“For what? How much are you asking for? A couple of photo ops and maybe one fancy party in LA? He’d love that.”
“He’d hate it,” I said. I could hardly imagine Ward at one of those parties. Not only were they huge, loud, packed wall-to-wall with drunk strangers, but the drunk strangers also only cared about what you could do for them, whether they could call you later when they needed something.
I’d been surprised at Ward coming out with us last night—not just because I hadn’t known he was bi, but because crowded bars weren’t really his thing. Not that anything in Otter Bay could be calledcrowdedthe way everything in LA could be. The big city wasn’t for Ward.
“Okay, fine, he’d hate it,” Seth agreed. “But he’d do it. For you. And you should let the people who love you help.”
Of course he’d do it for me. That was the problem—as soon as I asked, I knew he’d agree. I didn’twanthim to agree, I didn’t want to put that pressure on him. Besides, he’d done enough for me over the years, and I hadn’t done anything to repay him.
This one more thing seemed like too much to ask.
“You still have to tell him,” Seth reminded me.
Right. I hadn’t done that yet.
“Okay, okay,” I said, unlocking my phone with my heart in my throat. “I’ll call him.”
4
Ward
“Why didn’tyou tell me you were dating Ryder?”
I stood beside my truck blinking at Liz in the morning sunlight, halfway to grabbing the new set of stairs I’d knocked together after Ryder ran out of the cabin like his ass was on fire.
The whole morning I’d been worried about him. I knew he felt guilty for kissing me and I wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t, that I didn’t hate it, that…
That maybe, if he wanted to, we could try it again. Except that he didn’t need to hear that right now. Ryder wasn’t ready for me to pour my heart out about how I’d been lying awake on the couch all night thinking about how it felt to kiss him after all this time.
Which was a big part of the reason why, as far as I knew, we weren’t dating. I felt like that was the kind of thing I would’ve noticed.
“Dating Ryder?” I asked.
“Comeon,” Liz said, a big smile spreading across her face. “You nearly married me, you can tell me. Besides, it’s already all over the internet.”
“All over the—”
I paused as my phone vibrated in my pocket, pulling it out without a second thought in case it was…
Ryder.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted out the second I answered.
What the hell was going on?
“Uh.”
Okay, clearlysomethinghad happened, and I didn’t know about it.
Scratching the back of my neck, I glanced at Liz, then went around to the other side of the truck for as much privacy as I could get while I was parked in her driveway.
“Whatever it is, it’s okay,” I said. “But uh, what are you sorry for?”
“I… listen, this is all my fault and it’s fine if you’re mad at me, I’ll grab my stuff and stay somewhere else, I just… I’m really sorry.”
“I can’t think of anything you could do that’d make me mad enough to kick you out of my home,” I said.
He was having a rough week, I got why he’d be nervous. But any arguments we’d had before had been short-lived and we never went more than a day without forgiving each other. Besides, what could he possibly have done that I didn’t know about?
