Chapter 14
C HAPTER 14
Present Day
“Ryan . . .”
“They’re leaving.” He jerked his head back, in the direction of Noah and Quinn, who were waving at their guests.
“Oh I . . .”
“There’s no point going over this,” he said.
I could see that he wanted to, though. That he didn’t want to pull away. And I felt the same thing.
He turned and walked away from me, toward Noah and Quinn, where he started taking pictures of their walk to the car. I tried to gather myself and join them, because I needed to help see them off.
They were going to the airport and flying to Auckland, and from there to Fiji.
Everyone else was getting flights out that night too.
Out of Queenstown, out of the country.
My flight was for the next day.
And I regretted that, suddenly. I wanted the familiar. I wanted to be at home. My memories of Ryan, and the acknowledgement of what was between us, coupled with the wedding, had left me scrubbed raw and I was longing for something familiar.
I wasn’t going to get it.
I packed everything up, and Trev offered to take me back to the vacation rental.
“Thanks,” I said. But I wanted to make sure he knew that it didn’t mean I was going to sleep with him.
I didn’t know how to do that without coming out and saying it. So, I decided to wait and see if he tried anything. He didn’t. He just very pleasantly waved me off in the driveway. I opened up the garage to go in through the side door, and paused when I saw Ryan’s rental car there.
I hadn’t asked when he was leaving.
And suddenly, I had the very terrible, exhilarating feeling that he was staying here tonight.
And that the house would be just him and me.
What if.
Except I’d broken it. I could see it when I looked at him now.
But he wanted me. Even if he hated that.
Even if he hated me.
I took a breath, and unlocked the door, taking my shoes off before heading up the stairs.
He was in the living room, looking out the windows at the lake.
“I didn’t realize you were staying here tonight,” I said, knowing I sounded on guard.
“Yeah. I fly out tomorrow.”
“For Europe?” I asked.
He nodded, clearly uninterested in fighting with me. I didn’t know why that hurt a little bit. “By way of Sydney, I’ll be flying there from here.”
“Oh. That’s . . . great.”
Suddenly, without the wedding, without the distractions, and with that honest memory about the fifth wedding, it seemed like it bloomed between us bigger than it had.
I wanted to apologize. I also didn’t want to say anything about it.
I wanted to move closer to him. And I wanted to move further away.
Without the conflicting feelings for Quinn’s wedding and her new life in New Zealand there, I was left with nothing but the complication of Ryan.
I stayed on the other side of the room. I thought it was probably the better part of valor.
“I’m flying out tomorrow too. I have a midmorning flight.”
“To Auckland?” he asked.
“Yes. And then to LA.”
“You going to be okay on a long-haul flight by yourself?”
That he cared at all did more to my heart than I wanted to admit.
“Great. Great. I have my noise cancelling headphones and my eye mask. I may download some Shark Week.”
“Seems a little intense for a plane watch, Poppy. I heard sharks are scary.”
“In the fun way.”
“I see.”
There were so many things I wanted to say, but didn’t feel like I could. I couldn’t get any closer to Ryan, because I was never being really honest with him.
I never had been.
Or maybe it was myself that I wasn’t honest with.
I guess in the end it didn’t matter very much.
Because the end result was the same.
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “I’m going to go take a shower and go to bed.”
“I’ll give you a ride to the airport in the morning.”
“Okay.”
I went upstairs and undressed. I got into the shower, and let the warm water cascade over me. I didn’t do much else. Didn’t wash my hair. Just let the spray beat down on me.
It felt like I was missing something. Missing a chance of something. But I felt that way once with him.
When I had been hurt and furious. I wasn’t hurt or furious now.
And he was a much bigger part of my thoughts than Josh had been for a long time.
I stopped.
I had probably spent more time thinking about Ryan Clark in the last five years than I had about my own boyfriend.
Wondering what he thought about me and why. Watching his every move at all these weddings.
Making him mad. Accepting his help. Talking to him about the way our fractured pasts seemed to line up in weirdly synchronous ways.
I stepped out of the shower and dried myself. Put on baggie, warm sweatpants. And the oversized sweatshirt I’d bought in Arrowtown with the giant kiwi bird on the front, and Aotearoa emblazoned across the top and Keepin’ it Kiwi on the bottom.
I went out into the hallway between mine and Ryan’s bedrooms. And I decided to go out onto the small deck up there to look at the stars. I stepped outside, and startled, when I nearly ran into Ryan.
He had his camera out. Taking pictures of the stars, I realized.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll just leave you to—”
“Don’t go,” he said.
I turned to him.
He had his camera up. That wall. The one he kept between himself and the world.
I suddenly wanted to break it down. I wanted to get between that camera and him. But that would mean being pressed up against him. I had been once.
I felt exhilarated then.
Maybe this was inevitable.
This moment. Ryan Clark and Poppy Love, standing on the deck on the other side of the world, with no one who knew them anywhere for miles.
With nothing but acres of misunderstanding, bad feelings, and the kind of desire that had never made sense.
Maybe it was what Ezekiel and Madeline had felt too. Standing on a prairie somewhere, with promises and obligations to other people that didn’t matter as much as what they felt right then.
Maybe it was a true story. Maybe it wasn’t.
I suspected Gran had told me that story to keep me from losing my head over a man. To keep me from ever giving into the kind of madness that consumed you, all the way down, and left you without thought, without breath.
It was dangerous. I knew it.
I didn’t care.
For once, I didn’t care.
My heart was beating hard.
I was terrified.
Terrified that he was thinking the same thing I was.
Terrified that he wasn’t.
That would be horrible. To feel this alone. To feel this sense of inevitability, and to be the only one.
He lifted his camera up and took a photo.
And I reached out, and put my hand on the top of his camera, forcing him to lower it. “Put it down,” I said.
“Poppy,” he said, his voice rough.
And he did. He set the camera down on a bistro table out there.
And he moved closer to me.
So close that if I breathed, it would be the same air he was breathing in.
“Remember what I said last time?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I don’t care anymore. I don’t give a shit why you want to do it. I just can’t wait. Not anymore. I need you. And if that’s not what you want—”
“I do,” I said. My words hung there in the air, suspended on a cloud of my breath.
I thought that I was going to pass out, my heart was beating so hard.
I thought I might topple over completely.
I was terrified.
But it was fun scary.
It was Shark Week.
But then, he wrapped his arms around me, and I didn’t have to be afraid of that. Not anymore. Because Ryan was holding me. His arms solid and strong, his chest hot and firm.
And then, he lowered his head and kissed me.
We were leaving tomorrow. That was unspoken. We were leaving tomorrow, and then after that he was going away. We wouldn’t see each other.
At the fifth wedding, it had been a terrible idea because we were going to see each other again the next day, and the next day, and the next.
But we wouldn’t now.
Because I was going back to Pineville and he was going to Europe. Because this was goodbye as much as it was anything.
I wanted to cry.
Because somehow, goodbye was a relentless, repeating theme in my life, and yet at least now the promise of goodbye was helping me get to somewhere honest within myself.
Get to somewhere honest between the two of us.
And so as he kissed me, I clung to him. His mouth was hot, the slick glide of his tongue against mine sending a shock of sensation to my breasts, down between my legs.
I was wet, instantly, needing him in a way I had never needed anyone else.
We were right back to where we had been that night a year and a half ago.
Zero to near orgasmic just from his mouth on mine.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered against his mouth.
And I would beg if I had to. Because I didn’t have any pride left. I only had my desire for him.
My tangle of confusing need.
I had never wanted sex without love.
Ryan was the exception.
I didn’t know myself. That was becoming clearer and clearer.
Because I had thought that Josh was the love of my life. And I had been forced to reckon with the reality of that.
So maybe I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe I didn’t know what I felt.
And anyway, what I felt before didn’t matter, because this was like nothing I had ever experienced. Not ever. Not with anyone.
He was still wearing his suit from the wedding. I pushed his jacket off his shoulders, right out there on the deck.
I would’ve let him take me out there if it wasn’t so cold.
“Ryan,” I said, his name a plea. A reminder to both of us that I knew full well who he was.
He growled, and walked me back a few paces, opening the glass door, and bringing us both inside. He closed it ruthlessly behind him. And I was momentarily immobilized by the intensity in his expression.
I had never seen anything like it. Not directed at me, that was for certain.
I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to know what this was. Because it was only when I had destroyed this moment last time, that I had realized there might be more to it than just him being opportunistic.
That the possibility of me being more than that bridesmaid in New Orleans had made itself apparent.
Maybe.
Maybe.
But I couldn’t speak, because I didn’t want to ruin this. More than anything, I didn’t want to ruin it again.
So, I just let him take me back in his arms. I let him pick me up, like I didn’t weigh anything. And I reveled in his strength.
In all the things I would’ve told you I didn’t care about.
That he was bigger than me, that he was stronger than me. That he was so unapologetically masculine.
He carried me into his room, and I felt a moment of pure terror. After all, it had been a very long time since I’d been with a man who wasn’t Josh. And before that, there had just been my college boyfriend. Just the two.
And Ryan had probably been with more women than he could readily count. I wasn’t going to have a special set of skills.
I wasn’t going to blow him over with my fantastic hand-job technique, or my practiced deep throat.
The idea of doing both to him suddenly made me dizzy.
He took hold of my chin, and looked at me, his eyes fierce. “Get out of your head, Poppy.”
“I can’t,” I said, my heart beating a scattered rhythm. “I’ve known you since we were kids. And you’re Ryan.”
“And I’m going to make this good for you,” he said.
I couldn’t keep my insecurity pushed down as deep as I wanted. “I’m worried I won’t make it good for you.”
The words escaped, as small and sad as they had sounded in my head, and I wanted to punch myself in the face.
He chuckled. Hard, strained. “I’m not worried.”
“I am. Remember that time I saw you with . . .”
“She doesn’t matter.”
She doesn’t matter . It was that easy for him.
After this, I probably wouldn’t matter either.
But I was used to that. That was maybe the one good thing.
I knew how to say goodbye. Or, at least, I knew how to stand there and take it when somebody said goodbye to me.
And I wanted him. So it seemed worth it.
At least this time the goodbye was forced by flight schedules.
And it would mean . . .
No expectations that I built up in my head that were going to be dashed.
It was what it was. And this had a time limit on it. One that wasn’t personal. That was all for the best.
He loosened the black tie he was still wearing, and I felt like I had been shot clean through with an arrow of desire, watching a large masculine hand undo the knot, loosening it and casting it aside. Then he began to unbutton his white shirt. First at the wrists, and then at his throat. I found myself shivering. He released one button at a time, each one exposing more of his skin. Of his dark chest hair. Those muscles. So perfect and glorious. I had seen them before. From afar.
But this time I could touch him. Suddenly, I was very self-conscious about the fact that I was wearing a baggy, yellow sweatshirt and voluminous sweatpants.
So, I did what any sane woman would do in that situation. I took the sweatpants off. Because the sweatshirt just went down to the tops of my thighs, and that kind of made it a miniskirt, which was infinitely sexier than what had been happening before. I thought maybe.
He stopped unbuttoning his shirt, his eyes zeroing in on me, a muscle in his jaw ticking.
He wanted me.
He really wanted me.
I couldn’t breathe through that realization.
This wasn’t about sex. Because Ryan could’ve had sex with any woman that had been at that wedding. Probably married or single. His power was that great.
He wanted me .
No man who didn’t specifically want a woman would be immobilized by the world’s saddest striptease.
But then, if anyone was forbidden, it was me.
It was him.
Because hadn’t we built this up for all these years?
This impossible thing.
Maybe that was why it felt so essential, so inevitable, to me.
He was the one man I could never fathom touching, and so he was the one I wanted to touch most.
I walked forward, and put my palm on his bare chest, sliding it beneath that white shirt, shivering as I made contact with those hard muscles. He wrapped his arm around my waist, bringing his other hand down to the back of my thigh, moving it up slowly underneath my sweatshirt, until he found my bare ass. “Holy fuck,” he said.
“I don’t wear underwear to bed,” I said.
“No . . . you don’t,” he said, sounding like he’d been stabbed.
And I thrilled at that. How much he wanted me. That was my kink.
Being wanted.
And I had never experienced it quite on this level. Not even close.
I stretched up on my toes and kissed him, and he tightened his hand on my rear, squeezing hard as he kissed me deep.
Until I was breathless.
Until there was nothing but this. Nothing but him.
He moved his hand slightly, and his finger grazed my slick, wet channel. I gasped as he teased me, tormented me, with the promise of penetration that he never made good on.
All the while he kissed me, deep and hot, holding me so tightly that he had full control over the kiss.
I was being conquered.
I didn’t even mind.
I had been the driving force in my other relationships. I had never experienced anything like this. Surrendering like this.
And I knew that I could trust him. I knew that I could trust him to make it good. He’d said it, but he was proving it.
And suddenly, I felt utterly unburdened by all my insecurity.
He wanted me. So it would be good.
I would be good enough for him.
Because he had looked at me like I was a revelation, even in a baggy sweatshirt. I couldn’t lose.
He grabbed hold of that sweatshirt, and tugged it up over my head, leaving me completely naked, pressed against him, still partially clothed.
I could feel the hard outline of his cock pushing in front of his pants. And I arched against him, hoping to feel more of that.
He growled, and walked me back to the bed, pushing me down on it.
I was tempted to look away from that sharp, hard gaze.
Because it was almost too intense. Because it was almost too much for me to withstand.
But if I looked away, I would miss this. If I looked away, I would lose this moment.
When a man looked at me like I might be everything.
Weird way to heal childhood trauma, but I would take it.
“I’ve fantasized about this for a long fucking time,” he said, his voice hard.
He was Ryan. Still. Familiar. A man I had known for so many years. And yet he was a stranger now too.
I was naked in front of him, and he was looking at me. He was hard.
This wasn’t part of how we knew each other. And changing it, rearranging the way that things had always been, was a magical sort of terror.
And all I could do was surrender to it.