I felt a little selfish for saying that because my brother did love me, and I was admitting this all to a man who had just lost his family. But Ryan didn’t look upset. He met my gaze with empathy, pressing his hand harder against my heart.
“I didn’t expect to find you. Not really,” I admitted. “And I thought if I did, maybe we’d say hi. That I’d get a chance to thank you. I didn’t expect to be here in your bed.”
He looked up at me, his eyes holding an earthy kind of glow from the light in the room. “I’m not going to pretend like I think you’re disappointed it got a bit more intimate than a quick hello.”
I snorted and fought the urge to hold his chin, lean in, and kiss him. Though I wasn’t sure that was off the table with the way he was looking back at me. “Not in the slightest. But I do wish the circumstances were better.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “You’ve been alone all this time. I’m glad you’re not here with anyone, but I wish you hadn’t been on your own to deal with everything your family put you through.”
“I wasn’t totally alone,” he said. His free hand rose, and he traced a touch around the ink I had decorating my arm. He was such an intense contrast to me—tan where I was pale, blank where I was decorated, bony where I was thick. I loved it. “My best friend and her fiancé are there every time I need someone to talk to. And I dated a little.”
An unwelcome rage flared in my chest, but I quickly swallowed it down. I had no right to give even one solitary fuck about who he’d spent his time with over the last year. But there was a possessive monster in my head when it came to him, and I didn’t even know it existed until this moment.
“Atlas,” he said quietly.
I realized I was grimacing, and I quickly schooled my face into something closer to neutral. “I don’t know what to say to that. I hope whoever it was made you feel less lonely.”
“Yeah, no. They weren’t thrilled about my teenage boy–style obsession with a rock singer.”
I frowned, then realized he was talking about me. “Oh my god.”
“I’m joking. Sort of. One of them did point out how many photos of you I had saved on my phone.” He reached out and tugged on a lock of hair that had escaped the elastic band. “This was a lot shorter in those photos. And your face was shaved.” He scratched his fingers over my seven-day-old scruff, making me shiver.
I felt my cheeks heat as I let him go to twist my hair up into a tighter bun. His eyes widened a bit, and his pupils got larger. Oh god, he was turned on? By the way I looked like a total disaster? “Yeah,” I admitted. “I wanted to do something different. Something that didn’t remind me of the person I was beforehim.”
“Raleigh,” Ryan said, like he was testing out the weight of the name.
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s not his real name, you know. He was jealous of mine. He wanted something that sounded unique.”
“Why’d he choose Raleigh?”
My lips twitched. “In third grade, that was the word he failed during the spelling bee.”
“You’re shitting me.”
My grin turned into a barely-restrained laugh. “Nope.”
“What a fucking tool. I mean, in third grade, I probably would have failed with that word too, but mygod, let it go.”
Grinning, I leaned into him when suddenly the laughter between us fizzled out, and something heavier took its place.Something intense. Something wanting. We shared each other’s breath, and in that moment, a heartbeat.
Then he reached up and palmed my cheek. His touch was so careful. So soft. He blinked, lashes feathering downward, long and lush without a ton of product to make himself fit for the stage. Fuck, it was so different, and so, so much better than what I’d had with my ex.
“Am I reading this wrong?” he asked.
“No.”
“Can I?—”
“Yes.”
He huffed, and his eyes lifted, searching mine. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“No, but I was hoping you were asking for a kiss. Or more. But whatever it is, Ryan, I’m yours.”
He swallowed thickly. I heard his throat catch, and then he cleared his throat. “I feel like I’ve been half in love with a ghost for a year. Which is ridiculous, you know? I mean, you probably had a thousand people thinking they were in love with the part of you that you shared onstage.”
