I frown. “What have you been living on all week?”
She purses her lips, and I already know I’m not going to like the answer before she even utters it. “Chips and dip. And the meatball sub sandwich I ate earlier at the tattoo studio.”
Just as the door opens on Maddie’s floor, I push the back of my hand into her stomach to stop her from exiting the elevator, reaching toward the buttons with my free hand and pressing the ground floor once more. We watch in silence as the doors close, and it’s only then I remove my hand from the warmth of her bare stomach, her shirt riding up to reveal a strip of creamy skin.
“Uh, that was our stop,” she points out as though I wasn’t aware.
I nod, tucking my hands back into my pocket, mostly to stop myself from touching her again. That single touch isn’t enough, but there’s a conversation we need to have before I dare touch her again. That is, if she even lets me.
So, keeping a nonchalant appearance, I inform her, “I can’t very well cook you anything if there are no ingredients to use.”
“Okay? So what’s the plan?” Maddie wonders, leaning back against the mirror.
“We’re going to the store,” I answer, and I smile over at her when her face paints itself into one of bewilderment before morphing into acceptance.
“All righty then. I could do with more chips,” she mutters, and it takes every ounce of my self-control not to lecture her on her eating habits.
Thankfully, the elevator pings open, and I waste no time in snatching Maddie’s hand in mine and dragging her straight back to her car. I open her door and help her inside before rounding the front and climbing into the passenger side. With a wave of my hand, I instruct, “To the nearest grocery store.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she quips, before rolling out of the parking lot, all with twitching lips and a sparkle in her eye I want to see more of.
Chapter Thirty-One
Maddie
Grocery shopping with Ryan is an experience.
A domestic experience, yes, but certainly an experience I wish to have again. Because watching a determined Ryan Young guide the shopping cart around by the front of the basket while I push on the other end, grabbing things from shelves after only a quick glance and nod of approval, his classically handsome face painted with an expression I’ve only ever seen on him when he works, was a sight to behold.
There were more times than I can count where I got distracted by the veins in his hands and arms, and too many times I lost myself in the vision of him reaching for things on the top shelf I would have to climb to reach. It’s such a mundane everyday-life thing, and yet my vagina had perked up so thoroughly I was actually worried it would start flashing like a beacon of need.
“I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t let me pay for my own groceries,” I grumble around a carrot stick, watching the man put everything away at his own insistence. Something he’s done a lot of since we first got in the elevator. All I’ve managed to do is untangle my hair after Hairstylist Laylah got her hands on it. Every offer of help has been thwarted, every suggestion glared at. I gave up after I asked him if he wanted me to help put the freezer food away.
Shutting the fridge door, he gives me a look that sends tingles through my entire body, and I wonder, not for the first time today, how the hell I’ve survived two months around these men without pouncing on them. It’s almost like Rayne’s kisseshave unlocked a whole new page of a book I’ve been reading, and I want to devour every single word.
Pretty sure Rayne’s kisses have turned me into a slut or something.
Yeah. Sure. Let’s blame Rayne.
I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t constantly ogling all four of them, thinking thoughts I had no business entertaining, and wondering things my slutty little mind would be curious about after they did something that sent me spiraling into a pit of filth. But I don’t think it was as bad as it is now, especially knowing they all like me and are willing to try a relationship with me together.
“Because it was my idea to drag you to the grocery store, it’s me who will be using what I bought to make you dinner, and it’s me who is trying to get back into your good graces so we don’t have another week like the one we’ve just had,” he explains, a little more detailed than before when he only told me, “because I want to.”
I bite my lip, that horrible guilty feeling clutching my shoulders once more with the reminder that I avoided them all because of my own insecurities and misunderstandings. Now that Rayne has confessed that he likes me, that they all do, and didn’t do it with a nonchalance that made me question my entire sanity and life, I realize just how badly I misunderstood everything.
As though he can see my thoughts on my face, Ryan sighs and leans across the island from me, linking his fingers together as he stretches his forearms along the counter in front of him. “That wasn’t a backhanded comment, so don’t feel guilty. If anyone should feel guilty, it’s me.”
Frowning, I look up from his distracting hands, my gaze colliding with his beautiful hazel irises that are filled with his own form of guilt.
“Why are you guilty? You didn’t do anything wrong,” I promise, running over everything in my head for any sign that he should carry that guilt. There’s nothing that comes to mind, so I shrug and tell him, “It was my issues, Ry. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“Don’t I?” he asks, looking like he might already know the answer but wants to hear it from me. I don’t give him the satisfaction, keeping my silence as my eyes narrow on him, and he sighs before he says, “I’m sorry for what I said when we last drove home together.”
What he said…
“I don’t understand,” I confess when I still can’t think of what he said that was so wrong that he feels guilty over it. I remember he told me Caiden shared the whole email fiasco, and that they all agreed to keep me company more now than they had before. It’s my own fault my mind took a nosedive into my personal issues. “It was my fault, Ry. All mine. It seems it was a misunderstanding on my part, and a whole lot of overthinking and wallowing in insecurities I never used to have.”
Confusion paints his handsome face, and I smile a little, basking in the butterflies that take flight in my stomach. Placing my chin in the palm of my hand, my elbow leaning on the counter, I say, “So, turns out when Caiden bluntly proclaims he likes someone and then moves on with a whole other conversation, it tends to leave someone a little reeling. I didn’t have a clue if he meant as a friend, a person, or more. And then, on top of that uncertainty, you told me you guys were hanging around more because you were worried about what Toby might do. I got in my head about it because of the shit Toby used to feed into my psyche while we were together.”
