Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ridge
Seven times.
I’ve used the new stairlift seven times so far.
Not because I needed to, but because it exists.
The thing about accessibility is that when something works properly, you stop noticing it. You stop planning around it. Stop calculating angles, distances, and whether getting somewhere is worth the effort.
You just go.
After the seventh trip, I took a shower.
Showering here is, against every instinct I have about admitting Paul Bennett has ever done anything right, actually enjoyable.
Big bathroom. Grab bars that don’t look like grab bars, and a bench that doesn’t make me feel like a piece of medical equipment being hosed down.
It’s clearly designed with an actual person in mind instead of a liability checklist, and I refuse to examine too closely what that says about how much he’s been thinking about me.
And now that I have access to the upper floors, I counted Paul’s houseplants because I could.
Ninety-eight.
I genuinely believe they’re reproducing when nobody is looking. Somehow, that is an easier concept to process than whatever the fuck just happened at the inn.
Nevan and Paul are currently upstairs, doing a therapy session, and Lennon offered to come keep me company since I’m already in bed and settled for the night.
So here we are. Me, propped against the headboard, her stretched out beside me in cute yellow pajamas, e-reader balanced on her knees, scrolling at a pace that suggests deep personal suffering.
I already clocked what she’s reading, because it’s the same garbage I was reading the night she fell asleep on me. Such a bad plot.
I lean over and tap her screen. “Spoiler alert, he gets amnesia in chapter twenty-two and forgets he loves her.”
“Ridge!” She clutches the e-reader to her chest and glowers at me.
“I’m protecting you.”
Her nose scrunches. “I know it’s bad.”
“Then put it down.”
“I’m almost done.”
“Looks like you have over a hundred pages to go.”
“I can’t abandon it, Ridge.” She says it like I’ve suggested she abandon a child at a bus station. “I have to know how it ends.”
“It ends badly. For your sanity.”
“I have to finish.”
Okaaay.
I file this away under things Lennon Maes will not let go of, ever, under any circumstances. The list is getting ridiculous.
Bad books.
Comatose best friends.
And possibly me.
I pick up my phone and open my notes app before I say something embarrassing out loud, typing out the thoughts instead.
She never gave up on people. She just kept showing up long after everyone else had decided it was pointless.
I stare at it.
The fuck is this?
Lennon watches me over the top of her e-reader. “What?”
I glance at the note again. “I think I accidentally had a romance idea.”
She sits up so fast the e-reader nearly slides off her lap. “Romance? You? Mister happy endings are a lie we tell children?”
“Don’t act so delighted.”
“I’m beyond delighted.” She’s grinning now, full-wattage, completely unbothered by how smug she looks doing it. “Tell me.”
I scrub a hand through my hair. “Guy meets a woman who’s completely incapable of letting things go.”
Her nose scrunches again. “That’s not a flaw.”
“It absolutely is.”
“It’s not.”
“She keeps rescuing things.” I gesture vaguely. “Stray animals. Terrible books. Random men she finds emotionally bleeding in the woods.”
Her expression softens. “And?”
“And he spends the entire book waiting for her to realize he’s one of the things she’s trying to save.”
Fuck. That’s not a story.
That’s my life with extra flourishes. Apparently, I’ve become the kind of writer who self-inserts.
Disgusting.
She reaches out to squeeze my forearm. “I’d read that.”
“In space.”
She sighs. “Of course.”
“With aliens.”
“Oh God.”
“The man is an alien.”
“The emotionally damaged man?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the emotionally damaged man.”
“I’m actually three emotionally damaged aliens in a trench coat.”
A laugh bursts out of her.
“There it is,” I say, pointing at her. “Now it’s literature.”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “Do the aliens get a happy ending?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re aliens.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’ve identified the central conflict.”
Her smile turns even softer, and I almost let the moment sit there unbothered, except there’s a thing I’ve been carrying around for days now. It’s burning a hole through whatever is left of my conscience.
“Speaking of things I’ll have to confess to…” I say, before I lose the nerve. “I may have read your messages on your phone while you were asleep. I may have also listened to a voicemail from Spencer. Well, we all did, but I was the one holding the phone.”
Her e-reader finally slips from her hands, falling to the mattress beside her.
“Wait, what?”
“He wouldn’t stop texting you, and you don’t have a passcode, and I…” I exhale through my nose, hard. “Fuck. I shouldn’t have looked. I know that. But I did, and then I texted him back.”
“You texted him?”
“Told him to fuck off. That you’re ours. Then I blocked him.”
Instead of the anger I’d been bracing for and genuinely deserve, she rises to her knees, cradles my jaw, and kisses me hard. “I don’t give a single fuck about Spencer,” she rasps against my lips.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
She’s already climbing into my lap, knees on either side of my hips, settling there as if she belongs there, which, fine, she does. “We’re absolutely going to have words about you going through my phone without permission, because no passcode does not mean open season—”
“I get that,” I say, grabbing her hips and pulling her closer.
“But…” She kisses me again. “Spencer can fuck off. Completely. Forever.”
I groan and drag my mouth down the line of her throat, and she tips her head back to give me better access.
“And that voicemail,” I murmur against her pulse point.
“Shh.” She draws me off her throat at my hair, then tries to shut my brain off with another kiss, but I can’t not talk about that part.
“Hey.” I pull back from her sweet lips. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
She goes still, then exhales shakily. “I am too,” she whispers, all the heat gone out of her voice.
“Do you want to talk about her?”
Her eyes water, and she blinks rapidly, giving me a small nod.
“I want to tell you all about her, but not right now. Right now, I want to talk about how you told my ex that I’m yours.”
I smirk, and she kisses me again, sliding her hands under my shirt.
I grab the hem of hers, but then she rolls her hips against me in a way that pulls a sound out of my chest I’ve never made before.
She moans into my mouth when my hand slides up her ribs, and for one long, stupid second, I almost forget why I have to stop this before it goes somewhere I can’t follow.
Almost.
“Sweetheart.” I catch her wrist gently before her hand gets where it’s headed. “How about we go to sleep. Continue this in our dreams.”
She laughs, breathless, like she thinks I’m joking, and kisses me again.
“I’m serious,” I say against her soft, persistent lips.
She gives me one more kiss, then pulls away with a frown. “Why?”
I look down at my legs pointedly, then back up at her. “Because in waking life, I can’t do to you what I can in dreams.”
Instead of flinching, like I halfway expect her to, she tilts her head, studying me with that maddening, patient focus. “You don’t feel it?” she asks. “Or can’t you get hard? I thought I heard you through the wall, the other night, when…”
I groan and drop my forehead against hers. “You heard that?”
“Yeah.” She kisses my mouth with a grin. “It was hot.”
“I never get hard on my own anymore. Usually, I need manual stimulation, and a cock ring to keep it that way once I am.” I say it with no emotion, the same way I’ve learned to explain the worst parts of myself so they sound like facts instead of grief.
“That night, it just happened. I don’t fully know why.
But yeah, I haven’t had sex in waking life since the accident. ”
“Okay.” She shifts in my lap, and mischief sparks in her eyes. “That’s not an issue. I can stimulate your cock. I have to say…” she rolls her hips against me with a smirk, “… I was planning on doing that anyway.”
I grunt as she grinds against me again, but grab her hips, needing to be sure. “It’s not a turn-off for you?”
She stops moving against me, staring at me long enough that I regret asking. Long enough that I wish I could take it back.
“Ridge.”
“Forget it.”
“No.” Her hand slides into my hair. “Look at me. See how much I want you.”
“I want you, too, but we can absolutely keep this part in dreams. I’m not—”
“Why would I want that?” She tugs at my hair, like a warning. “You’re right here. I’m very happy with what we do in dreams, believe me. But I want this too. I want you.”
“You may want me, but you don’t want this.”
She shrugs. “I have issues too.”
I give her a dark look. “Don’t tell me your legs are paralyzed.”
“No.” She lets out a small, embarrassed laugh, the first crack of nerves I’ve seen from her all night.
Her cheeks blush the prettiest pink. “I have trouble with getting wet. And coming. I’ve had a pretty good track record lately, but normally, it’s not easy for me.
My body doesn’t cooperate the way it’s supposed to. ”
I scoff. “I know the feeling.”
Everything she’s said genuinely doesn’t move anything in me except toward her.
Huh.
“But there’s lube for that. And delayed gratification is a perfectly respectable kink.”
She scoffs right back at me. “See?”
“What?”
“This, we, us.” She kisses me again, and I kiss her back automatically, our mouths moving together perfectly in sync.
“We work,” she says, breathless as she pulls away.
“Even in real life. So, how about we try? If it’s not good for you, we stop.
We always have the dreams. But God, I really would love to try. ”