Chapter 21
Barcelona
Before my legs have a chance to buckle, Ryder swoops me up in his arms and I swear to God, I have never felt anything more wonderful in my entire life.
“I’m so sorry,” I weep uncontrollably, the floodgates to my heartbreak opening and dumping everything out.
“Elizabeth, everything is going to be alright.” Ryder kisses the side of my hair, my face, and my lips several times, then buries his face into my shoulder, inhaling deeply. I clutch him tightly to me, afraid that if I let go, he’ll disappear, and I’ll be lost again.
“How did you find me?”
“I called him,” Fallon says from behind me. My head swivels to where he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Fallon?” I say his name as a question
“Private jet, kitten. We own three,” he replies with that infamous Fallon smirk.
I think it takes about nine hours to fly from North Carolina to Spain. Ryder must have left immediately after Fallon’s mysterious mid-morning phone call to be here now. The fragmented and one-sided conversation I overheard earlier this morning through the bedroom door makes sense now.
Ryder puts me down and I rush over to Fallon and throw my arms around his neck, hugging him fiercely. “Thank you. How did you know I chose Ryder?”
“Kitten, there isn’t much I don’t know when it comes to you.”
“You are absolutely wonderful, Fallon Parker Montgomery,” I whisper against his cheek.
“Go be with your guy.” He kisses my nose, then releases me and walks back upstairs, leaving me and Ryder alone.
Starved for the sight of him, I turn back around to look at the boy—no— the man whom I have loved since the third grade. He’s watching with curiosity as Fallon ascends the stairs.
As his eyes track Fallon, my gaze devours every inch of Ryder.
I still can’t believe he’s really here. He came for me.
I have missed him so much. His hair is a little longer on the sides and on top, like he hasn’t had a haircut in a few weeks.
His eyes have bags under them, telling me he hasn’t been sleeping well, and his face is slightly gaunt.
He’s wearing his usual faded jeans and T-shirt, and the black work boots I like because they make him look even more badass.
Haggard-looking or not, he’s still the most amazingly handsome man I have ever laid eyes on.
Ryder drags his gaze from the top of the stairs and slides those mesmerizing light brown eyes my way. “You look good, but also different somehow,” he says.
Why does everything between us suddenly feel uncertain?
“I love you, Ryder,” I loudly exclaim, unable to hold back the words. I have so much to make up for. I would crawl across broken glass for him if he can find it in his heart to forgive me.
“Thank God,” he exhales, the tension in his shoulders dissolving right before my eyes.
Neither of us makes a move toward the other, even though my body is screaming at me to catapult myself back into his arms.
“Please forgive me.”
“We have a lot to talk about, Elizabeth. A lot that needs to be said.”
“I know.”
He’s too far away. I need to touch him. I need my mouth on his. I just need him so much
“You remember? Everything came back?”
I nod. “Yes.”
Tense silence ensues.
“I love you. It’s you, Ryder. I only want you. I will beg and plead and do whatever I have to do if you can find it in your heart to give me another chance. No more running. No more confusion. I know what I want. I know who I am.
“And who’s that?”
“Yours, Ryder. I’m yours if you still want me.”
A joyous smile spreads across his face like an exploding supernova. I sprint across the entryway and into his ready arms once again, peppering kisses all over his face, neck, and jaw until our lips collide in a desperate kiss.
“I love you, Elizabeth,” he professes against my lips. It’s been weeks since we last saw each other. There is no known hyperbole that can describe how happy I am at this moment.
“Take me upstairs,” I tell him, hooking my legs around his waist. I chase Ryder’s mouth with mine because I have to kiss him again.
“Which room?
“Up the stairs, down the hallway, and fourth room on the right.”
Ryder deftly carries me up the curved staircase with ease, and once he gets to the correct room, he shifts me so that he’s holding me up with one arm.
Using his free hand, he turns the knob and pushes the door open with his foot.
Once inside, he quickly shuts and locks the bedroom door.
I kiss up his neck as he tumbles us both onto the bed, neither one of us letting go of the other.
“I need you to explain why you left,” Ryder says. “But tonight, I’m going to love you. Everything else can wait.”
I nod my head in agreement and he seals his lips over mine. I’m finally complete. I’m home. Ryder is my home.
He bends his arms to rest on his elbows and grabs my face with both his hands.
We don’t move. We stare at each other for a long time.
It has felt like ages since I last saw him, and my eyes can’t seem to get enough of his stunning face.
I trace the scruff of his stubble with my fingertips.
I touch his mouth, rubbing it with my thumb.
My other hand glides across his eyebrows and into his hairline, feeling the soft hair that falls forward onto his forehead.
Ryder gradually leans in, butterflying his mouth across mine with feather-light kisses.
“I’ve missed you,” I tell him. The world is right again with Ryder in my arms.
But I also need to start working for his forgiveness.
I curl my fingers around both his wrists on either side of my face. “That night you went to see Fallon, I found a banker’s box in my closet. It had stuff in it from my old room.”
I panic when Ryder tries to move away from me, so I pull him back down. “Please, just listen. Let me finish,” I implore him, and he stills.
“There wasn’t a lot in the boxes. Mostly pictures and scrapbooks. There was a scrapbook full of Hailey’s poems. I read every one of them. They were so beautiful, and I became sad because I couldn’t remember her.”
“The two of you loved each other very much. You and Hailey were as much best friends as you were sisters.
“I know that now because I remember. I miss Hailey so much. I wish she would come home. I miss Mom and Dad,” I say, choking back the tears that are threatening to escape.
“I found some pictures of you and me as kids and thought it would be cool to make a memory board to hang up in my bedroom. As I went through the box, I kept pulling photographs of us out and placing them in a separate pile. I found another scrapbook. It was of me and Jayson. When I picked it up, something caught my eye. It was a picture of me and him at prom in front of the Eiffel Tower. He was down on one knee. It was like something clicked. Like the final puzzle piece snapped into place and I was able to see the full image. All of my memories came pouring back. Every single one. Everything. Why was I the one to survive and not them, Ryder? It’s not fair.
I would give anything to go back and take their places. ”
As I cry, I feel wet droplets dripping down onto my shoulder and I realize that Ryder is crying with me. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him tightly.
“Please, baby, don’t ever say that. Don’t ever think that. I never want to exist in a world without you in it.”
Ryder covers my face in kisses wetted from our tears.
“When my memories returned, it was like I was possessed by two people battling for control. My mind split between Old Elizabeth and New Elizabeth. That night, Old Elizabeth took over. I don’t remember how I got to Jayson’s house.
I don’t remember getting in my car and driving there.
When I woke up, I was in a bed. I rolled over to reach for you, but it wasn’t you.
I didn’t understand why Jayson was next to me and not you.
I’m so sorry, Ryder. I slept with him. I wish so desperately that I could go back and not open that stupid box.
I didn’t want to remember. I was happy with my new life.
And I’m so incredibly sorry. I’ve hated myself ever since that moment.
I never meant to hurt you or Jayson, and I wound up hurting everyone. ”
Ryder pulls back slightly, curling his fingers around the back of my neck and brushing his thumbs across the apples of my cheeks. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why did you run to Fallon and not me?”
It takes me a minute to calm myself enough to explain.
I meet his eyes. “How could I run to you for help when I betrayed you so badly? I felt like I was losing my mind. I didn’t know what was real anymore.
A part of me wanted to give up and curl into a ball on the floor and disappear.
I was so ashamed, Ryder. I didn’t know what else to do. So, I drove to Fallon’s.”
“Home,” he says gruffly. “You should have come home, Elizabeth. Daniel and I searched everywhere trying to find you.”
“I couldn’t face you after what I did.”
Ryder kisses me once, ever so softly. “Baby.”
I shake my head at his tenderness. I don’t deserve it.
He kisses me again. “I saw the note you left for him.”
I shatter when he tells me that. He’s known this entire time that I slept with Jayson?
I feel like I’m going to be sick. I gasp for breath, trying to pull oxygen into my lungs.
Ryder knew and he still came for me? He still loves me?
How will I ever be worthy of this man? He should hate me for what I did.
Grief and shame slither their way up my esophagus and I push Ryder off, running to the bathroom to retch up nothing but dry heaves.
After a moment, Ryder sits down beside me on the cold tile floor, pulling my hair back as nothing more than strangled gags come out of me.
He rubs a hand in soothing circles around my back, and I rest my head on my forearm where it’s propped on top of the toilet seat.
I should be grossed out by the fact I’m leaning on a toilet, but I’m too distraught to care.
“Baby, please,” he begs. “Please don’t do this to yourself. I love you. Jayson and Julien love you. Everything will be alright. We’ll figure things out, I promise.”
“How can you say that? How can you stand to look at me? I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Ryder.”
He slides himself behind me and places my long hair to the side so he can rest his chin next to my ear.
“I have loved you since I was nine years old. I was given a second chance with you, Elizabeth. I hate the tragic circumstances that allowed us this time together, but it’s a chance that I will never regret taking.
You are everything to me. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.
I’m not going to lie and say that you didn’t, because it was one of the worst pains I have ever experienced—to know that you had regained your memories and the first thing you did was run back to him.
All my fears came true, and it was like everything you had told me was a lie. ”
I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the agony his words bring me. I hurt the man I love. I broke his trust.
“You’ve been through so much already, Elizabeth, but I promise we’ll work through it.
When Fallon first called me to let me know he had you with him, I told him you went back to Jay.
His exact response was, ‘No, she didn’t.
’ At the time, it took me a minute to understand, but I do.
Fallon told me how you talked about Old Elizabeth and New Elizabeth.
If it’s Old Elizabeth who needs my forgiveness, she has it.
But she’s not the girl in front of me now.
When you came back to us after the accident, you were different.
You had changed, whether you meant to or not.
That’s the girl you are now. The feisty fighter with the pink-tipped hair who loves new adventures.
The one who drives a Hellcat. The girl I made love to for the first time. And I love you, Elizabeth.
His words break me apart and put me back together. Ryder Cutton is absolutely amazing in every way. I sit up and he pulls me back into his lap.
“Fallon has helped me a lot these past couple of weeks. I wouldn’t have made it without him.
I owe him so much. I know who I am now. The night of my car accident, I remember what you and I talked about at the garage before I left to go home.
I remember what I asked you and what you said.
I want our ‘what if.’” I shift in his lap so I can see him better. “I choose you, Ryder.”
He tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear and kisses the tip of my nose, his eyes never wavering from mine.
“And I choose you, Elizabeth. I know we’ll have a lot of things to work through, and then there are Jayson and Julien to deal with.
But if it’s forgiveness you need, then you have it. I forgive you.”
Words have never sounded sweeter to my ears. Ryder lifts me in his arms from the cold bathroom floor and carries me back into the bedroom.
“I forgive you, Elizabeth,” he repeats, adding steel to his words. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. You must have been so scared. I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you to help you through it.”
I may have to reconsider my disdain for the Fates. I would endure any trial, any struggle, any fight, to have Ryder love me. He bends down and takes my mouth in a gorgeous kiss that leaves me breathless.
I haven’t lost him. He still wants me. I wasn’t expecting his forgiveness, even though I was desperately hoping for it.
I know Julien talks about my capacity for love, but Ryder gives meaning to the phrase.
My heart expands and my skin warms as if the sun is breaking through the dark clouds of a thunderstorm, creating a rainbow in its wake.
I smile at him. “There’s one good thing about my memory returning. I have every memory of you back, and I wouldn’t trade those for the world.”
“Even the one of me doing a backflip on the motorcycle?”
“Especially that one. You were so sexy that night.”
The sound of Ryder’s laughter makes my stomach cartwheel in that special way only he can make it do.
I touch his lips with my fingertips. “Thank you for finding me.”