“Yeah,” he said, as if it were the simplest thing to understand in the entire world. “The things that matter and that you love the most have a tendency to do that. They take over. Isn’t that kind of the point? Would you want it any other way?”
Pressing my lips together, I knew I didn’t need to respond.
I stared at where his eyelashes tucked themselves against his freckled cheeks. I lifted my fingers, as if to touch each one. He was still slightly in whatever dream he had fallen into on Gertie’s couch downstairs. Still, a smile hovered over his mouth.
“Are you staring at me, Lu?” Ryan’s gravelly voice asked. His eyes fluttered halfway open. His lips curved to the right.
I inhaled but didn’t move. My palm flattened on Ryan’s chest, testing the waters. I watched it rise and fall.
“Yes.”
He hummed with pleasure at the word before shutting his eyes intentionally. “We have found that we do fit well in bed together, huh?”
Silence settled.
Unable to help it, unable to close my eyes, I swallowed. “I just …”
“Yeah, Luella?” Ryan asked, amused.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Just … thank you. So much. You know, for all your help recently. I honestly can’t believe that we got this far tonight, let alone the fact that you were willing to come back here and spend time with Gertie and Vadika. Before, I know that you found it strange and weird and everything.”
“Maybe at the start, sure. But not weird.”
“No?”
“More fascinating.”
“Well, thank you.”
His jaw clenched at my words. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“I do. It’s been nice,” I admitted. “You’ve been kind to me and gone so far above and beyond how I helped you with your class stuff once.”
“Twice,” Ryan corrected.
Twice then.
“Do you really think that is what this has all been about?” Ryan asked, amused. His eyes were once more fully open and alert as they studied my face, looking to see if I could possibly be telling him a joke. “Me paying you back for help on my classwork these past few weeks?”
The two sides of whatever argument I was starting must’ve been mirrored on my face.
“Luella”—he bit his bottom lip after saying my full name again—“I had no idea how twisted and confused that head of yours is.”
“It’s not—”
“I think it is. Listen. I would stay up until the next day, every day, with you, making soaps and spells with bits inside I’m not even sure I will ever know the names of. I would do that not only because you are selfless in helping a poor sap like me, who made you feel awful once for such a stupid reason, but also because—”
“Because now you like hanging out with me?” I said, repeating a similar assortment of words that he had to remind me of all the time. Like yesterday, the first time we had lain in my bed together, a breath away from a kiss. Another kiss he had let fade away with calm refusal while all I’d felt since that night on Mabon was want. “I know.”
“Because I like all of you.”
My lips parted before I thought of coming up with something else teasing back. But this wasn’t a tease. Ryan’s smile turned into something more genuine, serious even, as he lifted a hand and settled his thumb in the center of my chin.
“I thought you just wanted to be friends.”
