My lips parted, but words did not come out. Instead, I just stared at him, holding myself back from running into his arms. I had missed him so much over the past few weeks.
“New York isn’t for me,” I finally said.
“I’m not going back. I just had to finish a few things.” He dropped a bag I hadn’t seen on the floor, then strode toward me.
“Did you just get in?”
“Came right here from the airport.”
“So, no horse-drawn carriage,” Kasey smirked.
“My Ellie doesn’t need that stuff,” he said, his eyes locked on mine.
My Ellie.
Swoon. Not that I could show him how much his words soothed the crack in my chest that grew with every day he was gone.
“But I’d gladly give it to her if she wanted it.”
He took a step forward, and just that slight movement had my walls climbing higher than ever before. He was here, saying all the right things, but I wasn’t sure I could trust any of it. I didn’t want to go back to the way things were, and from everything I knew about him, he couldn’t offer me more.
“You look good, Ellie.”
I wanted to believe his words, but the truth was, I’d put on ten pounds since I broke things off with him. I was the mostuncomfortable I’d ever been in my life, but the only way I’d found to comfort myself these past two weeks was through food and wine.
And I’d had a lot of it.
“You should leave,” I said, keeping my voice firm.
“I came here because I realized something.”
With every word, he came just a little closer. My heart rate kicked into overdrive. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t keep doing this to me.
“Ryder, there’s nothing more to say.”
“I’m falling for you, Ellie.”
Several gasps came from around me, but it was the one that slipped past my lips that had the left corner of his mouth kicking up.
“I was stupid when I walked out on you. I thought that if I shared pieces of myself with you, that you’d end up just like her, working your way under my skin until I couldn’t see straight. So I refused to give you all of me, and in the end, it made you hate me.”
Except I could never hate him. Not really.
“Say something.”
I struggled to find the words, to think of anything besides how hard my heart was pounding in my ears, making me dizzy. I couldn’t give in to him. Not just because he said he was falling for me.
“These are all just pretty words,” I finally said, spinning away from him, pressing my hand to my stomach as it revolted from the very idea of turning him away.
“I don’t get along with my father. We’ve pretty much never gotten along. He wanted me to work the ranch, and I wanted to escape, to have a different life than the one he always planned for me. And with every day that passed, he grew angrier with me. You already know I planned to escape with Krista. That waspretty much the final nail in the coffin for him. When I left for college, he pretty much wrote me off.
“And my mother has always defended him, so I don’t really get along well with her either. They came out to visit me one time in New York, and my father made it perfectly clear that he thought I was wasting my life. That’s when I introduced them to Bianca, my girlfriend at the time.”
I could no longer pretend I wasn’t hanging on his every word. I spun and waited for every morsel of information he would give me, and so did everyone else in the shop.
“I met her in London on a work trip. We fell in love, and when I asked her to come to New York, she agreed. And for a long time, it felt like everything was perfect. What I couldn’t see was that she was using me for what I could give her.”
“What a bitch,” Delaney muttered.
