“No,” Ryder said. “Well. Yes? Kinda. It.” He paused to sigh again. “Well, first of all, you’re internet famous for the squirrel thing last night. Seth says the consensus is that you’re hot.”
That made me break into a smile. “Good,” I said. “You deserve a hot boyfriend.”
And there was the worry again.
“Are we breaking up?” I asked softly, trying not to let my voice tremble. If it was what Ryder needed, what hewanted, then I wasn’t going to try and convince him otherwise. No matter how much I didn’t want it.
“No!” Ryder’s eyes widened. “No, I don’t… I don’t want that.”
“Good,” I said. “So what’s up? You’ll have to tell me eventually, might as well be now.”
Ryder pursed his lips, and then caved. “I got a call from Astrid,” he said.
“Bad news?”
Maybe something else had gone wrong, maybethatwas why he was upset.
I had mixed feelings about how I wanted Ryder’s luck to go, but I didn’t want to see him unhappy. Not for the world.
Not even for the chance of keeping him.
“No, uh. Maybe good news? She told me to expect a call. I don’t even know who I’m expecting the call from but she told me not to be rude, this could be my big break.”
“You’re never rude,” I said.
“That’s what I said!”
The faintest hint of a smile made the corner of Ryder’s lips twitch, but it was gone again a second later.
“But it must be really important if she warned me. Ifshewasn’t even allowed to say who was calling.”
“Is that normal?” I asked. I couldn’t see why Astrid couldn’t tell Ryder who he was expecting a callfrom.
Ryder shrugged. “She’s under an NDA. I’m not even supposed to be tellingyouthis, but I know you’ll keep my secrets.”
“Always,” I said. “Still haven’t told anyone about the time you threw up in Mrs. Murphy’s rose bushes. Especially Mrs. Murphy.”
“I think after all this time she’d still kill me,” Ryder said.
“It’s been almost twenty years,” I pointed out. Ryder had sworn me to secrecy and I’d promised him I’d never tell a soul, mostly because he was really sick and I didn’t want him to feel worse, but even at the time I hadn’t thought it was that big a deal.
“She loved those roses and I definitely killed them,” Ryder said. “An eye for an eye.”
I snorted, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear.
“So if it’s a big secret it has to be big, right?” I asked. “That’s how it works?”
“That’s how it works,” Ryder confirmed. “Maybe they’re casting me as James Bond.”
I laughed at that. Not that I didn’t think Ryder would make a perfectly good spy—not that I didn’t think he’d lookgreatin one of the suits—but I doubted that was it, somehow.
“This is good though, right? This is what you wanted.”
Ryder sat up, perching on my hips. His clothes were rumpled—including my shirt, which he looked fantastic in—and his pants were still hanging open. A beautiful, disheveled mess, one that I’d made of him, one that I always wanted to remember.
He smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Yeah, it was the general idea. And itisexciting, or at least I think I should be excited. Just nervous, I guess,” he said, staring down at his own hands splayed on my chest.
