Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
B rielle nearly swallowed her tongue. Was he suggesting what she thought he was? Or was she simply too cold to think clearly?
“Y-you want me to…” Her voice trailed off as she fought to stay focused and stop shaking like she was having a seizure.
“I want you to take off your wet things, and we’ll get close to conserve heat.” His eyes weren’t on her, and Brielle was sure he couldn't see how shocked she was at the announcement. Unfortunately, all the heat that they’d generated when she’d stupidly kissed him had worn off, and the moisture and injury were working hard to take away her capacity to think clearly.
“I don’t think t-t-that’s a good idea,” Brielle stuttered.
“Brielle.” Ryan stopped his fumbled movements and grabbed her face, forcing her to look him in the eye. “You’re too cold,” he stated slowly, as if talking to someone who didn’t understand English. “You’re shaking, and your body is in shock. I can’t carry you the whole way back, and you definitely can’t walk. The only thing we have are each other.” One side of his mouth twitched. “After that kiss, I’m not sure why this should bother you, but I promise not to take too much advantage of the situation.”
Her eyes widened, and Ryan chuckled before shaking his head.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t tease like that, but seriously. I’m not trying to be inappropriate. You need to get warm, and I’ll probably start to get cold soon as well. We’re out of the worst of the rain, but the temperature is only going to get worse and I have no idea when or if they’ll be able to come for us. I’m also not leaving you here like this while I go get help. You could be in serious trouble by the time I get back.” He tilted his chin down, raising his eyebrows. “Do you understand?”
Brielle gave him a shaky nod.
“Do you trust me?”
Brielle hesitated. Did she trust him? She was grateful to him, that was easy. But did she trust him? The guy who might or might not have lied to her?
He was good with Sparky. He took care of us. He went the extra mile in the office and at his apartment. Was he really the type of man who would play with her like that?
She watched the play of emotions in his eyes, as much as she could through her shivering state and after a few moments of her non-answering, the pain in his gaze was hard to ignore.
Ryan sagged. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make you hesitate, but I promise we’ll talk about it. In the meantime, I’m begging you to let me keep you warm enough to survive so we can talk about it.”
After another moment of hesitation, Brielle realized he was right. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering like gravel under a truck, and if she didn’t get it under control, there wouldn’t be a chance to air their dirty laundry. After he ran all this way to try and save her, she owed it to him to give him an opportunity to explain.
“Okay.”
Ryan nodded curly and continued with getting undressed. He carefully laid his trench coat to the side, then stripped off his layers of shirts, leaving Brielle gaping at his bare chest. It might be enough to warm her up simply by looking at him. It wasn’t anything she wouldn’t see if they went to the beach or a pool, but geez…how did a veterinarian have so much time to work out? Wasn’t he supposed to have gotten soft during his studies?
Before she could begin to drool, however, Ryan pulled his trench coat back on and looked up at her. “Your turn,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“Uh…”
Ryan gave her a wry grin. “You don’t need to take everything off, Brielle, but let’s at least get you down to your last layer, okay? We’ll pull you into my coat and wrap it around the two of us.”
When she didn’t move, Ryan reached out to help her, and Brielle snapped out of her haze and into action. “I got it,” she grunted, not sure how she’d handle it if he began to undress her. Good heavens, her mother would have a conniption if she knew what was going on.
To her utter horror, however, Brielle’s hands were shaking too hard to get undressed as she couldn’t even pull apart the buttons on her heavy water coat.
“Let me help,” Ryan said softly, getting up on his knees to lean over and help.
Brielle cleared her throat and looked away as he helped remove the coat. Next came the sweatshirt and long-sleeve moisture wicking shirt she wore, leaving her in her sports bra and leggings.
“Come on, Brielle,” Ryan said, the gentleness in his voice enough to make her cry again.
She’d already basically assaulted him in gratitude, though he hadn’t seemed to mind, she definitely didn’t want to break down and cry all over him.
His hands slipped under her armpits, helping lift her weight until she was settled on his lap, where he pulled her into his chest, wrapping his coat as far around them as he could, then reaching for her trench coat, he wrapped it over the last bit of exposed skin at her side.
The change in temperature was immediate, and Brielle tried to focus on that, rather than the sensation of being skin to skin with the man she both liked and hated. It seemed a cruel type of irony that he had been the one to save her, but here they were and without his heroic efforts, she wasn’t sure she’d have made it through the night.
Despite her reassurances earlier, no other runners had come by. They must have all been contacted and stopped their runs either in front of her or behind her, and they were truly going to be on their own for the night.
“Wrap your arms around my back,” Ryan whispered into her hair.
Brielle obediently followed his directions, pressing more of her skin to his and sighing at the contact. It felt good. Too good. But it had already made a difference in her core temperature, and her shaking was subsiding. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Ryan’s hand rubbed her side. “It’s my pleasure,” he teased.
Brielle snorted. “Men,” she grunted.
Ryan’s answering chuckle said he heard her. “I wasn’t talking about holding you like this.” He clucked his tongue and shifted their weight a little. “I just meant that I enjoy taking care of you.” He’d said those words in a lower tone, his breath warm on the top of her head where she was tucked under his chin.
Brielle blinked, feeling a little sleepy as the warmth began to seep into her muscles and bones. “I don’t know how that can be true,” she mumbled.
His hand moved faster on her side. “No sleeping, Brielle. Stay awake for me, okay, sweetheart?”
She jerked a little at the nickname and dared to push back far enough to look at his face. “How can I know if you’re telling the truth?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly.
Ryan frowned. “This is what I was talking about earlier. What in the world have I done to make you distrust me?” He took a long breath through his nose. “I know we butted heads in high school, but after our first kiss, I’d thought we’d gotten over the animosity.” A short, sarcastic laugh left his pale lips. “At least, I did until you dumped me the next day. ”
Brielle thought she might throw up. “What?” she screeched. “I broke up with you? What are you talking about?”
Ryan stilled. “What am I talking about? What are you talking about?”
Brielle closed her eyes and tried to focus her tired and wandering mind. “Look,” she said, forcing the words to be slow and clear. “Aurora told me everything. So you don’t need to keep trying to pretend. Yeah, you broke my heart in high school, and I’m trying to let it go in light of our current situation, but I don’t think lying about it is going to help anyone now.”
Ryan’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he could choke out any words. She thought he was lying? Did she not remember their kiss? Or the day after when she snarled at him and walked away?
Just what was going on in that beautiful brain of hers that had her so mixed up? Could someone’s brain get disoriented in this kind of trauma? There had to be a reason for her calling him a liar.
“I haven’t lied about anything,” Ryan said, his teeth gritted and his fingers digging into her side. He forced his body to release the tension so he didn’t hurt her. “What would I have lied about? You didn’t even speak to me the day you broke up with me.”
Brielle collapsed against his chest, but not in a way that said she was enjoying being held by him. It was of someone exhausted, and she was shaking again.
Ryan wrapped his arms more tightly around her, trying to infuse her with warmth even if his own body was struggling a little. A little more time in the coats, and the heat should begin to pick up. It was already better than when they were sitting separately.
“I’m so confused,” Brielle muttered, her words sloppy and drunk sounding. “I walked out that day because you chose Aurora over me. It was clear as day. And then just last week, Aurora told me that she’d asked you to kiss me that afternoon because she felt bad that I had a crush on you, only I wasn’t enough to keep your attention, which I’d already concluded when I saw you two together in the cafeteria. I told her she was lying, I mean, because we talked about you two dating, but she said you’d always been the flirty type who would say anything to get what you wanted…I…I didn’t know what to think or who to believe, and I got angry.”
Ryan felt as if his head was about to explode. “Wait, wait, wait…let me process all this for a minute.” He closed his eyes and tried to go through her statement one word at a time. There was so much to dissect, and most of it was complete nonsense. “Okay…let’s start from the beginning.”
Brielle didn’t respond, but her muscles were tight.
“Aurora told you that she told me to kiss you?” He waited, wanting verbal confirmation.
“Yes,” Brielle whispered, her voice shaky and broken.
Ryan went over it again. Why? Why would Aurora say something like that? “I’m trying to figure out why Aurora would say something like that, but it’s just not true. Your sister seems to be a pathological liar.”
Brielle jolted.
“Aurora never said anything about you. Ever, actually. I was only sort of friends with her,” he admitted. “We were never close, but I never heard her talk about you at all. I sort of figured you two kind of did your separate things, which didn’t really bother me. I mean…I was kind of clueless. I was a teenager.”
Brielle didn’t respond for a really long time, and Ryan started to worry she was plotting his demise when a sob broke through the sound of rain. “She really didn’t tell you to kiss me?”
Ryan shook his head before speaking. “No. In fact, I don’t know if I would have kissed you if she’d asked. That’s…really weird and would have been really cruel.” He shrugged a little before stopping when the coats shifted. “I mean, like most teenage boys, I was an idiot, but I wasn’t out to hurt people. ”
They grew quiet again, and Ryan was lost in his thoughts. Why in the world would Aurora lie like that? It’s not like she twisted the truth, it was a flat out lie.
“Brielle?”
“Hmm?”
Ryan could feel his brows pulling together. “When did Aurora tell you this?”
One heartbeat…two heartbeat…”Last week.”
“Right before you stopped talking to me.” It wasn’t a question, and it explained a lot. “You were that hurt over something you thought happened, what? Seven or eight years ago?”
Brielle sighed. “I already had bad memories of the event, and the thought of you doing her bidding made it worse.”
“My kiss was that bad, huh?” Ryan tried to joke, though the words stung, a lot. It was his good memories of the event that had guided him into wanting to pursue something with Brielle now. He’d been too young and naive back then, but now he knew better than to let someone like Brielle get away, at least without a fight.
“It had nothing to do with the kiss.”
The words were so quiet that Ryan barely heard them over the pounding of the water around them. “Come again?”
Another long sigh rushed over his skin and Brielle shifted, leaning back so they were still touching, but she could look up into his face. She winced when a couple of droplets from the tree above them hit her forehead.
Ryan went to move her, but Brielle tapped his chest.
“It’s fine,” she said softly. “There’s nowhere that’s going to be fully dry.”
He tightened his grip around her waist and nodded. “Before you explain that last statement, how’s your ankle?”
Brielle shook her head. “The same. It burns, and I doubt I can put weight on it.” She smirked, though the lines around her mouth were too tight for it to be actual humor. “The cold, however, is probably doing wonders for the swelling. ”
Ryan closed his eyes, and his breath rushed out. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get you out of this…somehow.” His heart fell. He’d finally discovered the woman meant for him, they were beginning to talk, and yet there was still danger ahead. Why did something as stupid as a freak storm in the middle of the woods have to be what it took to bring them together?
Would Brielle have stopped for anything else?
He had to give the thought credit. She might be destined to be his, but Ryan was all too aware of her stubborn streak. Every kid on the cross-country team was.
Pushing the morbid thoughts away with a heavy shove, he opened his eyes again. “Since I can’t do anything about that right now, how about you explain why you have such bad memories of something that was the highlight of my high school career?”
She blinked at him, looking shell-shocked. “If you liked the kiss so much, why did you throw me over for Aurora the next day?” Brielle’s voice rose at the end, almost into a screech, causing Ryan to wince.
“I didn’t throw you over,” he argued, shifting them again. His thighs were starting to go numb. Problem was, he had no idea if it was the cold or the position. “I was just sitting there for lunch. Aurora came and sat next to me. We hung out with the same people, you know that.”
Brielle snorted. “Your smile…you were all smug and looking at me when I walked in.” Brielle shivered again. “At first I thought it was just you being you, I mean you were pretty cocky as a kid, but then…” She paused, her nostrils flaring. “But then Aurora turned to look at me, and she winked, placing a hand on your knee. There’s no way I misinterpreted that. She told me for weeks afterward how you two were dating. Flaunting it!”
Brielle’s chest was heaving as her emotions grew more raggard, and Ryan felt his eyes widen at her angry explanation.
“I didn’t realize she knew we kissed. I just thought she was letting me know you were off limits, as I was pretty sure she knew I had a crush on you.” Brielle shook her head, droplets flinging from her hair. “She’s always—” She abruptly cut off, pinching her already pale lips together.
“She’s always what?” Ryan pressed, fighting his own anger at that point.
Brielle shook her head again. “It doesn’t matter. But Aurora said you two were a thing.”
Ryan took a minute to make sure that he could speak without saying words his mother would wash his mouth out for, then he leaned in until their foreheads were nearly touching. “Listen very closely,” he ground out. “I. Never. Dated. Aurora.” His chest heaved. “Do you hear me?”
Brielle slowly nodded.
“Good.” His eyes dropped to her lips. It was absolutely the most inappropriate time to be thinking of kissing her again, but he didn’t care. It’ll warm us both up. That’s as good an argument as there ever was. “There has only ever been you,” he added before making his move. “I barely knew your sister, and from what you’re saying, I’m glad I didn’t know more. I don’t even remember her hand on my knee and when you spun on your heel, marching out of the cafeteria, I was sure that you’d decided you weren’t interested, and I was too stupid and young to go after you.” He leaned in farther. “But I’m not stupid and young anymore,” he warned her. “And this time…I’m not letting you go.”