Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
RYDER
I t’s after two in the morning when I arrive at Elizabeth’s. Knowing better than to use my key and walk inside, I go around the side of the house and peer up at her window.
Her light is on, so I take a chance that she’s awake, even though she hasn’t responded to any of my texts.
I carefully examine the tree that sits between her house and the Jameson’s. Only way up is to climb.
Jay and Julien do it. Hell, even Elizabeth climbs up and down the damn thing .
Here goes nothing. I take a few steps back and leap off the ground. My fingers grasp one of the rough, low-hanging branches, and I use it to pull myself up. The tree sways slightly under my weight, but surprisingly, it’s not as difficult as I expected—so long as I don’t look down.
When I finally reach Elizabeth’s window, I pluck a small acorn from a nearby branch and toss it at the glass, the soft thunk barely audible. I throw another for good measure. Please be up.
After what feels like an eternity, the curtains part, Elizabeth’s wide, shocked eyes gape at me.
She fumbles with the latch and slides the window open. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Can you wait to yell at me until I get inside?”
My gaze slips, just for a second, and I catch sight of the ground far below. Definitely not my brightest idea.
“Aren’t you afraid of heights?”
“Yep,” I croak, feeling ridiculous.
She leans out the window, arm outstretched. “Grab my hand and move a little closer.”
I breathe a sigh of relief when my feet hit her bedroom floor, and I fold like an accordion, sliding down the wall until I land on my butt.
Elizabeth crouches in front of me and vigorously rubs my arms. “You okay?”
“I don’t have hypothermia.”
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“You do it all the time.”
“I also don’t have acrophobia.”
I have no comeback for that.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me, her fingers stroke over my busted knuckles. Without saying a word, she gets up and goes into her bathroom. I hear Hailey’s voice before a door closes. Elizabeth comes back out with a first aid kit and sits back down, grabbing my right hand.
“Let me take a look.”
She ever so gently feathers her fingers across the scabs that have formed over my middle three knuckles.
“This may sting a little,” she says, tearing open an alcohol wipe.
Elizabeth takes her time wiping away the old blood and applies some ointment. She repeats it all over again with my other hand.
“Do I get a lollipop for being a good patient?”
Her light green eyes trail up to my face. Lifting my hand to her lips, she brushes a soft kiss over each knuckle, then blows. All the blood suddenly rushes southward.
“I’m out of lollipops. Will that do?”
No.
I shift farther back against the wall, needing the extra space between us before I do something stupid to make this shitty night go from bad to worse.
“I came here to see how you were doing and to tell you about Jay. Why didn’t you text me back?”
A flicker of pain crosses her expressive face. “I turned my phone off. And we’re not talking about him right now.”
“You don’t understand, Eliza?—”
“We are not talking about him right now!” she snaps and then immediately backs down, exhaling loudly. “Sorry. I’m not mad at you.”
“I really need to tell you?—”
She slaps her hand over my mouth to shut me up. “I said no, Ryder.”
When I nod yes, she drops her hand.
In a whirl of frantic movement, she springs to her feet and paces back and forth in front of me. “I think I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?” I ask, not understanding. She didn’t do anything wrong tonight.
Her blonde hair swirls around her face as she pivots sharply on her heel.
“It’s something I think about all the time. Something I couldn’t stop thinking about tonight. God, this is so crazy. My thoughts are a mess, and I’m angry.”
Her words spill out in disjointed bursts, as if they’re fighting to be heard before she can stop them.
“Elizabeth, you’re not making any sense. And I really do?—”
She halts mid-step, turning to face me. “What if it was you that came through my window that night?” she says at the same time I finish saying, “—need to talk to you.”
“What?” we say at the same time.
“That’s what I think about,” she continues, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, like a confession she’s been holding back for far too long. “I think about you. What if it was you that night? There’s always a part of me that wonders…‘what if.’”
What she says hits me with the subtly of a freight train, and for a moment, the world seems to blur around the edges. My mind stutters, trying to process the gravitas of its meaning.
I need to tell her about Jay, how he was drugged and is in the hospital. How he needs her there with him. But I can’t because my mouth won’t cooperate with what my brain is telling it to do.
“There’s a part of me that knows that no matter what, no matter how much I love him, I will always love you, too.”
Her words are like jagged slivers of glass, each one cutting deeper.
She loves me. Holy shit. She said it. Out loud. She loves me.
“He ripped my heart out tonight, Ryder. I gave him everything. I chose him over you, and he destroyed me. It hurts so much.” Huge, silent tears trace down her face.
Elizabeth’s liquid, verdant eyes beg me to ease her pain, make it go away, give her promises that I know I won’t be able to give and still live with myself without a heavy burden of guilt weighing me down. I decide to once again be the better man, even though it kills me to do so.
I go to her and take her in my arms. It’s a beautiful torture to hold her like this, knowing that I’m about to let her go once again to be with him.
“I know you’re upset, and angry, and confused. I know you’re hurt and want that hurt to go away. I wish I could be the one to give that to you. I wish things were different. But they aren’t. I told you that I’m not going anywhere. Perhaps, one day, we’ll get our chance. Fuck , I wish that with everything in me. But today…” I kiss her temple. “Today, you need to be with Jayson.”
“I’m so sorry,” she cries into my chest, shoulders shaking, her hands gripping the front of my shirt now wet with her tears. “You must hate me for saying these things to you. I’m screwed up. I’m selfish. I want things that I shouldn’t.”
“Not selfish, Elizabeth,” I tell her. “Just wishing for something that’s not possible right now. Maybe someday, just not right now. And after you truly understand what happened, you would hate yourself if we allowed things to happen between us tonight.”
I need to see her eyes, knowing my next words will inevitably make her go back to him.
“Jayson is in the hospital. He needs you, Elizabeth. I came here to bring you to him.”
Her voice cracks with grief. “What? How? Why?”
“I think we need to sit down for this.”
I pull her to sit on the side of her bed. She and I will forever be tied together, just like she is with Jayson and Julien. I meant what I said, believing the words my dad told me the day my world fell apart, and I lost her to Jay. She needs to experience life and love, the good parts and the bad. And I will hold out hope that one day she will be free for me to love. Hope that all of this, the things we feel and do and say right now, will be worth it in the end.
“He didn’t do it, Elizabeth. He told you the truth.”
“How do you know for sure? We saw the same thing. He and…” She swallows hard. “They were half naked on a bed together. I know what I saw!”
“He was drugged. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“What?” she almost shouts before lowering her voice. “How do you know?”
I fill her in on everything. As I explain to her what happened after she left, she goes from worried to furious to murderous.
“The bloodwork confirmed it. He had GHB in his system. I looked it up and everything he did, the over-the-top way he went after Marshall, the dizziness and vomiting, not remembering stuff.”
Elizabeth grabs her tablet and looks GHB up on the CDC website to confirm what I’m telling her.
“How can we be sure that he didn’t take it willingly?”
I also had the same question.
“I texted Maria on my way over here. He was never out of her sight, even when she went to grab the bottles of water. She saw Jacinda and Samantha give him the red cups. She said that was the only thing he drank.”
Elizabeth curses Jacinda’s name.
“It’s not his fault, Elizabeth. You also didn’t see him after. He’s torn up that he hurt you. He’s blaming himself. Can you forgive him? He really needs you. Will you let me take you to see him in the morning?”
She worries her bottom lip and slowly nods.
“I’ll pick you up at seven. If everything’s good overnight, they’ll discharge him in the morning.” I stand up and wipe my hands on my jeans. “Is it all right with you if I exit through your front door and not the window?”
“Will you stay with me? Or just hold me until I fall asleep?”
I hesitate for only a second. “Elizabeth, I would do anything for you.”
I remove my shoes and climb on top of her comforter, leaning back against her headboard with my legs outstretched. She joins me and snuggles into my side, resting her head in the crook of my shoulder, and closes her eyes. The smell of her jasmine body lotion envelops me. She always smells like flowers.
“Would you rather,” she begins in a soft cadence, her voice husky with sleep. “Would you rather be rich and feel somewhat content, or poor and be extremely happy?”
“That’s easy,” I say. “I’d rather be poor and happy.”
“Me too,” she replies, eyes fluttering closed with exhaustion. She’s had a very long, hard night. “You make me happy, Ryder.”
“You make me happy, too,” I murmur back, kissing the top of her head, but she’s already asleep.