16. Maren #2
“It’s not just the secrecy,” he said. “The reason that happened. The reason there’s always going to be a version of that.
It’s because of what I do. My job. The life that comes with it.
” He paused, working through it carefully, the way he didn’t speak until he knew what he wanted to say exactly.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Early in my career.
Easy things that didn’t cost anything because nothing mattered enough to cost anything.
” Puck bunnies. That’s what he was talking about.
“That’s not who I am now. It hasn’t been for a long time.
And I need you to know that. When I said what is between us isn’t nothing, I meant that. ”
I knew Griffin was a fuck boy; he had been since…well as long as I could remember. It was reasonable to assume that a man with the Nordic good looks Ryan had would not have been a saint. The house was quiet. I didn’t know how to respond, or if I was supposed to.
“How long?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know.
His jaw shifted. “Longer than I want to admit.”
“You haven’t—”
“No.”
I stared at my knees. The loose thread had come all the way off now and I was holding it between my fingers without remembering pulling it.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“I’m processing.” I pressed my lips together. “Give me a second.”
He gave me a second. He was good at that. At waiting without making the time passing feel like pressure.
“The whatever her name is situation,” I said carefully. “That’s always going to be a thing. With your job. There will always be bunnies.”
“Yes.”
“And I know that. I went into this knowing that.”
“Yes.”
“And it still felt terrible.”
“I know.” He reached over and pulled my feet out from under me, settling them across his lap, his hand resting warm over my ankles.
“And it’s not nothing to me that it cost you something.
Even if I didn’t do anything wrong, you still paid for it, and I’m not going to pretend that part doesn’t matter.
If our roles were reversed, I don’t know that I could keep quiet about it. ”
I stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” I made a frustrated sound. “Because I’m trying to be reasonably annoyed and you keep being like this and it’s very hard to maintain.”
His expression softened, warm and unhurried. “Like what?”
“You know exactly like what.” I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. “You came over all sexy looking, and you’re so sweet, and you smell really good,” I said, because now I was just ranting. “It’s extremely unfair given the circumstances, and entirely impossible to stay upset.”
He exhaled through his nose, the sheepish version. “Noted.”
“I’m still annoyed.”
“I know.”
“Not at you specifically.”
“I know.”
I rested my chin on my knees and looked at him sideways.
He was watching me with that quiet, thorough attention I had never once in my life experienced from anyone before him.
The kind that didn’t want anything from me except exactly what I was, even if it was a jealous grump.
I was so mad at him for being like this.
“Can I stay?” he asked. “I promise to behave.”
“Well no, not if you’re going to behave,” I said incredulously. “I expect to be wooed now.”
Ryan barked out a laugh. “Oh you want to be wooed? I can make that happen. Should I get started right now?”
“Maybe not right now. I’m still kinda grumpy. But later?” I asked hopefully, raising my eyebrows in question.
“On it.” He opened up his arms for me to snuggle into him. “I will woo you after we hang out and pretend to watch a movie for a little bit. How does that sound?”
“Good,” I whispered. “Then you can stay if you want,” I added as I tucked myself into his side and pulled a blanket over both of us.
He kissed the top of my head. “?lskling,” he whispered into my hair. “There is literally nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you right now.”
He reached for the remote on the coffee table and held it out to me without a word. I took it. Found something neither of us would remember later. He kicked his shoes off and put his feet up on my coffee table.
With my feet tucked under me, his arm warm and solid across my shoulders, I relaxed into him and sighed, the weight of the evening—of my jealousy and coming to terms with it—lightening with his proximity.
I pressed my nose briefly against his shoulder, and felt him exhale, slow and settling, his arm pulling me incrementally closer.
He smelled like himself. Warm and clean and frustratingly, completely him, and I was going to have to come to terms with the fact that I’d started thinking of it as a scent that meant safe.
On-screen, someone was explaining the terms of a heist to a room full of skeptical people.
“For what it’s worth,” Ryan said, quietly, into my hair. “You’re the only person I’ve wanted to come home to in longer than I want to admit…Like ever. This is the best I’ve ever felt.”
I went still.
“That’s all,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
I didn’t say anything. I pressed my hand flat against his chest instead, feeling his heartbeat under my palm, and turned back to the movie. He rested his free hand on mine and squeezed it gently.
We were asleep before the heist was finished.
I woke briefly at two in the morning, half off the couch, his arm still around me, the TV casting blue light across the ceiling. I reached for the remote without moving anything else and turned it off. He made a low, sleepy sound and pulled me closer.
I closed my eyes and let myself have the moment with him. Just the weight of him and the warmth and the fact he’d shown up, that he’d driven across the city and sat with me and hadn’t tried to fix it with anything except himself while he listened to me completely.
I was falling for him. I’d felt it building since before I’d let myself admit it. Lying in the dark with his arm around me, I let myself know it all the way down. For once I didn’t fight it.
The game had gone to overtime.
I’d watched all of it from my couch with takeout I’d mostly stopped eating and a blanket I’d pulled over my feet sometime in the second period. The Sidewinders won it in the shootout—Ryan’s shot, clean and deliberate, the same way he did everything. I’d texted him.
Maren: I’m really glad you’re coming home to me.