He looked me in the eyes.
“First, don’t let yourself out of the car again.” Ryker blew on his coffee mug and took a small sip. “Second, I’m not Parker.”
I picked up my mug now, taking a long sip, letting the familiar sensation of the warm tea fill my body. I instantly relaxed. Then I registered his words.
He was right; he wasn’t Parker. I knew this, but my brain didn’t. My heart was trying to get it to come out of flight mode. I looked around the room, anywhere but at Ryker. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes at how foolish I was being. I was long gone, moved on from Parker, but something about him being where we were today, trying to take a jab at me and Ryker standing up for me, had me unsure of how to handle it all.
“I know you aren’t,” I took a deep breath, a tear streaking down my cheek. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not scared that you might have the same feelings that he did one day or act the way he did toward me.”
“Can you let me know what those things are, Odette?”
I’d talked to Ryker a little bit about Parker, mostly that he knew we dated and that I’d left him, but he didn’t know a lot of the little details. The things that I’d gone to therapy for years to try to work through.
He didn’t know how Parker had broken me.
“Take as long as you need to tell me. I’m not going anywhere.” Ryker took another sip of his tea, and I did the same. He looked comfortable in the chair next to me, like he was making himself at home. Like he was home, like he belonged here, in my life.
“You know that I was with Parker for a few years, and that when we broke up, it wasn’t great, but there was a lot in the relationship that wasn’t great either. Things I didn’t see until long after we had been apart. Things that I’ve been able to move on from with therapy, but sometimes little things creep up here and there that I hadn’t realized were big for me, or even the little things that still linger.”
Ryker put down his mug and took my hands, leaning forward, listening to me. He was all ears to anything I would tell him.
“If you haven’t noticed, Parker kind of likes to get what he wants, however he can get it. Even when we were together, it always had to be his way. The music we listened to, what I could do in my free time, who I could hang out with, what I could wear, or how I did my hair. If it wasn’t what he liked, it was out of the question.” I pulled my hand out of Ryker’s, handing both of mine together in front of me, intertwining my fingers together, rubbing them together, the pressure helping me calm down. I took a deep breath before continuing. “I changed my whole life without ever realizing I had done so. It was like going from my parents’ control to his, and I hadn’t noticed it had happened. I’d lost my friends in the first few months of us dating because he didn’t like them and inherited his friends instead. I didn’t look like myself when I looked in the mirror, and I hated how I felt most days. Like I wanted to do more, but didn’t know how. I didn’t see all of that until months after we had broken up. It took me so long to get myself back, learn what I liked again, how I wanted to dress, style my hair, or even what music I wanted to listen to in the car. I had to rebuild myself from the ground up. That’s where a lot of this came from when I decided to move out here on my own.”
I motioned around my home, a home that screamedme.
“Fuck, baby.” Ryker moved his chair closer to me, but didn’t try to pry my hands apart to hold them. Instead, he grabbed them together, pressing into them. The added pressure was helping.
“I thought I was madly in love with him and would have done anything for him, but he never did anything for me. It was always what he wanted. And at some point in time, he no longer wanted me.” I laughed, but this wasn’t funny. “Scratch that. Hewanted me, but as a friend. He wanted me in his life because I somehow made his life better, but he didn’tactuallywant me. I knew about the affairs but could never prove them, not until after we were no longer together.”
Ryker didn’t say anything as I stopped and grabbed my tea, needing a break momentarily because there was so much more. He didn’t add anything else, but waited until I was ready to continue, so I did.
“The day I told Parker that I wanted to move somewhere out here and for him to come with me, he’d made mention of still needing his own space, saying that we wouldn’t work well together crammed in one house. I let it go on for a few months, where we saw each other once a week and talked maybe a few times a day. It wasn’t until the day I told Parker it was over that he pleaded with me not to leave, that I was too much of a friend to him, and that he needed me in his life, and he wouldn’t know what to do without me.”
I straightened myself in the chair, ready to unveil one of the hardest moments in my life. Even harder than when I cut off my family, because all in all, Parker had basically been my family for years, and then he wasn’t, and I had to let him go for my sake.
“He came over that night, drunk, trying to confess his love on my front lawn. I let him in out of pity, and he sat on that couch,” I pointed to the living room. “And told me how much he realized he hadn’t been appreciating me, that we could do whatever I wanted, that he would move here, that I could, as he said, be with my ‘stupid’ friends again.”’
I reached for my mug, taking a few sips of tea. I hadn’t thought about that night in quite some time. Thinking about it reminded me of just how manipulative Parker really was, and no one truly saw it.
“After he left that night,” I continued, “he started texting me every day. I thought maybe he thought it was just a bump inthe road, that he thought I wasn’t being serious, until I finally blocked his number a month later, per Jemma.”
“I need to send Jemma a thank-you gift,” Ryker said as he took a sip of his tea and looked at me from over the mug.
“She was the best friend I could have ever asked for. Parker had kept going on and on about how we were best friends and still wanted me in his life. Wanted to be able to text me when he wanted to, show up, go out to dinner, but also be able to see others. He’d actually texted me that night, and it sent Jemma into a frenzy. She blocked his number on my phone, blocked him on all socials, and that was it. To this day, I do not speak with Parker, and if for some reason our paths cross in the gaming universe, his assistant is who Jemma works with.”
Ryker was shaking his head as he held his tea, taking in everything I had just laid out for him.
I finished off my tea as Ryker stared at me. He took a sip of his own tea, finishing off his glass, before grabbing my hands again. He pulled his chair closer to mine, his legs between mine.
“I promise,” Ryker took a deep breath. “To always be there for you. Whenever you might have a shutdown, need to talk, or anything you need. I will work my fucking hardest to rebuild a trust I know I didn’t break, but fuck baby, what you just told me breaks my fucking heart. You didn’t deserve that kind of treatment; no one does. And if I could, I’d go back to that beach and punch Parker right in the face.”
I let out a guttural laugh, and relief washed over me.
“I know that promise is a lot, but you deserve to be loved, to be taken care of. To be shown that you matter, and I plan to do just that. But, Odette,” He placed a hand on my cheek, and I leaned into it, our eyes locked. “I am not Parker.”
“I know you aren’t, and I trust you. I trust you with my whole heart, Ryker.”
He leaned forward, placing his forehead against mine.
