But somehow, this felt different. It was different. Maybe because she was different.
Embry’s cheeks immediately flushed. Her intestines knotted. Her fingers tingled with the suddenneedto touch his face.
Instead, she balled her hands into fists. Took a step back and bumped into the solid iron of the fence. Planted her gaze firmly on the sliver of brickwork between Rye’s battered Docs and her spotless running shoes.
“I know I messed up with Oakley on Friday night. I know I did.” Embry nodded and willed her voice not to crack. “You were right—it was badly done. I was a non-shifting bitch.”
Rye pressed a palm into her shoulder. Embry didn’t look up at him, though. She couldn’t. She had to keep talking. She had to say this, mostly because he was the one who always heard her, even when she was, as he’d pointed out, putting on a front.
“Maybe I messed up our entire relationship, from the moment I met Oakley—thinking I was doing the right thing, helping this clueless, friendless girl inmy benevolence.”
Embry laughed at herself, all the fight in her tone gone. Tears were welling. She didn’t bat at them. She deserved every terrible, mortifying, shameful feeling pushing them to the surface. “Yeah, that was a shitty thing for me to think. That I was so high on a pedestal that it would be a gift—a little craft project—to help this poor soul. Oakley was right. I did think I made her.”
She dug furiously for the remains of her courage. “I did want to control her, but only because I wanted her under me. And I didn’t want her to want you because—because I didn’t know what I would do with myself if she managed tohaveyou.”
Her voice broke on those final words—the truest of the bunch. Even if she wasn’t exactly surewhyshe felt that way. Pulse pounding in her ears, Embry waited, head bent, eyes scrunched closed, for Rye to say something. Instead, he closed the space between them and wrapped Embry in a bear hug.
It was the tightest embrace she’d had in perhaps years. Differentfrom when they’d been smashed together in the drama closet. Rye’s hug had the effect of a weighted blanket. Every ounce of apprehension, anxiety, fear, shame, disappointment, and insecurity melted away at the pressure of his body against hers, his arms caging her spine, his stubbly cheek pressed into her tearstained skin.
“I’m here. No one has me but you, Em.”
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t like the scenes they’d manufactured on the stage at the Marlow Theatre. It was a whisper.
But it meant everything.
Embry’s lips dropped open, and a sob burst out. She shifted to press her face into him to muffle the sound. Rye only, impossibly, drew her tighter. Her tears slid down his neck.
When she pulled away, Embry realized she’d actually stained his skin. There were magical ways to fix this—to prevent it, even—but she was all out of sorts and panic-blotted at his throat with a thumb. “This mascara isn’t as waterproof as advertised. Sorry.”
She felt silly to even admit that she was wearing mascara. Seriously, who takes the time for makeup when their life is upside down? But the truth was it made her feel more like herself. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone—even him. He’d seen her without makeup often.
“It’s fine,” Rye replied, even as he held her face gently in both hands and rubbed his thumbs under her eyes, clearly removing smudges there. “It’ll just improve my camouflage.”
That meant he knew what she was doing and would be going with her.
Of course he was. Of course she was glad.
Embry coughed out a burbling laugh, tears and snot making it a wet sound. She swallowed and caught both his wrists. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to keep saying that, Embry—”
“No, but I do.” She dropped his wrists but only to shove a lockof wayward hair off her face, strands holding fast to her cheek, dredged in tears. “Thank you for being here. For knowing me. For seeing every little thing I try to hide, even from myself, and tease it into the light. And I… I need that. I can’t seem to do it myself.”
Rye’s whole body softened as he looked down upon her. He smoothed away the remaining strands she’d missed. Embry wanted to catch his hand and press it against her face. She wanted to feel the pad of his thumb run over her mouth.
She wanted to kiss him.
Sheneededto kiss him.
Not like the accidental peck on his palm. No, a real kiss. Hard, long, satisfying.
That breathtaking need surprised Embry as much as the strange suspicion that the need wasn’t sudden. Embry wasn’t sure when it had started—it could’ve begun the moment Rye arrived not to mock her pain but to declare his intention to help prove her innocence. It could’ve been lurking under the surface of their bickering for a decade or more.
Maybe her insistence on matchmaking for others but never herself wasn’t that Embry didn’t want the distraction while focusing on her education, but because her heart already beat for someone else.
Rye.
Embry had loved him for a long time as the boy next door. Daddy loved him like the son he never had. But this? This was different. It involved her heart in a different way.
