ve even been some literal crying on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he ran one hand down my hair and pressed me closer with the other. “I guess I still struggle to believe a girl as amazing and strong as you could want me for me—that I even have a chance at keeping you happy.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re a total catch.” I placed my hand on the side of his face, basking in the scrape of his five o’clock shadow against my palm. “I’ve spent most of the past couple of months wondering why you’d want to be with me.”
“Sounds like we’ve both been a little bit stupid.”
I laughed and then sniffed.
“I’ve always prided myself on my ability to remain in control, but I don’t ever feel fully in control when I’m with you. That night when I saw you with Daniel, I swear it wasn’t about your past, it was the thought that I could lose you—it felt like you were slipping right through my fingers—and that made me lose my mind. Then I did lose you, and now my life doesn’t make sense without you. I don’t want to go back to trying to not rock the boat. I want to rock the boat with you.” He scrunched up his forehead. “That sounds dirtier than I meant it. Not that I don’t want to also rock that boat with you, but I just mean that you’re my person, and I want to be yours, and I hope I’m not too late.”
Oh, crap. Another wave of tears was forming. “I love you, too, I do—”
He pressed his lips to mine, and I couldn’t help melting into him. A desperate edge tainted the kiss, our lips and tongues urgently seeking more, like we both knew that what I said next might change everything and this might be our last taste.
Once we broke apart, it took me a couple of seconds to catch my breath.
“Just had to do that before you start with your buts,” he said, resting his forehead against mine.
I laughed because he knew me so well, and because he’d told me that when we’d first kissed. But then reality set in and it turned into more of a cry than a laugh.
Ryder swiped the tears with the pads of his thumbs, which made the fact that I was crying in front of him slightly less embarrassing.
My head swam and I had to remind myself to inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale… “I have that summer internship set up in New York City that starts the week after I graduate, and I also have this big interview for a newspaper job in New Jersey. If they offer it to me, I know I need to take it—amazing editing jobs don’t come along very often, and thanks to student loans, I have a lot of debt I need to start paying off. I want to be with you, and like I said, I do love you, but do you really think we’d survive a long-distance relationship?”
I wanted to be optimistic and believe that jumping in and making the most of our last few weeks in Boston together would make us strong. Strong enough that even after I moved out of the state, my boyfriend wouldn’t be tempted by the plethora of women who’d throw themselves at him, regardless of how long we had to go between times we could see each other. There was optimistic, then there was naive, and I worried that a foolish idea like that was the latter.
“I know I’m not willing to risk it,” Ryder said.
My heart sank—low enough I’m pretty sure it fell right on out of my body and hit the toes of my shoes. Of course long distance was too much to ask. What was I thinking?
I dropped my head, more tears pooling in my eyes.
Ryder cupped my chin and tipped my face toward his, his large fingers rough and warm against my skin. I loved how he made me feel tiny and protected, yet strong and powerful at the same time. Loved how patient he was when he helped me with my math, teaching me without making me feel stupid, and how he’d dropped his walls with me as much as I’d dropped mine with him. I loved everything about him. Finally I’d found someone who completely understood me, and it didn’t matter.
Confession #24: Life is epically unfair, and if I ever meet it in a dark alley, I’m so kicking it in the balls.
“I’m coming with you,” Ryder said. “I’ll transfer to a college that’s closer to you.”
Wait. What? I shook my head. “No, Ryder, you can’t.”
He nodded his. “Yes, Lindsay, I can.”
I shook my head harder. “Our relationship is still so new, and I know it’ll be complicated, and not always easy, but we’ll figure out another way. You’re about to go defend your championship title—you’re playing for one of the best hockey teams in the nation, which gives you a much better chance to catch the eye of a NHL scout. Your friends are here. Your entire life is here. I can’t ask you to move for me.”
“You’re not asking. I’m telling you.” Ryder brushed his lips across mine and desire and happiness danced across my skin. If I wasn’t afraid of breaking the spell, I might pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. “I’d rather play slightly distracted and have you in the stands cheering for me and waiting for me after the game than have nothing to play for any day. I choose you, and that means wherever you’re going, I’m going there, too.”