24. Emma
24
Emma
“Ryan—”
“Emma—”
We both speak at the same time, and then I close my mouth, waiting for Ryan to continue. But he doesn’t, and there’s another awkward moment of silence between us.
“You start,” I say eventually.
He looks nervous and a little edgy, with a side of “not sure what to do next” thrown in for good measure. In fact, he’s standing there looking terrified that I might spin on my heels and run from the room at any second. Lifting a hand, he takes tentative steps, like he’s approaching a scared animal.
“I was going to ask you to come in and sit down,” he says, gesturing to the other chair beside the fire. “You want a drink?”
I nod as I make my way across the room. “Sure. Thanks.”
He waits until I’ve passed him before he makes a move, as though he’s scared of getting too close to me in case he spooks me or something.
“I see you’ve started without me,” I say, looking at the decanter on the table beside him.
It’s partly to lighten the dense tension between us, but it’s partly to try and put him at ease. I didn’t make this trip just to turn around and walk out again. I’m here to talk.
He looks at the decanter and then looks embarrassed. I’m waiting for him to give me some lame excuse. When backed into a corner, Ryan usually makes light of things. But when he returns with a glass, he looks me dead in the eye and takes a deep breath in.
“Yes. I was drowning my sorrows.”
He gazes at me with that same intensity he always has, and I feel a lump rise in my throat. I don’t reply, scared he’ll hear my voice crack as my eyes glisten, and instead, I try to swallow my pain.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” he whispers, not taking his eyes off mine as a tear escapes down my cheek. “You cannot know how sorry I am.”
I nod. “I can,” I croak. “Because I’m sorry, too.”
He hands me the glass and wraps his fingers around mine when I take hold of it. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Course I have,” I blurt, swiping my face with my free hand. Ryan reaches and brushes my cheek, tenderly wiping the next tear that falls. “I was an idiot. I should have given you a chance to explain yourself.”
He shrugs, and his eyes soften as they never leave mine. “It’s hard to know if a leopard can truly change its spots, right?” he says tenderly.
But I shake my head. “No. Not with you. I knew last night, and I knew this morning, before I saw that picture. It’s just…” But I trail off because I’m not really sure how to explain myself.
“It’s just the wound hasn’t yet had time to heal,” he says. “It’s been ten years, but let’s be honest, the pain has been there for a long time.”
He is making sense. It probably isn’t how I would put it, but I know what he’s trying to say. But even at that, it doesn’t excuse how I reacted this morning. Instead of trusting him when he told me it wasn’t real, I decided to believe something that, deep down, I knew couldn’t be true.
“I didn’t trust you,” I say.
Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s that. You were scared; that’s all. I mean, this is new to both of us, right? Megan had already rattled our cage, showing up when she did. She knew what she was doing. In fact, it’s clear to me now that she planned this all along.”
I nod. “Yes. I figured that, too. The woman needs serious therapy.”
Ryan bursts into laughter. “That’s for darn sure.”
And then we’re both smiling.
With his eyebrows hitched, he says, “Are you going to sit with me, or are you still deciding whether to run or not?”
I sidestep to the chair and lower myself down, the heat of the fire already licking through my denim. When he’s lowered into his chair, we both sit there for a few moments, neither of us speaking. Our eyes never leave each other’s gaze, though, like we don’t need words to communicate.
“Thomas came to see me and explained everything,” I say eventually. “It didn’t even occur to me that the photograph could be fake. Even after you and Sharon told me it was. And then, when Thomas was talking, I remembered the picture Phil took of us. Do you remember?”
Ryan nods. “Sure, I do. The one he took in the office. The one that, when he finished, looked like we were walking down a street in the city.”
I nod. “That one. Thomas is convinced that she ”—I hiss the word—“isn’t that talented, and that she likely got someone to fix it up for her.”
“Yes. We figured that out together. I mean, he thought the same as you at first, but when I explained it all to him, he finally understood.”
“He told me,” I say. “He told me everything.” I pause for a beat. “At least something good came out of this, right?” I smile.
Ryan snorts. “Who knew? It only took Megan Whitmore’s callous trickery to get me and my brother speaking again.”
“Which is good,” I say.
“Yes,” he sighs.
The conversation fizzles out, and I don’t know what to say. Instead, I take a sip of my drink. Partly to do something, partly because I really feel like I need a drink. We both sit quietly for a while, the silence drawing out and the discomfort growing—for me, at least. I’m about to open my mouth and speak when Ryan looks at me nervously.
“So, about last night…”
He leaves the sentence open, like he’s scared of taking me in any one direction, leaving it for me to decide what I want to say.
I decide to take it in a direction he least expects. “What about it?” I knot my brow, feigning confusion. “Did something happen?”
A slow smirk grows on his lips, and I can slowly see the tension falling from his face, his shoulders, his entire body. My words have released him from the prison he’s probably been locked in since this morning. The prison I put him in.
“You’ve forgotten, huh?” he says, a mischievousness to his tone.
I wiggle my head from side to side. “My memory’s pretty vague.”
He places his glass on the table and then moves towards me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting him to drop to his knees in front of me.
“I think, maybe, I need to remind you,” he breathes.
Taking my face in his hands, he brings his lips to mine and kisses me as tenderly as he did last night. This time, he doesn’t pull away. This time, I don’t want him to, and snaking my free arm around his neck, I pull him into me. His lips feel soft and full against mine, and while fireworks explode across my body, the pieces of my broken heart seem to carefully slip back together, and then it thumps blissfully in my chest.
When he finally pulls away, Ryan is as breathless as me, his pupils so big that his eyes look black.
“I don’t think I’m ever not going to want to do that,” he growls.
I smile. “You know, your Italian is fantastic, but you need to work on your English.”
He bursts into a grin then, and wrapping his arms around me, he pulls me into an embrace that fills me with so much joy that I think it’s going to overflow out of me. But that’s okay, right? It doesn’t matter if it does because I have Ryan at my side to fill me up again.
“So, Emma Carter, are you going to go out with me or what?” he says, nuzzling my neck.
“We’ve been going out for nearly three months,” I moan in reply. “Maybe you need to change your question.”
Ryan swiftly pulls away from me and stares at me, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping. He’s searching my face as I’m trying not to laugh.
“Really?” he gasps ecstatically. “Are you being serious?”
But all I can do is giggle deliriously. At this moment, everything is making me laugh. His face, how he’s acting, the fact that I’m here with him. Today was the darkest day I’ve experienced in a long time, and if nothing else, it made one thing perfectly clear to me.
I gaze at him, lost in his excitement, and everything I feel bubbles to the surface. “I love you, Ryan.”
“And I love you,” he breathes back.
And then he’s showering me with kisses all over my face. My forehead, my nose, my cheeks, my chin. And soon enough, we’re both in hysterical fits of laughter.