Page 96 of Reveal

When my phone rings, I half expect it to be Priscilla on the other end of the line but am surprised to see Ryker’s name.

Every part of me sags in elation at the sight of it.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” His voice. Sigh. “It’s okay for you to pick up the phone and call me sometimes, you know.” His chuckle rumbles through the line.

“I know.”

“Do you?” His tone is playful.

“I do.”

“Good, because I was worried you were over there sitting behind your desk convincing yourself of every reason we shouldn’t be together instead of every reason that we should be. I vote for the glass-half-full approach.”

“I prefer it half-empty.”

And isn’t that the two of us in a nutshell? My whole life I’ve been left hoping for more while dealing with less. And then there’s Ryker, who has had access to everything, and yet he allows himself only so little.

“You need to change your outlook.”

“I do?”

“Mmm. Like one where you look up and see me standing in your doorway because I missed you and wanted to see you,” he says, and I immediately turn around to look at my front door, half expecting him to be there and being slightly disappointed when he’s not.

“You’re not standing here, though.”

“You haven’t invited me to be.”

I laugh. “You’ve never been one to wait for an invitation.”

“Now. Tomorrow. I need to see you,” he says, and the raw emotion in his voice hits me deep in my core.

“Seeing you scares me.” My unexpected confession takes me by surprise.

“What?” His voice is part amused, part leery, while I fill the line with nervous laughter.

“Everything has been calm. Quiet. Uneventful. I bet you a hundred bucks that if we see each other, the crazy will somehow reveal itself once again.”

“Stop thinking that way.”

“You know I’m right. Brian. Carter. A meteor strike. Who knows?”

It’s his turn to chuckle now as he realizes I’m right. “True enough.”

I pick at my nail polish as I weigh what to say next. “Yes. But . . .”

“Outside influences shouldn’t matter.”

“It seems these days everything matters.” I sigh.

“Just let us be us, Vee. We’ll figure the rest out.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It’s the truth,” he says matter-of-factly.

“How do you know this, though?”