Page 24 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

Asking point blank might’ve been considered rude under any other circumstances, but twenty minutes ago, the guy had told me that my wedding had been tacky and that he’d hated my dress. I figured if he could dish it out as a straight shooter, he should be able to handle the return fire.

Ryan glanced at me over his shoulder, his soaked jacket now hanging over a chair to dry while his tie was off and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. He’d also rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and kicked off his wet shoes and socks. While I was relatively sure he wasn’t pregnant, he was barefoot in my kitchen—and not looking too put out about it at all. Those ice-blue eyes bored into mine for a moment before he shrugged and returned his attention to the pot.

“I don’t have a deal,” he said easily. “I knew how to fix the stove because it’s really not that hard when you’ve had to teach yourself how to fix things before.”

He dumped the cheese packet into the pot with one hand and ran the other through his hair before it came to rest on the side of his neck. At this point, he’d had his hands in his hair so often today that it’d dried in a tousled mess, but the slightly disheveled look worked for him.

Naturally. Because everything just has to work for Ryan freakin’ Thayer.

When I sighed, he must’ve mistaken it for dissatisfaction with his response because he suddenly looked at me again, his lips pursing before he blew out a breath through his nose and shook his head. “My family got dragged through the dirt, Maggie. I was dead broke as a college kid. Trust me, I’ve cooked in much worse situations than this.”

“How much worse?” I asked, still trying to figure him out.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the guy. He was a giant walking contradiction. Everything about him screamed wealth, from the way he dressed, to how he spoke, and even the way he carried himself, but I supposed he didn’t have it anymore. Not the way he used to, anyway.

He turned halfway back to the stove, stirring again but keeping his eyes on mine as he shrugged. “For three months, I lived on ramen cooked on a hot plate that had exposed wires. My roommate and I used to cook eggs in our tea kettle and we went camping once, but we forgot the box with our pot back at home, so we had to make do with tins we cut open. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it worked.”

For a long beat, I just stared at him, but when he turned fully back to the stove, my gaze dropped to the expensive watch on his wrist and his tailored pants. He moved with such confidence that it was almost impossible to remember that once upon a time he’d lost everything.

I did remember it, though.

Thinking back, I remembered my mother being pressured by her friends to stop inviting Nora to things. At first, it’d been little events, just a lunch here or a charity drive there, but over time, the invitations had simply stopped.

I hadn’t really understood it back then. I’d only known that the Thayers weren’t around anymore. Even when I’d run into him at my bridal shower, I’d obviously known about their history, but this was the first time I’d truly stopped to think about what those years might’ve been like for him.

While I was marveling about all that, though, Ryan was pretty frustrated with me and it showed. “You do know that for every minute we spend here, your family and the Hawthornes are one minute closer to declaring all-out war on each other, right?”

“What I choose for my own future shouldn’t affect theirs.”

He scoffed. “That’s not how this works and you know it.”

I glared at him. “Why are you so angry?”

“Because this is a mess, Maggie. It’s a huge mess and you don’t seem to have any interest in cleaning it up.”

“That’s because I don’t know how.” I threw my arms out to my sides. “Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear? That I can’t go back because I don’t know what to do? Why are you even here, anyway?”

“Marcus told me where to look for you.”

“So you came? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” I shook my head. “You don’t even know me.”

Ryan went still, the spatula pausing halfway through another stir of the pot before he turned to look at me fully again. Then he lifted his hand and flipped me off.

I scoffed. “Oh, very mature.”

Just as I was about to rip into him, he turned his hand, and suddenly, I could see a small, pale scar on his middle finger in the shape of two front teeth. My two front teeth.

“I needed five stitches,” he said slowly. “In case you’ve forgotten. So, yeah. I know you, Maggie. Maybe I don’t know all the ins and outs of who you’ve become, but I do know you.”

As I stared at that little scar, I realized that was my first real memory of Ryan Thayer. He’d been just a teenager then, a boy who’d come looking for me at my own thirteenth birthday party, and now, so many years later, he was doing it again. For no discernible reason other than wanting to help me, apparently. Unfortunately for him, there were many people who were trying to help me right now, and none of them were actually helping either.

Twice now, he’d been on my side of history, back at my birthday party and again at the wedding, but this time, he was dead wrong. “I’ll bite you again if you try to force me out of this house.”

The corners of his mouth started inching upward. “I have no doubt, but I’ll bite you right ba⁠—”