He brushes his palms together and picks up my bag next to my feet. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Okay.”
Breathe. Take a step. Breathe. Step. I’m being dramatic, but walking this close, the occasional brush of his shoulder against mine has my head chanting each movement I need to make, as though my brain is about to short circuit.
I’m on dangerous ground here. No wonder Drake felt the need to give me a warning. How many years have I been lost in the casual dating pool? Like James. We had worked together, he was a successful guy, but when I looked forward, he wasn’t in my vision.
No one ever has been. Except Ryder Huntington.
I think that’s what makes the knife to my heart so sharp and lasting. I once believed I was one of those lucky ones who found her second half before high school graduation.
Love at eighteen is considered puppy love, but in my case, it was no less real than mature, adult love of another human.
I’ve never found it since. Truth be told, I’m not sure I’ve wanted to. And there is the problem. My heart is a glutton for punishment by hanging onto memories of a different time, a different man.
Ryder made it clear he didn’t need any strings hanging off him when he cut ties. Meeting again hasn’t changed anything. He needs me for a reason. He’s not back in my life by choice. I’d be doing my scarred heart a favor by remembering that.
“This is me.” I point to the Civic.
“I know,” he says.
“You did not.”
“Well, since it is the only other car, it wasn’t hard.” Ryder looks at the empty lot, and I’d like to bury my head in the ground. I stopped using brain cells somewhere between that moment he had me pinned to the wall and the cheeseburgers. He opens one of the back doors and puts my bag inside. “But the Tweety sticker gave it away. That thing is old.”
Embarrassment warms my face. “Only about a decade.”
“I never saw it placed.”
“Well, you left before I got Celia the Civic.” I pretend to take too long to dig out my key from my jacket pocket. Ryder saw the Tweety sticker at one of his baseball tournaments our senior year and bought it. He was already gone to Washington by the time I had my own car. Still, I couldn’t find the will to toss it.
When I can’t pretend my key is stuck any longer, I open the driver’s door, reluctant and desperate to leave in the same breath.
“I saw it that night at Griffin’s,” Ryder whispers. “Made me think of you right away.”
“Right before you called the cops?”
Ryder glares. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
A laugh snorts in a garbled noise through both my nose and throat. Utterly unattractive, but the sounds I make through laughter or tears are never pretty. “You’ll never live it down. It was horrible in the moment, but now, looking back, I think it’s safe to say you made the biggest, most hilarious blunder of all time. You should make yourself a pin.”
“I’ll think about it.” He smiles.Oh, no. It’s a full, bright white Ryder smile. One with the power to melt my stomach, speed my pulse, and knock me off my feet. A thing so rare, I used to think they were only saved for me. My own diamond in the rough.
I need to leave.
“Well, this was a productive day.” I slip behind the wheel. Ryder is silent, watching me fumble around my front seat. I try to start the engine; it revs and stalls. A nervous chuckle scrapes out of my throat. “She’s an old girl.”
His smile is replaced with a sexy kind of scowl as I try to start the car again. And again. On the fifth time, the engine doesn’t even try to start. It merely clicks.
I let my forehead fall to the steering wheel. Should’ve had Drake drive me.
The back door opens. Ryder takes my bag out of the seat.
“What are you doing?”
He nods his head toward the glossy Range Rover. “Come on. I’m driving.”
“No, it’s okay. I can call—”
