Chapter 42 – ryan
RYAN
She’s a mirage. She has to be.
When Pippa walks into the poker room, her red lipstick perfect and her dark hair more tousled than usual, I’m not sure it’s real. How can it be, when I’ve spent the past three days fantasizing about the exact same thing happening?
“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” Maybe-mirage Pippa demands, putting her hands on her hips.
I shrug. “Nothing on my phone I wanted to see.”
“What about your friends looking everywhere for you? We’ve been on a manhunt, you know.”
“You have?” I blink. “But I was right here.”
“Well, they didn’t know that because you weren’t answering your fucking phone.
” She rolls her eyes and stomps over, which is probably not as scary as she wants it to be, because the carpet muffles her clacky shoes.
She yanks out a chair from the other side of the table, and I’m pretty sure she’s real, because mirages shouldn’t be able to move physical objects.
“Deal me in,” she snaps.
“I’m not playing.”
She gestures at the table, which is set up for the poker game I canceled. Five sets of chips, including stacks in front of each of us.
“Play with me, Ryan.” Her voice is softer this time—almost a plea. It cuts right through my fog of depression, like a flaming arrow burning away the clouds.
While I was sulking, Pippa has been starting her new Ryan-free life, complete with a new apartment.
I have no idea where she’s living now, which is a first. Even when we weren’t in the same building, I always had a general idea of where she was.
I should have asked Nate to stalk her and find out her current address, just so I could make sure she wasn’t living in some dump. Speaking of which…
“Where’s Waffle?” I ask. “Is there someone watching her? She’s doing okay?”
Pippa’s expression softens. “She’s fine, Ryan. She’s at my apartment, and she’s okay by herself for a few hours.”
“She’s not too stressed out? I know cats don’t like going to new places.”
“She’s fine. Really.” She points to the cards in front of me. “Now deal.”
I grab the deck and give it a quick shuffle. It’s habit—I’ve already shuffled it a bunch of times while I sat here, brooding. “What are we playing for?”
“A secret.” Pippa folds her fingers. “If I win, you have to tell me one. If you win, I’ll tell you one of mine.”
She barely glances at her hand when I deal. I’d call it careless, if I hadn’t played against Pippa before. There’s nothing careless about the way she plays—it’s unpredictable, but it’s chaos by design. Perfectly calibrated to mess with me.
Even though I don’t have the option to sit out, my hand is good enough to play, at least. A ten and ace of hearts. As small blind, Pippa buys in without raising.
The flop doesn’t get me any closer to a flush or a straight, but there’s another ten, so I have a pair. Pippa knocks, and I deal out the next card. Again, nobody raises.
I can’t tell whether Pippa is limping along with nothing, or whether she’s planning to blindside me. The board is dry as fuck, so I’m guessing she has a pair as well, if anything. Odds are, it’s not higher than mine.
It’s not until I’m dealing the fifth card that I wonder if I even want to win.
I didn’t spend too much time thinking about Pippa’s wager.
I was just so stupidly relieved to see her that I probably would have agreed to any terms, just to keep her playing with me.
What kind of secret is she hoping for? Some confession of love?
An apology? Will she ask for the secret she wants?
I probably should have negotiated more. But it’s too late now. All I can do is play to win.
The final card is a king of hearts. It could make a higher pair for Pippa. I try to read her face, but it’s inscrutable. A perfect mask, practically porcelain. And I know it’s not the point, but, I have to ask.
“You’re PixiPirate09, aren’t you?”
Pippa’s mouth quirks up, just a little. Then she adds triple the blind in chips to the center. I match it, driven by the feeling that she’s bluffing.
She turns over her hand first—an unsuited three and eight. I laugh, disbelieving. Almost the worst fucking hand in poker, and she played it to the end, knowing she’d lose.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out her phone. “I just sent this to Ingrid for print, but I thought you should read it first.”
Her phone displays an open document–—ne of her articles, titled, “I Didn’t Mean To Fall In Love—But That’s Exactly What I Did.” My heart skips a beat, only to start thudding against my chest with triple the strength as before. Pippa nods, her eyes full of patience.
“Keep reading.”
I have to force myself to read every word instead of skimming ahead, looking for confirmation. This time, Pippa’s article is crystal fucking clear—it’s me. She loves me, and she has for just as long as I’ve loved her. There’s no competition. There never was. Pippa’s heart has always been mine.
I stare up at her, my mouth hanging open in amazement.
“That’s your secret,” I say dumbly.
“Well, it won’t be a secret anymore once Ingrid publishes it, but I wanted you to be the first person to know. I’m in love with you, Ryan.” She smiles, her teeth bright against her red lipstick. “I have been since I was fourteen years old.”
My body has forgotten how to breathe. I don’t know how to talk, how to think, how to do a single fucking useful thing.
Pippa fucking loves me, and she was brave enough to tell me first. I don’t deserve this brilliant, beautiful, ridiculous woman.
Not by half. But hell, I’m fucking taking her anyway.
“You could have picked anyone,” I find myself saying, the words clawing out of my chest. “All those dates, every option on the table—and you still choose me? Do you have any idea what that does to a guy who’s spent his whole life convinced that love is just bad math?”
Her expression saddens, and I hope what I have to admit next doesn’t hurt her, because she needs to know the truth.
“I knew it was you,” I blurt. “When you kissed me back in high school. I knew it was you the second you walked in the room, and I didn’t say anything because I had to know what it would be like to feel you.
To hold you in my hands just once. I’m sorry for all the stupid shit I said afterward.
I didn’t mean any of it. Every shitty thing I ever said to you was to push you away, because I was scared you could see through me.
I was scared you’d see how much I wanted you, and that you’d walk away from it. From me.”
Pippa stands up, and I realize my eyes are burning.
It’s overwhelming to finally have this moment with Pippa, and to know how close I got to never having it at all.
She wraps her arms around me, letting me bury my face into her shoulder.
She holds me together as I come dangerously close to falling apart.
“Thank you for telling me. That’s…” She laughs hollowly. “Such a relief, actually.”
“Really?”
She nods, and I pull back to see in her eyes if she’s telling me the truth. I wouldn’t blame her if she hated me for it, but I can see that she doesn’t. Pippa looks…happy.
“Yes, and I’m not walking away,” she murmurs. “It doesn’t scare me. However much you want me, it’ll never be too much. That’s what I always wanted—someone who saw every part of me and loved it all.”
“I should have told you sooner, Pips. Because it’s always been you for me, fucking always.
I was too much of a coward to tell you. I’ve been a coward my whole life, but I’m done only taking risks in the poker room.
” I gaze up at her, and her hazel eyes are full of tears, too.
She takes my face in her hands while I hold her waist in mine.
“My heart’s on the table. It’s yours—I’m all in. All you have to do is call.”
She nods, her smile wider than I’ve ever seen it. “I’m in, Ryan. I’m taking it all.”
I grin back. “I love you, Pippa Murphy.”
“I love you, too—”
Before she can finish, I’m pulling her to my lap so I can kiss her.
I don’t need to hear the words. I need to taste her and feel in my body that Pippa is mine.
I’ve never been territorial about any woman, except for her.
Fuck, I’d happily tattoo her name across my face so anyone who sees me knows who she belongs to.
Pippa would probably veto that plan, which is her prerogative, because I belong to her, just like she belongs to me.
I take her jaw in my hand, angling her face so I can kiss her as deeply as I need to.
I need to taste her everywhere. She opens so sweetly for me, her tongue meeting mine as her body bows against mine.
Her hands move over my shoulders, through my hair, down my back.
Her touch is hungry and wanting, like she can’t get enough of feeling me.
Which means we’re finally on the same fucking page.
I shove everything in front of me off the table, the cards fluttering through the air while the chips clatter to the floor. I push Pippa off my lap so she can lay across the table. I’m on top of her before she can protest the distance. Her hungry lips are back on mine in a second.
Yeah, my bed is upstairs, but fuck beds. Fuck anything that makes me wait any longer for this woman. Her legs wrap around my waist as she grinds against my cock, the layers of fabric between us not enough to diminish how goddamn good the friction between us feels.
She tugs at my shirt, yanking it up my back. I help her get it over my head, but I don’t take the time to undress her. Not yet. I need more of her mouth, more kisses, more confirmation that there’s nothing stopping me from having her.
I’m so fully wrapped up in her that the ding of the elevator feels like a distant afterthought. It takes somebody screaming to break through the haze of happiness I’m swimming in.
“Oh my god!” someone shrieks.
“Hell yeah!” someone else yells.