AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your daddy and your papa would very much appreciate it if you would hear me out.”
This was all very peculiar. Part of her didn’t want to listen to him. She’d been living with them for months and he’d had every opportunity to be kind to her or do more than barely acknowledge her existence but he hadn’t and now he wanted to talk at her? What the hell?
But when she looked at him, Cosima knew she wouldn’t say no. She did grab Hopscotch though, and tugged the bunny against her so she had something to hold onto. She wished Daddy and Papa were here too but there must be a reason Ryker was doing this himself. If he could bear it, so could she.
“Okay.”
There was that twitch of his jaw again, followed by a full minute of silence. Finally, Ryker started to talk.
“I’ve known Hudson and Ian for over twenty years. We met our first year in college because we lived in the same dorm. They were roommates and I don’t know why but they decided I was going to be their friend. And you know how stubborn and obnoxious Ian can be—it was easier to just let him have his way than to argue.”
That did sound about right. Ian was always Papa to her, but she’d heard him talk to other people, and Sable had told her about how he’d goaded a man into punching him so she wouldn’t have to report an assault. Cosima still wasn’t sure what this had to do with her, or anything at all, but she could wait. She was good at waiting.
“My parents died in a skiing accident my sophomore year and I almost dropped out of school but those fuckers wouldn’t let me. They said if I dropped out they would too so I had to stay. Those two basically dragged my ass through the rest of the school year and I stayed with their families over the summer and when we went back to school in the fall…”
Ryker scrubbed a hand over his beard. Not in that pantomime of thoughtfulness, more like he couldn’t help himself.
“I met a girl.”
Oh. That was an unexpected turn.
“Her name was Abby and she was smart and funny and pretty. She was also reckless and impulsive and hot-headed and a huge adrenaline junky. Hudson and Ian dated around some but for the most part it was the four of us, together, all the time. We didn’t share her, but you know Hudson hugs everyone and Ian gave her piggybacks and shit.”
This had all the makings of a breaking-up-the-band story but clearly things hadn’t gone that way. So what had happened?
“One night senior year we’d been at a party and Abby got it into her head she wanted to drag race which was insane. She’d had a few drinks and I told her no. We had a huge fight and she stormed out. I grabbed Ian and Hudson and we went after her. I’d only had a beer so I drove and I knew where she was headed. There was a long, straight strip of road she always liked to speed on about a mile from campus. When we got there she was driving real fast, peeling out, doing donuts. She wasn’t a bad driver—she grew up in the sticks and doing stupid shit in cars was one of the only things to do—but it wasn’t like she was trained in stunt driving or anything. Even if she had been, she’d been drinking and…”
He took a big breath, and his whole body shuddered as he let it out. If it would’ve been anyone else, she would’ve offered comfort but it wasn’t. It was Ryker and she didn’t want to do anything wrong so she just sat there.
“We got out of the car, yelled at her to stop but she wouldn’t. Finally she said if I raced her once she’d come home. I agreed.”
Ryker set his elbows on his knees then, leaned forward until he could lock his hands behind his head and he was talking to the floor.
“I didn’t even try to win. I didn’t want to. I just wanted her to stop. But she tore out of there and when she realized I wasn’t even trying she whipped around and headed for us. Gunned it. She was so angry with me and I should’ve just raced her. But playing chicken at eighty miles per hour?”
He released his hands, shook his head, and stared straight, profile looking like it’d been chiseled out of stone.
“If I didn’t do it, she wasn’t going to stop until she wrecked or ran out of gas. If I did, maybe I could convince her to come home. I didn’t realize though how hellbent on destruction she was. Not until I had to wrench the steering wheel at the last second so she wouldn’t fucking hit us. Wrapped my car around a telephone pole. Had a gas leak. Fire. Got Ian and Hudson out, and then…”
Oh no. She’d noticed his scars, of course. Hard not to see them on his hands and arms, shoulders and back. And they didn’t look like any of hers—Ryker’s looked like raised webs, the skin somehow melted but also pulled tight. Judah might’ve branded her but large scale burning hadn’t been his thing.
She could picture it too, Ryker dragging his friends from a car that was going to blow or that perhaps had already been aflame. Regardless of what he said or how he thought of himself, she knew him to be loyal and devoted and true. He had saved them when he could’ve died trying.
“I didn’t see it at first, or hear it. I missed the whole thing actually happening. But Abby managed to flip her car over the guardrail, down into a ravine. Died.”
Cosima closed her eyes. If she kept them open, she would reach out to him, touch him, and that wouldn’t be what he wanted. He probably wouldn’t want any sort of sympathy at all but she couldn’t help but murmur, “I’m so sorry.”
Unsurprisingly he didn’t respond, just looked at his hands, only the top two joints visible with the fingerless gloves he almost always wore.
“All of that is to say… Hudson and Ian, they have so much love and affection to give. I have none. After my parents and Abby, it’s like it all dried up. It’s not something I’m proud of, that’s simply how things are.”
He did look at her then, his face drawn and haunted. She couldn’t imagine how she’d mistaken his pain for hating her. It was all so clear now.
“So we can play, and I’ll try to be more present around the loft or at least not so purposefully absent. I swear I will never let anyone harm you, but I can’t…” Ryker spread his big hands in front of himself. “I’ll never love you. I’m not capable. But I’m glad you make Hudson and Ian happy and I don’t object to you being here. As I said, I like you, very much. Ian and Hudson have done you a disservice by infecting you with their romantic notions of all of us falling in love and living happily ever after so I apologize on their behalf. The truth is that will never happen and this is as good as it gets.”
Cosima’s blood pumped through her veins like molasses. That was…not what she had hoped for. Really, who hoped for a man to profess his deepest feelings for you with the words “I don’t object to you being here”? But she had two men who loved her—more deeply than she had ever expected even a single partner to love her.
Who was she—stupid little Cosima Valtolina who had run off expecting a dream only to end up in an eight-year nightmare—who was she to want three men to love and adore her? Who wouldn’t be content with even just Ian’s love or only Hudson’s? That should’ve been more than sufficient, hell, maybe even overwhelming for the most needy and high maintenance women. And yet here she was, feeling this side of devastated because while Ryker liked her very much—allegedly—he would never love her.
Was that enough for her to stay? Of course. She couldn’t hope for anything better than this. But would it forever eat away at her, bit by little bit that she could never—no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much pain she took, no matter what she did—earn this stoic sadist’s love? Probably. But the alternative of leaving all of them and having her entire heart shredded and burnt to ashes was simply not acceptable so this unrequited yearning was just going to have to do.
She forced herself to push the disappointment down and blinked at him.
“But you said we could play?”
