13. Ryn
Chapter thirteen
Ryn
Being your friend is the reason I’m dying inside- Ryn Raines.
A tentative truce has crept up between the five of us. The open hostilities have ended, but we’re not friends, either. Things are awkward because I’m not sure where I stand.
I show Tyr the song I’ve been working on, and he sits with me, suggesting alternative lyrics, like we used to. It’s the most fun I’ve had in forever, and by the time we’ve finished in three cities, we have seven songs.
But they still haven’t given me a decision, and I’m going to need to make one myself sooner or later.
When we get to the hotel, they enter their room, and I go to mine. So, maybe I turn back and watch them. So, maybe I hesitate as if waiting to give them a chance to ask me in. There’s a hope that they will, just to stop the aching loneliness.
I enter my room each night, but this night is different. I go to my suitcase and pull out the soft fluffy blanket I bought and curl up on the bed with it, inhaling the smell that has invaded it.
Coconut.
I close my eyes and think about the pack. I miss my friends, and I miss those long, long nights of writing songs, of talking music, of philosophical discussions that turned into drinks and giggles, that turned into whispered secrets shared as the dawn slid up into the sky.
I miss hearing them be themselves. The way they’d laugh with each other, teasing and roughhousing. How I’d be dragged into it, laughing until I cried. Digs would drag me into his practical jokes, teasing me into silliness, and his world of casual touch, until I no longer flinched when his hand rested on my head or shoulder or thigh. Until I yearned for his touch. Until I’d lay in my own bed, weeping, because all I wanted to feel was his hand on my nape, his body pressed up against mine.
Tyr would pick me up and swing me around when we finished a song. His joy in making music was devastating and impossible to withstand. When he is creating, I can’t look away.
Mako would lean against walls, looming over me, that tiny smile playing on his lips as he listened to my arguments. I’d never been seen, never been listened to, before I met Mako.
And Envy. Beautiful, mysterious Envy who took so long to warm up to me, and then revealed this alpha who just blinded me with his beauty. His soft laugh as he watched his pack. The way his fingers would slide onto mine while we sat side-by-side on the couch. I can still remember the way my breath would catch, the butterflies and fear that if I moved, it would stop.
They ruined me.
And now I’m trapped, wanting what I can’t have. A single wall that I bitterly want to destroy, the only thing separating us.
A whine escapes me, and I slap a hand across my mouth, sitting upright in the bed.
Oh, no! What am I doing? Laying here, pining for them like I’m desperate and heartbroken. This won’t do at all.
It crosses my mind that they might see me as broken or damaged now, since the pack…I get up, put my shoes on, and rush out of the room, heading down to the bar where I can get away from my thoughts.
I can’t drink much, but I can have one. I order a glass of white wine and sit there staring morosely at the mirror behind the bar. There are only a few other people in here. The black carpet looks expensive, and the tables are all deep, dark wood with gold trim. It’s nice but like so many other hotels we’ve been to.
I put my chin on my hand and ponder life’s unfairness.
A chill goes up my back, and I catch a whiff of the ocean. I still, my eyes closing because if this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
Not now, not ever.
He moves closer, his body brushing my back before my hair is pulled over one shoulder. He plants a kiss on my neck and lingers there, while I shiver in response to his touch.
“What are you doing down here, Ryn?”
“Dreaming. ”
His hand slides down my hip, and suddenly I’m hot and heated, and his touch isn’t giving me shivers, it’s turning me into a furnace of need. I pick up my wine and drink a good size mouthful.
“What about?”
“Do you like the new song?” I ask and hope he can’t hear the desperation in my voice.
In the mirror, I see his lips twitch as he fights a smile. The familiar facial expression sends a pang straight to my aching heart.
“I do like the new song. I think it’s going to be fabulous, but I don’t want to talk about work.”
I lick my lips and open my eyes, watching him in the mirror. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about us.”
I choke on my wine and wish I hadn’t taken a gulp at exactly that moment.
“There is no us, Mako.”
“Oh, you know there is. They know there is. But you’ve all decided to live in this delusional land of yours. It’s frustrating when I see the way you watch me. And I know you feel the way I watch you.”
“You do? I don’t notice,” I lie.
“Oh, you feel it, my gaze that says I’ve spent the last hour picturing you naked, licked every part of you. Daydreaming that you’d lower your cunt onto my face and let me drown.”
I suck in air, but it’s so hard to breathe.
“If you won’t get naked and let me lick you, will you dance with me?”
I turn so I can see his face, but that’s a mistake. I can’t resist him. He reaches for my hand, not pulling but just holding my fingers, his thumb stroking over my knuckles until I feel like I might die.
I should say no.
I stand up, and when he backs up, I follow him into a little area where there are no tables. He pulls me up to his chest and leans down, his mouth near my temple.
“I love this song.”
The song is an old ballad about love lost. It’s a beautiful song and one of my favourites. I’ll probably always associate it with Mako now.
He moves us around slowly, shuffling from spot to spot. I don’t care. I’m breathing his scent in, feeling a calm that I never feel anymore.
“I missed you, fish.”
“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”
“You started it, calling me shark. ”
“It’s literally your name.”
He grins. I can feel it against my temple.
“Don’t disappear again, Auryn. I can’t take it.”
I inhale sharply, suddenly so clearly aware of why we shouldn’t be doing this.
I pull myself free and look up at him. He lets me go. I know he’s right, and I’m being irrational, but part of me is upset that he lets me go so easily.
Why are my emotions so all over the place?
“I don’t want to disappear, Mako, but I can’t make that promise. If I have to go, I have to go. You’ve seen what my future looks like.”
“That’s never going to happen. I won’t allow it.”
I almost laugh, but then I’m yanked back into his arms, and he’s holding me tight, and I feel like maybe he could protect me from all the evils that come my way.
And then I remember that my dad owns them.
And I remember how hopeless the situation really is.