“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” was the only thing I could say.
I let him watch me while Bowen wove through the streets of Boston. Though I never gave him my address, he pulled up in front of my building like he’d been coming to this craggy little corner of Salem Street for years.
I reached for the door handle, but Ryan stopped me, saying, “Wait. I’ll come around.”
He gripped my elbow as I climbed down from the SUV, his other hand hovering near my hip. I’d love to say I didn’t need that much help, but I was just a hair over five feet tall and couldn’t dismount a vehicle this size without a firm grip on at least one handle.
“Thanks,” I said as I crossed to the narrow sidewalk in front of my building. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say now, but I knew I had to do something, anything. We couldn’t leave it like this. “Um, so?—”
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, flattening a hand beside my door.
His driver took off toward Charter Street. I watched as the taillights flashed before disappearing from sight. He was probably looping back up through Prince Street and not leaving Ryan here.
Because why would he leave Ryan here?
That wouldn’t happen.
We weren’tthatkind of engaged.
Or…were we?
That would be something to think about.
I dug my keys out of my bag and Ryan watched while I struggled with the old, sticky lock. Once we were inside, he settled a hand low on my back. He kept it there as we wound our way up five flights of narrow, twisting stairs. We didn’t say a word.
I turned to face him when I reached the small landing outside my door. He stopped a step below though that still didn’t bring him down to my eye level.
He slipped his hands into his pockets only to immediately pull them out again. “Tell me you’re all right,” he said.
“I’m—I’m not sure. I’m fine,” I hurried to add. “But I need some time to think. About everything. That you said.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “And after you’ve had that time?”
“We’ll talk,” I said.
He pressed his tongue into his cheek, nodded once. “I have to be in LA tomorrow night, but I’ll be back on Wednesday. Can we meet up later this week? I have some events coming up and it would go a long way to have you with me for them.” He glanced over my shoulder at the off-kilter brass5and the hot pink skeleton wreath left over from last Halloween. “Or I could stay and watch while you think. Just like I used to.”
There was no reason in the entire world for those words to warm my blood all the way down to my toes, and there was certainly no reason to feel a twist of anticipation low in my belly. None at all.
“You’d get bored without some calculus homework to entertain you,” I said.
“Unlikely.”
Before I could respond to that, a crash sounded from the other side of the door. “Don’t worry,” Ines called. “It’s not broken.” After a weighty pause, she added, “And I wasn’t listening.”
I met Ryan’s gaze with a tired grin. “Later this week,” I said. “We’ll talk then.”
He lifted a hand like he meant to reach for me but let it drop. “I’ll text you my schedule,” he said, though each word sounded waterlogged with reluctance.
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like the sense that I couldn’t tell up from down. And I didn’t like that I couldn’t read his thoughts with one quick glance.
I beckoned him closer, my arms open. “Come here,” I said, fisting my hand in his sweater and pulling him to me when he didn’t move. “You’re not allowed to leave me without a hug.”
I held him close and, after a pause I didn’t understand at all, he wrapped his arms around me. The scruff of his beard scraped at my neck, and for once I didn’t wiggle away from it.
“I love you, you know,” I said, my words muffled against his shoulder.
