Page 37 of Trust my Heart

I got out, dried off, and dressed. Jeans, an old t-shirt, bare feet. I’d just pulled it on when I heard his key in the lock.

I came out of the bedroom. He was just inside the door with his coat still on, stopped there like he hadn’t decided how far into the room to come, and he looked up at me, and I froze.

He’d been crying.

Not right then. But his eyes were red-rimmed and his face was blotchy and raw.

My heart dropped.

Every instinct I had went straight to him. I didn’t think about the talk, or the thing I’d spent all day working up to, or any of the places my head had gone on the run. I crossed the room and pulled him in.

He came into me without a word, his face against my neck, his hands fisting in the back of my shirt. I could feel how hard he was holding himself together. The second I had him against me I felt how much I’d gone without it. I put a hand in his hair and kept him there.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you alright?”

He nodded against me, and I didn’t believe it.

“What happened? Ryan? Talk to me.”

He pulled back enough to look at me, and he smiled. Tired, and real. Whatever I’d been dreading, that smile wasn’t it? “It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m okay, I promise. I’ll explain all of it, everything, I just need a minute.”

He had something ready behind the smile, and it was costing him to hold it, and I knew that look. If he started, I’d never get mine out.

“Then before you explain anything,” I said, “let me go first. I’ve got something I have to say, or I’ll lose the nerve.”

He went still. Then he nodded and let me have the room.

“Okay,” he said.

I went into the kitchen. I wanted something solid under my hands, because the rest of me wanted to go back to holding him and never say the thing I had to say. Saying it might cost me this, the two of us, the thing I’d just been so scared of losing. But I already knew what keeping it cost. So I put the counter between us and made myself look at him.

“You were right about Adam.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I know. I stood right here and told you there was nothing to be afraid of, and I called you jealous. I told you he was the past and you were the one in my arms and you needed to let it go.” I held his eyes while I said it. “I was wrong and I’m sorry. That’s the first thing I wanted to tell you.”

Something crossed his face that I couldn’t read. It wasn’t relief, which was what I’d steeled for. It was closer to the look he got when the news turned out worse than everyone said.

“Luke…” he started.

“I’m not done,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “There’s a second thing. Wait for me to finish before you react, because it’s going to land wrong and I need you to hear all of it.”

He put both hands flat on the counter and waited. He could go still and wait a person out. Half his interviews were won that way. I’d watched him do it to hard men across a table, and I’d never once had it turned on me at home.

I told him about the coffee meet with Adam.

I kept it short. Adam catching me at the doors that evening, asking for ten minutes off the property. Me saying yes because I wanted it over with. The place on Broadview that used to be ours. The whole careful hour of him telling me he knew what he’d done. Him asking, at the end, if I missed him.

“I meant the no,” I said. “I want that clear. There was never a second in that room where I wanted him back. I told him what he cost me, and I told him we were colleagues now and nothing else, and I meant every word.”

Ryan nodded, small. He hadn’t moved otherwise.

“On the way back, we walked together to the corner,” I said. “The light changed and I stepped off the curb without looking, still half distracted. And his hand came out and grabbed my arm and hauled me back hard to save me from a car, and before I had my feet under me he had his other hand behind my head and his mouth on mine.”

Ryan’s jaw tightened.

“I shoved him off. Hard.” My throat had started to close up. I kept on through it. “There was never a chance I’d go back to him, let alone kiss him. I don’t have proof, but the more I’ve turned it over, the more it feels like he set the whole thing up. The car, the grab, all of it, just to get his mouth on me for a second. I hate that it happened. I hate that I let him get that close.”