I closed my eyes and let myself breathe the scent of Ryder’s shampoo and aftershave and skin deep into my lungs.
“I still owe you nine thousand, seven hundred eighty-three kisses,” I said. “And I wanna make them up to you. All of them. But that’s gonna take a while if we’re on different sides of the planet. So I was thinking… come home with me instead?”
The maybe two seconds between me asking and Ryder reacting felt like a lifetime of anxiety, but I knew the moment the words were out that Dad had been right. I had to ask. I had totry.
My life wouldn’t be the same without Ryder in it. Not now that I’d had a taste of what it could have been like. If he didn’t want that, fine, I’d get over it eventually.
But if he did?
“You kept count,” Ryder said, staring up at me red-eyed and mussed.
He was beautiful, even like this. He was always beautiful, to me, because it’d never been about what he looked like. It was about the way everything he was shone out of him, about how warm and funny and protective and kind and patient he’d always been with me, the giant dork he’d decided was his best friend way back when we were little enough to hold hands crossing the street.
“Course,” I said, smiling a tiny, shy little smile at him. “I was scared I wouldn’t make it in time.”
“You didn’t,” Ryder said, burying his face against my shoulder again. “I’m just always late for everything.”
I was still waiting for an answer, but I didn’t want to push him.
“You drove here,” Ryder said. “Didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“Fifteen hours.” Ryder shifted in my arms. “And fifteen hours back. Just for me.”
I shrugged. “Not like I haven’t done it before.”
He looked up at me, but a delicate cough drew my attention to the doorway.
“So…” Allison asked, waving between the two of us. “What am I telling people?”
I turned back to Ryder, scared and excited, my stomach in free fall and clearly not planning to let up anytime soon.
“You’d do anything for me,” Ryder said, reaching out with a trembling hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.
It wasn’t a question, he knew the answer—and if he didn’t, it must have been written in neon lights in my eyes—but I nodded again anyway.
Ryder broke into the brightest, freest, happiest smile I’d ever seen on him in the whole time I’d known him.
“Take me home?” he asked.
I choked trying to take a breath, nodding like the little dog on Dad’s dashboard when he hit a pothole.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
I’d take him home.
“Stop that right now,” Allison said, and when I tore my eyes off Ryder to look at her—it seemed rude to ignore her—she was wiping a tear away from her eye with terrifyingly sharp nails. “This mascara isn’t waterproof and I don’t have time to redo it.”
Ryder laughed, letting his head fall against my shoulder again. Holding him like this made me so happy I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to let go.
“Tell them I got a better offer,” Ryder said. “And he’s taking me home.”
“Gotcha,” Allison said, taking a step back from the doorway.
“Text me when you land,” Ryder added. “And thank you.”
