Chapter 17 #3
“It’s funny, I’m the opposite. The thought of doing everything overwhelms me.
The only reason I started a production company of my own was because I was frustrated with the parts I was being offered and got tired of waiting around for quality scripts to find me.
I finally realized that if I wanted meaty roles, I had to create them for myself.
But I’d rather focus on the one thing I love doing and collaborate with the best people to do everything else. ”
“You’ve found what you love to do,” he says simply. “That’s a gift.”
I’ve never thought about it in precisely that way, but I realize he’s right. And I know how lucky I am—to have found success and fulfillment in such a fickle industry is a privilege few get to enjoy.
“But who knows,” he says, raising and lowering a shoulder. “If it doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll just become a fisherman. I mean, I already have a boat.”
“There’s always hocking products on Instagram,” I remind him. “I promise to click on your links.”
“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “Or you could bring me on at Violet Femmes Films?”
I grimace. “Sorry, we only hire women.”
“Damn it.”
We’re laughing. “Well, that was quite an update,” I admit, stretching my arms toward the sky, twisting my back. I’m still processing his biggest bombshell: Ryder lives in Seafolly. I can hardly wrap my mind around it.
We lapse into a comfortable silence as our feet swirl slow, aimless patterns in the water.
The wind’s shifted at some point during our conversation, thickening the air and stirring the leaves in the tall oaks guarding the shore.
We watch a gull swoop low over the cove, squawk a warning at us, then curve around the bend, melting into the watercolor sky.
His voice cuts through the quiet. “There is one thing I’ve been dancing around.”
I immediately tense, anxiety rising inside me like an algae bloom. Please don’t ask why I left. You’ll ruin this.
He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders, as if steeling himself. “A big part of the program is making amends.”
It takes me a second to grasp his meaning. “You don’t have to make amends with me, Ry.” I can’t let him apologize to me; the guilt will eat me alive. “Everything that happened was such a long time ago. We were so young. We were just kids.”
“I have a lot of regrets from that time in my life,” he forges ahead like he doesn’t hear me, like nothing could stop him from saying what he’s about to say. “And you’re the biggest one, Scarlett.”
His voice holds an ironclad resolve, and I suddenly know with deep certainty that he’s been working his way up to this, whatever he’s about to say next, and I am not ready for it.
It’s taken every ounce of energy to keep my defenses up, to protect myself from the pain of our past, and he’s about to rip the rug out from under me.
Pressure begins to build in my chest, a heaviness settling in my lungs until I can’t draw in a full breath.
It feels like an anvil is balanced on my breastbone.
He takes my hand from where it’s been worrying the ruffled hem of my shorts and pulls it onto his lap, trapping it between his two palms. It’s startling—we’ve spent the week circling each other, every trace of physical contact between us tentative and fleeting, but not this one.
Now, he’s claiming my fingers like he owns them, possessive and unrepentant.
My expression must be alarmed—What are you doing?
—because when he meets my eyes there’s bold defiance in his, as if to say: Tell me to stop.
I don’t.
“I’m sorry for not being the man I should have been to you,” he starts, his voice granite, firm and determined.
“You deserved so much better from me. I hate that I let so many things—my insecurities, my weaknesses, my pride—come between us. I should have fought harder for us. I should have moved heaven and earth to fix what I did wrong. If I could go back…” His voice cracks, and he pauses to clear his throat.
He’s gripping my hand like a lifeline. “Scarlett, you have to know if I could go back, I would never leave that hotel room. I would never let you go.” He swallows heavily, his eyes pleading for forgiveness.
“Walking out that door was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Please stop, I try to whisper, but no sound comes out.
My pulse is thundering so loud it’s like a roar in my ears, drowning everything else out.
Panic pinballs through me, ricocheting off my ribs, my spine, my sternum.
I try to swallow but it feels like a burr, its prickly spines stabbing at my throat.
“You know for years I thought you cursed me? Probably because it was easier to be angry with you than look in a mirror,” he says with a short huff, though there’s no humor in it.
“You’ve haunted me for a decade. I couldn’t shake you, Scar.
I tried to move on, but none of my relationships ever went anywhere because you were this giant specter in my life, this big unanswered question hanging over my head, and every woman I dated knew it.
They could feel it.” He twines his fingers through mine and squeezes, his rueful smile ripping open the wound on my heart that’s never quite healed.
“I finally realized it was because I didn’t want to shake you. ”
“Ry,” I breathe, my sinuses stinging, my throat tight with unshed tears. I’ve run from this conversation for ten years, and now that it’s happening, I’m coming undone. My carefully constructed cocoon is unraveling thread by thread, and I’ve never felt so defenseless.
“It’s driven me half-crazy. When I told you before why I agreed to do this, it was only the partial truth.
” His face is a mirror of everything I’ve tried not to feel, so raw and laid bare that I have to look away.
He has no idea what his words are doing to me, the emotional black hole he’s opening.
I’m disintegrating right in front of him, and he doesn’t even realize it.
“I thought if I could just see you, spend some time with you, then I’d know if it was real.
I’d know if I remembered it right, if what I’ve built up in my head all these years was true. ”
I stare down at my lap, my vision blurry. I can’t bring myself to look at him. “And is it?” I manage to croak around the mass in my throat.
He takes a strand of my hair that’s been dancing in the air between us and tucks it behind my ear, gently angling my face up toward his in the process. “You know it is.” His smile is soft as he brushes away a tear that’s broken loose. “You can feel it, same as me.”
He holds my gaze, and for once I force myself not to look away.
The setting sun is picking up the gold in his windswept hair, the glittering water reflected in the copper flecks of his eyes.
His profile is limned in the fading light like an apparition.
He’s so beautiful it hurts. He always has been.
The longer I stare at him, the harder it is to deny what I’ve always known: I’ve never gotten over him. I probably never will.
The only problem is that when it comes to my feelings for Ryder, love and pain are inextricably linked.
“You said you wouldn’t do this,” I whisper.
“I said I wouldn’t push you about the past. Not that I wouldn’t tell you how I felt.”
It’s so unfair, for him to say things now I so desperately wanted to hear back then.
Maybe we were the right people at the wrong time, but for him to act like it’s simple, like we can just pick up where we left off, lands like a stone in my chest, stirring up the loss that’s never fully left me.
I remember what it was like to go from all to nothing.
The pain nearly killed me the first time; there’s no way I’d survive it a second time.
“It doesn’t matter.” I swipe my tears away, regret an anchor in my stomach. “I’m not the same girl you knew.”
“Do I seem like the same guy you knew?”
“That’s not…” I shake my head, frustrated that no matter what I say, I can’t make him understand.
“I get it, okay? What we had back then…it was big, and real, and something that strong doesn’t just disappear because we want it to.
Of course I still feel it, Ryder. I probably always will.
But we’re different people now. This week just has you feeling nostalgic.
You said it yourself, you’ve built me up in your head to be something I’m not. ”
“That’s not what I said—”
“You only remember the good things,” I cut him off, anxiety making my voice shake. “You’ve forgotten all the bad.”
“Scarlett, I see things more clearly than I ever have.” He’s as patient as I am panicked.
“You don’t even know me anymore!” I say harshly, my voice shrill, and at this point I’m no longer sure who I’m trying to convince—him, or me.
He lets my words hang in the air until the breeze carries them away like smoke, before squeezing my hand, still held captive in his. “So let me know you again.”
The quiet plea, spoken in his calm, unwavering timbre, shatters the last fragments of my self-control.
I finally give in to temptation, freeing my hand from between his to reach up and touch his face, lightly brushing my knuckles over the thick scrape of his beard, which somehow feels both soft and prickly to the touch.
I skim my fingertips over his cheekbone, trace along his jawline, reacquainting myself with the planes and angles of this face I once knew so well.
Ryder holds himself motionless as I touch him, breath caught and eyes locked on my face, as if granting me permission to indulge this impulse and take my fill of him.
The way his eyes track my movements feels like a caress of its own.