“Listen, Ryder, you’ve made it perfectly clear that you want nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to figure out why you’re here.”
“Is that what you think? You think I’m acting like this and that I wrote a song about you and that I dragged my ass out of bed first thing this morning when Phoenix called me and told me you were crashing at his place because I want nothing to do with you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, feeling like it was a lie.
He just shook his head. “Tell me what’s going on,Ivy.”
I could tell that he really had lost whatever patience he’d started with. I decided it was probably just better to give him what he wanted. I told him everything. I started with where I had been for the past year and ended with waking up in Phoenix’s bed with Ryder looming over me.
“Where is Nix now?” he asked thoughtfully.
I lifted one shoulder and rested my cheek on it. “Probably on his way. I have no idea where he’s coming from, but if Thalia called him, I have no doubt he’s going to be here soon.”
“So what’s your plan?”
I shrugged again. “I need to figure out what happened to Honor. I feel like I should figure out what’s going on with my mom… I don’t know where to start.”
“Why do you even care? That woman deserves whatever they do to her.”
The fury radiating off him surprised me. I knew he hated Nix, but I had no idea how deep his hatred for my mother went. “I agree with you. I don’t know though… there’s just something off with the whole thing. What do they want with her? What are they doing to her? I’m not saying I want to rescue her. I just have this feeling that I need to know what’s going on. I’m missing a piece of this puzzle.”
“Red, we’re missing a lot of pieces.”
This time when I laughed, it was real. “Fair enough.”
“So what’s the plan?”
I chewed on my bottom lip while I tried to make one up really quickly. I didn’t exactly have a plan. “I want to drive by Smith’s house. I’d like to see if any of his employees are there and can tell me anything. I’d also like to swing by my old apartment and see if my mom still owns it or if she sold it or what.”
“She didn’t sell it,” Ryder said softly but with conviction.
“How do you know?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from me. If I didn’t know any better I would think he was embarrassed. But he couldn’t be. He had nothing to be embarrassed about.
“I’ve, uh, been checking up on it.”
“You’ve been checking up on it?” I clarified. Those words knocked the wind right out of me. I felt sucker-punched.
“Okay, don’t make a big deal out of it,” he demanded, sounding pissy again.
“I’m not.”
“You are. It wasn’t anything. I just wanted to know if you came back to town, all right? I had no way of knowing what happened to you or if you were dead or what. Okay?”
“Okay, geez.” My chest bloomed with pain again. “You really thought I was dead?”
His gaze shifted to mine and held. I felt breathless again but for a different reason this time. “Yeah, Ivy. I thought it was a real possibility.”
I slid forward until we were just a few inches apart. My hand shook as I reached out and touched the top of his. I just barely grazed the back of his hand with my fingertips, afraid of what more physical contact with him would do to my fragile heart.
He stilled so completely, I had to look at him just to make sure he was still breathing.
“I’m not dead, Ryder. See? Perfectly alive.”
His jaw clenched tightly. “I can see that, Red. A phone call wouldn’t have hurt you though, yeah? You left me…in the hospital. Do you know what that did to me? I couldn’t go after you. I couldn’t stop you or talk you out of it or anything. Do you have any idea what thatdid to me?”
I struggled to swallow around the huge lump in my throat. “I did what was best for you… for us.”
