I slumped back in the seat and avoided looking anywhere in his general direction when I buckled up. He took off through the neighborhood while I gave him directions to Smith’s.
As soon as he was headed in the right direction, I crossed my arms over my chest and fell silent.
I could admit to myself that I didn’t always know how to act around Ryder. He had always been this overwhelming force of something I couldn’t exactly understand. At the same time he felt both too much for me and just enough. He was too smart, too strong and too perceptive while I floundered in front of him always exposed and always frustratingly vulnerable. He had been, up until this point, always ready to catch me, while I had been forever poised at the edge of a cliff ready to fall.
And now all of that was amplified intensely because those things had never been truer.
I didn’t know what to say because whatever I said felt wrong. I didn’t know how to behave because whatever I did felt like not enough. And I really, really didn’t know how to think because every thought I had about him was in absolute opposition to how he felt about me.
“Smith,” he finally said and I didn’t understand at first.
“You’re going the right way,” I told him.
“No, Smith did this to my car. Before he dropped it off for me, he had it completely redone. I didn’t even recognize it when I got it back.”
“Smith did this?” My words were a pained whisper.
“Yep.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryder. I didn’t ask him to. I swear I didn’t. I just… I just wanted you to get her back. And I guess that’s something else I have to apologize for. I’m sorry I stole your car. I’m sorry-”
“Ivy, I’m not mad you stole my car. If you need my car, no matter where we are or what has come between us, the car is yours. It’s not the point. I’m not interested in material possessions. I want you to be safe. That’s all. If my car has to be a casualty to make it that way, then so be it.”
I pressed my lips together, unsure what to think about that. Eventually my mind spun as fast as my heart and the question just fell out, “So why do you seem so upset about the car?”
“Because he didn’t even ask me! He did everything without asking me and then he handed it over like it was my reward for helping you. Like I wanted some kind of monetary repayment for falling in love with you! I told him I didn’t want it. I didn’t want the damn car or anything to do with you running away. I didn’t want the reminder and I sure as hell didn’t want to be bought off while I couldn’t even recover from losing you… while my world ended.”
“Ryder,” I whispered, but it was the only word I could force out.
“Ivy, I’m going to say this one more time… I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
He gave me a sideways look that I couldn’t read and the rest of the drive was spent in silence. The gate to Smith’s house had been left open, so we drove up the long drive and parked in front of his sprawling estate.
By the time Ryder turned the car off, I had a thousand questions to ask him, but in the end only one made it beyond my lips. “If you didn’t want anything to do with it, why did you keep it?”
He stared straight ahead, without moving, without even breathing and said, “It turned out that I did want the reminder. That I couldn’t live without it.” He shoved his door open and jumped down before I could respond.
Not that I could have responded if I wanted to. His words had depleted any coherent thoughts in my head and erased the words I wanted to speak.Mixed signals much?Geez.
“Let’s go, Red!” he called from outside. His voice was muffled through the windshield, but it still had an effect on me. I still felt the gravelly tenor of the nickname he gave me skitter down my spine to my very bones.
I had to close my eyes and remind myself to breath before I found the courage to meet him outside.
He hadn’t been exactly kind to me since I’d come back into his life, but then at the same time, he had. He had shown up first thing this morning when he heard I was in trouble. He had offered to drive me around and keep me safe while I was here.
He had revived my soul… my heart. I had lived for so long by just coasting. It was something I was used to. Shutting off all of my emotions and focusing on goals was one of my strongest survival techniques and yet it never worked around Ryder. He forced the feeling back into my body. He demanded that I wake up and pay attention. And he always got what he wanted with me.
Or most of the time.
I finally jumped down from the cab and joined him on the porch. We stood there ringing Smith’s doorbell for a solid ten minutes, but nobody answered.
I let out a sigh and let my forehead fall to the hot door. I had wanted some easy answers, but it was clear I wasn’t going to get them.
“Let’s try your apartment,” Ryder suggested. “Maybe there’s something there.”
“Okay.”
