Air. Simple as that.
I flutter my eyes open, my heart lurching when I see the slant of a cowboy hat over the shell of a familiar ear.
“Ryder?” I blurt, my mouth moving against his in a way that sends a bolt of heat through my middle despite the very real terror that grips me. “What the?—”
“Billie.” He says the word on a pained exhale. His cobalt eyes meet mine, and I can suddenly breathe through my nose again. “Oh. Oh my God. Thank God.”
My stomach takes a tumble at the naked emotion in his eyes. He’s the guy whonevershows his cards—never lets his feelings show. Sure, he’s always ready with a smile or a smart-ass comment, but I know it’s all an act. A deflection. Because behind that mask lies a deep,deepwell of pain. I glimpsed it for the first time at his parents’ funeral thirteen years ago, and every so often he’ll let his control slip and I’ll see it again.
The grief. The hurt. The longing.
Ryder turns his head, lifting it a little so that he’s no longer kissing me. Touching me. Doing whatever he was doing.
I’m hit by a crushing sense of disappointment.
“Ryder?” I repeat, and my voice shakes. “What—how am I—why are you?—”
“You took a nasty spill, Billie. I just—” He puts a hand on his chest. “I’m so relieved you’re conscious. Tell me what hurts.”
Ryder gets right to the heart of the matter. No preamble. No niceties.
I like that.
“Everything hurts when you fall from heaven,” I deadpan. It’s my way of dealing with the wash of embarrassment that movesthrough me. My first race and I fall off the damn horse? I’m better than that.
Apparently, though, I’m not.
He lets out a bark of laughter, and my chest lifts. “Aw, Billie Wallace, you’re many things, but an angel ain’t one of ’em. Now tell me what hurts.”
Is it wrong that I like it when he says my full name? When we were younger, he’d always make me feel like a whole person. A real human being, and not the perfect, well-behaved Barbie doll my parents wanted me to be.
He’s making me feel that way now.
He’s making me wish he would put his mouth on me again even though I can see my family hovering just a few feet away.
Never in a million years would Ryder ever date me. But that didn’t stop me from falling in love with him that night in the barn fourteen years ago, when he learned how to play my favorite song. My nightmares were so bad back then.
They still are, if I’m being honest.
Sometimes I wondered if ten-year-olds can even fall in love. But over the years, I’ve come to realize with deep certainty that you’re never too young to notice a kindred spirit.
Even if Colt wouldn’t murder us both if we ever got together, though, Ryder’s definitely not interested in me. He’s always so…aloof when I’m around. Polite, yes. But not at all the open-minded, curious boy I sat next to that night in the barn. He changed after his parents died. Which I understand—whowouldn’tbe traumatized by losing their parents so suddenly, so young?—but I still miss who he was before the accident.
We’re friends now. But really, we’re more like acquaintances, which sucks. I see him around, but we never really hang out.
He runs with a…different crowd. Like his brothers, Ryder can get any girl he wants. And he does. No surprise there; he’s six-two, hot as fuck, smart, and super charming when he wants to be.
He’s a lady-killer, no two ways about it. I’m just one of his many victims.
I often fantasize about breaking through his carefully guarded walls, the ones he put up after his parents died. Walls that got even taller when Garrett Luck passed too.
When we were kids, he was more of a free spirit like me. But as we got older, that side of him went the way of his guitar: gone for good.
It’s not my place, though, to bring that side of him back, right? Ryder seems content enough. He has fun. He loves his family.
Yeah, it kills me to think he’ll never play another song again. Hard to forget howhappyhe looked with a guitar in his hands. Sometimes I worry he’s sleepwalking through life, surviving but not really enjoying much.
But we’re not kids anymore. And Ryder was never meant to be mine.
