He asked this in a plain, unassuming way. There was no heat, no innuendo. No expectation. And I loved that so much because I knew my response wouldn’t change anything between us. There wouldn’t be pressure or disappointment. There wouldn’t be any loaded comments about the weekend ahead or the next time we traveled for one of his events.
We’d be okay if we never crossed another line together—and that was everything I needed. We could only cross these lines if we could turn around and walk back to the start at any point.
“Not right now.” I motioned to my abdomen. “There’s a teardown project taking place in my uterus. Authorized personnel only.”
He reached between us, pressed a hand to my belly. He was so deliciously warm, I couldn’t help but lean deeper into his touch. “Is there something you need? Supplies or anything else?”
I shook my head. “No, but…thanks. For everything. You really didn’t have to do all of this for me and Ines.”
“It wasn’t like I was going to leave you two there.” He kissed my temple, my forehead. “At least not without a canoe.”
“That would’ve solved many problems though invented a few others.”
“Couldn’t have that.” He scooped me off the counter, set me on my feet. “Come on. Let me introduce you to all the different pain-relief bath soaks I keep on hand.”
“No hotter words have ever been spoken,” I said, lacing my fingers with his.
chapter seventeen
Ryan
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will be able to read the room.
Emme chose the room upstairs.
It was probably the better direction to go, all things considered. We all needed to retreat to our separate corners and recalibrate for a night. Plus, she didn’t feel well and I doubted I’d succeed in staying on my side of the bed. I hadn’t managed it yet, and after this morning I couldn’t see the odds getting any better.
We shared a meal upstairs in the family room and then she worked on her plans for school while I watched a few hockey games. I needed to pack for my trip to Minnesota tomorrow and I owed Jakobi a call—my grandmother too—but nothing in the world could get me off this couch. No fewer than six hundred times did I stop myself from askingCan we do this forever?
Goddamn, that was all I wanted. Just like this and for as long as possible.
Though I didn’t know where we went from here. If we went anywhere. She’d kissed me in the kitchen and neither of us were pretending it had anything to do with wifeing up my reputation.
But it’d ended and she’d drawn some boundaries. That part didn’t surprise me. I knew Emme so I knew it was coming.
I remembered two things from my four years of high school. The first was the dark, suffocating blanket of my father’s illness and the way I still felt trapped beneath it every time I went home.
The second, and the one that stuck with me like an old splinter, was sitting by while Emme bounced from relationship to relationship. She dated a lot though never seriously. Nothing lasted more than a month or two and it always ended when there was a threshold she wasn’t interested in crossing. Some thresholds were big, others nothing at all. But she only crossed the lines she chose to cross.
In ninth grade it was Christmas. The guy she was with—Ethan Mace, a year ahead of us and not a complete prick but I resented his presence on this planet very much—wanted her to join his entire extended family on Christmas Eve. There were like sixty people coming to this thing and they took their traditions very seriously. She wanted nothing to do with it and he didn’t recognize that insisting it would be fun and chill—with sixty people and a baby Jesus in the manger skit—only made her run faster for the exit.
In tenth grade it was Marcus Denflower and the homecoming dance. She wanted to go with a group of friends. He wanted to go withher. They split up one day before the dance. I lucked out in that situation because she used me as a human shield against Denflower’s attempts at smoothing things over. Fortunately for all of us, he knew better than to fuck with me.
In eleventh grade it was Jaxon Perrent, and that silly motherfucker wanted Emme to watch him play chess at lunch every day. She didn’t even bother with a backward glance in Jaxon’s direction when he swore he hadn’t meant it as an ultimatum. She was done and that was the end of it. Sheate lunch withme.That single point on the board—and those lunches—had kept me going through some hard times.
In twelfth grade it was Kivan Waleswood and he wanted her to go to his parents’ lake cabin with him after the prom. It was obvious what Kivan was looking for with that. I knew Emme had…done things but there was a big difference between some time behind closed doors at a house party and a whole fucking weekend alone in the woods with someone. Emme—thank god—wasn’t interested in the cabin or even going to the prom with Kivan anymore.
Then she blew my entire mind and announced we’d go together. It was supposed to be a joke, and I didn’t understand how or why or what that was supposed to mean but I didn’t care. It was the closest I could come in that grueling time to getting what I wanted.
And I knew now that if I wanted Emme, I had to let her make the decisions. If I wanted her to wrap herself around me the way she had this morning, if I ever wanted to feel her shake and pant with pleasure again, I had to wait until she was ready.
I had to give her time to cross the line.
If there was one thing I had when it came to Emmeline Ahlborg, it was patience. After fifteen years of watching her date the weakest link in every chain, a week or two was nothing. I could do that in my fantasy-soaked sleep.
Hang on. There was a third thing I remembered from high school. It was working out with the football team before school started and hearing Brett Kincaid, the senior quarterback who lost his starting position to me three weeks later, yellDibson the new girlwhen Emme walked past the field. We all knew he had a hard time hearing the wordno.He was a fucking asshole who thought everyone owed him something.
