CHAPTER TWENTY
The elevator could get me upstairs faster, but I need the stairs to help calm down so I don’t physically harm Ryland as he follows behind me. It doesn’t work. Being tired from walking only serves to make me more pissed. My body vibrates with emotions. If I wasn’t clenching my fists so hard, they’d probably shake.
For the first two flights of stairs, I work on ways I’ll address his shitty behavior in a calm and rational way. By the third floor, my feelings bubble over and I lose my control.
“What the fuck was that, Ryland?” I’m yelling, but there isn’t a better volume to figure out what the hell he’s thinking.
Ryland keeps walking. “You like a guy to dress that way?” After all the male posturing I had to witness, that’s what he focuses on?
He finally stops walking and I push on his chest… well the top of his stomach because he’s a tall, stupid idiot. “Are you really that insecure you're bothered because Cody wore a tie?”
“No!” He starts walking again punching in the code to access our fourth-floor hallway. “I’m fact finding. Why would you meet him at all? He cheated on you and then tried to pay off his mistress so you’d never find out. Have you forgotten? I thought you were better than that.”
His words sting. I step on my flower doormat with a hand on the knob. I need to get away from him before the angry tears start. Why do women cry when we reach a certain point of pissed-off? It’s unfair.
“Do you know what I was thinking while Cody and I were talking? Do you want to know, Jerkface?” His chin twitches in a quick nod. “I thought about you and how happy I've been the last month and how I’m glad we didn’t get married. Cody saved me from a huge bullet.”
His mouth falls open and his eyes widen in shock. “You were?”
Fucking idiot men.“Yes, dumbass. Did you think we were down there reconciling?”
“Well… no. I guess not.” He places a hand on the white textured wall and leans on it, his eyes to the floor either thinking hard about his actions or looking for answers in the carpet. “I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t like it. Don’t do it again.”
I bite my lips closed while my blood boils. I cannot believe the arrogance of this man. “Do people always do exactly what you want?”
Still checking the floor for his answers, he takes a full fucking minute to think before lifting his head to address me. “Yes.” It’s a simple strong answer——one he obviously believes.
“That must be boring.” I slip inside my apartment only opening the door enough to let my body past and then give it a good smack to shut it on him.
Ryland doesn’t take the hint and leave. Instead he saunters in stopping in front of the kitchen. “No, actually it wasn’t boring at all. It was simple, and calm, and quiet."
“I think you mean boring and lonely.” I toss the comment back at him.
“Just look at the rules.” He points to my refrigerator. “Have you followed a single one of these?” He walks to the fridge taking the piece of paper from under the magnet. “What’s the point of even having them?” He tears the paper in two throwing both pieces on top of the trash can.
“You drive me insane, woman. You don’t listen to anything,” he says to me in annoyance and walks to the couch squishing a pillow when he sits. With hands on the top of his head he lowers it until his elbows touch his knees. “Fuck, Marissa. What I did was shitty, but I think I love you.”
“You think you love me?” I stop a few feet from him. The air in my lungs stolen.
“Yeah.” We make eye contact across the small living room, his brilliant blue eyes sparkling from this distance.
“You think you love me?” I ask again.
His expression turns wolfish when his lips turn a fraction upward. “We haven’t known each other long.” Maybe he’s trying to explain the “I think” part of his statement, but it’s the “love you” part I’m stuck on. Ryland Bates told me he loved me. I think.
Oh. My. God. Ryland Bates told me he loved me. Half of me wants to run screaming from the room and hide. The other half wants to open a window and scream it out into the chilly winter air.
I do neither, but rather slump down in the chair beside the couch processing this new turn of events. “You love me.” This time it’s not a question, but a statement.
I’d like to pace as I work through exactly what his words mean, but my legs won’t move. They don’t have the strength in them to do a few laps even though the life-altering words still hover around the room.
“Is it love to think about you constantly? When you decide to sleep at your place for the night, I miss having you in my bed. I’ve considered begging you to stay with me, but then I’d sound crazy.”
“You could have begged me to stay.” What girl wouldn’t want their hunky neighbor to beg them to sleep over?
“I’m trying to give you independence and not suffocate you early in our relationship.” He adjusts the baseball cap on his head. "I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. I have no idea how to handle it. Locking you in my condo probably isn’t socially acceptable, but I’ve considered it…more than once.”
“No, probably not.” I need to add more to this conversation, but my brain is three topics behind Ryland at this point. I’m also having warm squishy feelings about being kidnapped, and that isn’t right.
