Chapter Thirty
Elliot
M y knees go weak as he steps out of the car.
Why I’m here at Ryder’s place is beyond stupid and into the realm of masochism. I’m meant to be gone. I took the day off and had some last minute things to do in Murray Hill, which is why I got to observe that lovely scene of the spectacular and naked starlet climb all over him.
And his well-handled rejection of said naked woman.
And yet, Ryder still managed to fuck it up with me.
He wants a crutch, not someone where there might be a future.
So…masochism has me here.
But I can’t leave without seeing him.
His walk slows to a stop as he sees me. “Elliot?”
“That’s my name.”
Ryder climbs the steps to his door and lets us in. “I thought…I thought I’d fucked up.”
“You did.” I stop in the entrance way as he shuts the door behind me. “I’m leaving. I’ve a vacation planned and I moved it up. I can’t be here anymore. Not for a while. Any loose ends, Andre will handle them.”
“I’m paying you.”
“You have paid me,” I corrected. “And I’m delegating. I know you’re getting your necklace, which will look very pretty on you. And you saved the company. So, Andre can handle the loose ends, if there are any.”
He nods, and he rubs the back of his neck. “It would look better on you, Elliot.”
My body starts to tingle. Not for some jewel, but what he’s saying behind it. “It’s not mine.”
“I fucked up, big time. I didn’t fight for you. I wasn’t honest. This is all new for me. You are like nothing I’ve ever known in my life. You’re my friend, and someone I want to spend weeks on end in bed with. You make me so angry and happy and unsure of myself. You make me secure and you make me feel like I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t get how that happens. Except, maybe it’s to do with how you just make me feel, Elliot.”
I keep the hope that’s trying to get free from escaping, because these aren’t the words I want to hear. Not completely. “Why did you ask her to Murray Hill?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
“She sounded sad? She kept calling? I wanted…maybe I wanted to see what would happen. Maybe I was so fucking angry you rejected me I thought I’d do it.”
The words slap me, hard. “I see.”
“I thought maybe I could, but that wasn’t why. I don’t know why. Shit, I wasn’t even interested in her at all. Elliot, I think you broke me.”
I start laughing even as tears burn my eyes and I’m not sure if they’re happy or sad. “I didn’t break you.”
Ryder wipes a finger under my eye. “Don’t cry, Elliot. I’m not worth it.”
“You are to me. That’s the problem. Maybe I came here because I wanted to see…to see you, to see why you called.”
“Maybe deep down it was a test,” he says, sounding a little dazed.
“Maybe.”
“To see if I could change, not for you to save me.” Ryder takes my face in his hands. “I actually was so fucking gobsmacked when she walked out naked—I’d been sitting there thinking about you, obsessing might be the word, and I had that text out…I wrote it as an SOS right back at the beginning. And maybe I wanted to see if you’d turn up—I just hit send.”
“And I show up.”
“You’re not a crutch, not like that. I want you to be a lot of things with me. All of them. And I want to be all those with you.”
Now I reach up, and run my fingers over those soft lips of his, the ones I dream about. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you can change, I think you have.”
“Because of you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “And maybe because of you, too. I see you, Ryder. All of you. You’re more than this ridiculously beautiful face of yours. You’re more than being amazing in bed. You’re more than charm and magnetism. You can be awkward. I know I am, and I like that you can be, too. It’s charming if we’re not arguing over you putting your foot in it. Your fucking up like that is what people do. It might cause you grief, make you feel like you’re in Dante’s hell—”
“Seventh circle, usually.”
I start to smile because I can’t contain the hope, it’s blooming like it’s got a life of its own. “It makes you human, Ryder.”
“So what’s your excuse for your perfection?”
“I’m not perfect.”
“To me, how you are is. You might frustrate the fuck out of me, but I don’t want you to be anything other than you are, Elliot.”
“That’s good, because I can’t be. I’m not great with the limelight. I hate half the events we went to. Except…except they weren’t so bad with you. And I like being in your light.”
“It’s the other way around. I’m better in yours.”
I go up on my toes and kiss him softly. “Ryder, I’m trying to say I’m not expecting anything from you. But I want you to know I appreciate you.” The words of love are there, but I’m not letting them out. And whatever happens, I need to tell him this. Then I can go. No matter what this hope inside thinks. “I get some people just see the surface. Gorgeous rich man and nothing else. Not me.”
“You see the monster?”
“You’re an idiot. No, I see you. You like beautiful things, but you understand them. You saw what my plants are with me, and with my art deco furniture, you know what it is, the beauty side of old things that are loved. You appreciate not the monetary value but the aesthetics and that’s rare.”
“I appreciate you, Elliot. More than you know,” he says quietly.
“I’m not beautiful or anything—”
“You are,” he says, releasing me and taking my hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss against my palm. “You’re beautiful and sexy and you’re the hottest thing I’ve met. I can talk with you. I can tell you anything. I can just relax with you.”
And yet, he doesn’t tell me what I long to hear and maybe he doesn’t feel how I do. Maybe he—
“I love you, Elliot.”
He’s shaking and I start, too.
“I’ve never said that to anyone before, outside family. I’ve never loved before and I think I might have for a long time, I just went about it wrong. I mean, it takes a bit to work out what the complicated thing you’re feeling is. At least for me. And you don’t need to love me back. You can walk out the door, because I sure as fuck don’t deserve you. Will I try and stop you? Yes. Will I try and wear you down and win you and spend a life taking whatever I can get with you? Absolutely.”
Ryder meets my gaze. “Basically, I’m trying to say I’m head over heels in love with you, and I don’t want anyone but you. I love you.”
“Really?” The hope is back swooping, flying singing and my heart is so full and big and I can’t stop the sudden wild happiness from spilling inside.
“Yes.”
I start to cry. Not sobs, but tears definitely fall and I can’t help it. I know what those other tears were now. Pure hope and that’s morphed right into happy. “You love me?”
“With everything I am.”
“I love you, too. I am so in love with you I make myself sick.”
“I know you don’t trust me, but—”
“I trust you, Ryder.”
“Even when I don’t trust myself?”
“Don’t push it,” I say, looping my arms around his neck. “That’s fear. You’re your number one fan, you do trust yourself. You just were finding your feet and you never did anything. You had a naked woman begging to sleep with you.”
“She wasn’t you.” He kisses me soft and slow and sweet and then looks at me, a wicked light in his eyes. “Or maybe I’m lying.”
“No. I know your tells.”
“Really?”
“I’ll never tell.”
I kiss him again and he holds me tight, kissing me back like I’m the most precious thing in his life. “You know, you’re worth more than the company and the necklace. Without you, it’s empty.”
A Spice Girls song starts and he reluctantly pulls free. “My mother.”
He waits for the phone to stop ringing. Then when it beeps, he listens to the voicemail. Ryder hangs up and shoves his phone away. “Holy fucking hell, Elliot. That was her congratulating me and her saying if I don’t seal the deal with the best thing that’s happened to me—you—I’m in trouble, but Kingston’s piece is missing. She has the necklace but the last piece and his quest are gone; not that I trust her or Jenson in this. My brother is not going to be happy. But this is in King’s hands now. Oh no.”
“What?” The look of annoyance on his face twists in me.
“I’m going to have to introduce you to my family.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, it’s going to be strange if they never meet my wife.”
For a moment I can’t speak. “Wife?”
“Yes. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but I love you and I’m not letting you go, Elliot. Marry me. I want a life with my hot best friend. I want one that means something. With you.”
“I never saw myself as getting married,” I say, “but for you, I’ll make an exception. And I don’t think I want to let you go. After all, who knows what situations you’ll get yourself into.”
“I love you, Elliot. I’m going to spend my life showing you.”
We kiss, and all that angst and twisting ourselves in knots seems miles away. If we could get through that, then we can get through anything. And now we know we love each other. And there’s trust, it’s going to be good. With Ryder by my side, we can do anything.
It’s not just love. Because he’s my best friend, too. And this feels right. It feels good.
It’s forever.
It’s that kind of deal, and he isn’t the only one who changed, I did, too.
We changed for each other.
Because we found love.
This is the end of Ryder and Elliot's love story.
But the two, as well as all the other Sinclair brothers, return.