“I didn’t believe it was you,” I say thickly. “But . . . I had to be sure.”
“Ava.” He says my name again, almost like he’s entered a dream.
“It’s fine.” I take a step back toward the house. “It’s fine.”
Ryder tilts his head. He needs to stop looking at me like that. Like there is this delicious wonder at the sight of me.
He left. Not me. Him. He didn’t want me, so I’d be a fool to think otherwise.
“Okay,” I say, rubbing my hands down my thighs. “Now that we have all this cleared up, I have work to do.”
“Wait.”
I don’t wait, I keep my quick pace toward the Marks’s home.
“Ava.”
“No,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“At least let me—”
“Drake is in there.” I wheel around, but know I’ve shot the good shot. Ryder stops at once. One of those classic, all Ryder scowls twists on his lip. I soften my voice. “Unless you want to tell me what happened, I doubt either of you two have plans to hug it out. Right?”
Ryder steps back, but I pretend I see a bit of torment in his eyes. I pretend he’s battling the same need to pull me close as I am with him.
But it seems his distaste for my brother wins out against anything he might’ve felt for me.
Ryder storms back toward the Range Rover. I ought to be used to the back of his head. It’s the last memory I have of the man. This moment is big, astronomical, really. A greedy, broken part of me wants to chase after him, to merely touch him, even for a moment.
But I don’t follow.
The heart can only take so much before it breaks forever.
The entryway is a little disheveled when I step back into the house.
“Where did you go?” Drake pokes his head around the corner, broom in hand.
“Signature for the police report.” I lie so easily. But I’m really trying to be the neighborhood hero.
Facing off with Ryder is plenty of electric pain to my system I didn’t expect. To watch two men I care about fall back into disdain and hatred . . . I won’t make it through that a second time.
Ryder
I slurpa bowl filled with bland cereal. My pulse hasn’t stopped racing in my head since I saw her face in the dark.
Ava Williams.
It was a shot to the gut. A pain, a gift, a torment I’d buried deep inside until it all crashed to the surface. My head is spinning; my T-shirt feels too tight against my skin, even the cereal tastes rougher on my tongue.
Surprises are not my thing, but tonight’s surprise wasn’t horrible. Not entirely. Seeing Ava sliced open an old scar in my heart, made me want things I shouldn’t want, and started the haze building in my head.
But it’s not horrible because it’s Ava. Soul mates are a fantasy, but she is the woman that’d make me believe in fairy tales. The same way the emotions of musicals bring tranquility, Ava Williams was a security blanket, a bit of serenity capable of chasing away worry, tension, fear, anything.
Parker saw the cops and had hurried down to meet me with Bridger Cole, his rockstar brother-in-law. I’d been anxious to disappear, and gave them both a brief explanation that I called because it looked like someone was inside the house, then explained nothing more.
Probably not the best way to leave it, since I’m sure both were worried about wives and kids and important people like that, but I had to go.
I slurp another bite.
