“Right. Or that.”
“Stay the night.”
“Not like there’s not room in my bed. Oh.” I put my fork down, smiled. “Wow. How long was it going to take me to get that hint? Did I just ask you to move in with me?”
“Technically or accidentally?”
“Both?”
He picked up a tea towel hanging on the oven handle and wiped it through his wide hands. “I’d say yes.”
“Yes that I asked you to move in, or yes to doing it?”
“Yes.”
I smiled and the warm stutter in my chest that was part excitement, part desire thrummed good and strong before fading away. I knew my smile slipped, because his did too.
“Gods, I hate this.” I took another swallow of coffee, wanting the heat from it to dig deeply into me and fill the cold I couldn’t seem to melt.
“Hate asking me to move in?”
“Hate not having my life where I want it to be. Knowing what I am, what I really want. I’m…I’m not in a great place for figuring this out. For figuring us out.”
“Uh-huh. Is this your way of saying it’s not you it’s me?”
“No. But it’s not you.”
He came up so close in front of me, he was crowding me with his body. He propped his hands on either side behind me, caging me in.
I inhaled the warmth and scent of him, something deeper and spicy that mixed with the scents of breakfast clinging to his skin.
“This isn’t just about you, Delaney. This is about us. About what we are. Together.”
Even without a soul, even without emotions, I knew I never wanted to cause Ryder pain. It used to be I thought keeping the secrets of this town and my job away from him would do that. But not knowing what might hurt him hadn’t stopped him from wading in and getting hurt.
He had been claimed by a god who didn’t like me, my sisters, and our town. A god who would rather pin Ordinary under his thumb. He’d traded his life away to that god just like I’d traded my soul away to the demon currently muttering to himself on my living room couch.
I couldn’t keep the secrets from him, but what I should have done was stayed away from him myself. It wasn’t the secrets of town that had hurt him, changed him. It was me.
And all of Jean’s worry about hurting Hogan by telling him about Ordinary seemed like a repeat of what Ryder and I had been through.
If I’d never let him touch me, if I’d never wanted to touch him, if I’d walked away and let him live his life, and let me live mine, he wouldn’t be here in this mess.
Just as screwed up as I was.
“Where did your mind go just then?” he asked. “I can tell you’re thinking awfully hard about this.”
I searched his hazel eyes, the warmth and sparks of brown and gray. I was pretty sure I loved him, when I could feel it. When I had a soul.
I hadn’t said it, the L-word. We’d agreed we both felt it for each other, but neither of us had said it out loud to the other.
Maybe there was a good reason we were hesitating on that commitment.
For all that he was convinced I’d get my soul back, that was not a likely outcome of the situation. It wasn’t even a probable one.
The very last thing I wanted to do was make him commit to me and then fake my feelings for him for the rest of our lives.
That was the worst kind of lie, the worst kind of harm.
