Chapter 2 What I Never Told You #3
“And part of it was that I never knew if it was over. I never found whoever took those pictures, so I never got to watch them stop. For all I knew they were still out there, still watching, waiting to see if the Bear was dumb enough to do the whole thing twice.” I said the last part anyway, because it was the one that mattered.
“So when I started falling for you anyway, and I did, the first clear thought I had wasn’t a good one.
It was that I’d just painted a target on you.
That if I let myself have this, some version of what happened to Adam was going to happen to you.
Your work. Your name. Your place here. I’d get you run out of 51 the same way he got run out, and that time it really would be my fault. ”
Ryan was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, it wasn’t what I braced for.
“I’m not going to sit here and judge Adam,” he said.
“How he took it. Why he left. I wasn’t the one being hunted, so I don’t get to say what I’d have done in his shoes, and neither does anybody who wasn’t in them.
” His eyes stayed on mine. “But two things I do get to say. What happened to you was never your fault, and nothing that ever happens to me because I love you will be your fault either. And I am not going anywhere.”
I let out a breath that was half a laugh and mostly tired. “Ryan. It’s barely been any time. You don’t even know yet what you’d be signing up for.”
He didn’t argue it. He just moved. Came up off the cushion and put a knee down either side of my thighs and lowered his weight onto me, the way he had earlier that night, except there was nothing playful in it now. He looped his arms around my shoulders and brought his face down.
“I’m not going to make you promises about a future I can’t see,” he said.
“Nobody can promise that and mean it. But I can promise you this much. I don’t get bullied.
I never have. Some coward with a camera does not get to decide who I love or where I work, and he sure as hell doesn’t get to run me off before I’ve even started. ”
I shook my head, slow, my hands finding his hips because they had nowhere else to be.
“You don’t understand yet what it does to you.
Standing in the middle of it. I’ve done this a long time, the hiding, and I’m still barely used to it.
You’ve been in love with a man for a very short time.
You haven’t felt a whole room look at you and decide what you are and treat you like it. ”
“Then I’ll feel it, and I still won’t move.
” His arms tightened around me. “I won’t be bullied, Luke.
And I am damn well not going to sit here and watch the man I love get bullied either.
Not by a ghost with a camera. Not by Saunders.
Not by anybody who walks back into that building thinking he gets to pick up where he left off. ”
Something in me let go. Not far. I didn’t believe him all the way down, not yet, but I wanted to, and the wanting was further than I’d let myself get in a long time.
Then his certainty slipped. Just for a second, and he looked younger for it.
“Unless.” He said it and then couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“We are new and fresh together Luke, you said so yourself, and now he’s back, walking around 51 like he never left, and I’ve watched you go still every time his name lands in the room, and I’m not blind, I know what old feelings look like when there’s still a coal under them somewhere, and if what you actually want is a chance to go back and find out whether there’s anything left there with him, then I’d rather you told me now than had me find out later I’d been standing in the middle of something you were trying to get back to, and I know that’s a lot to put on you tonight of all nights, but I’d rather say it wrong than not say it, so. ”
He ran out of words there, a little breathless, watching me like the answer might go either way.
It was the most unsure I’d ever seen him, and it went straight through me, how much he’d just handed over without any idea what I’d do with it.
So I kissed him.
He went still against my mouth for half a beat, surprised, and then his hands were in my hair, and he was kissing me back like he’d been waiting all night for the excuse.
I pulled back just far enough to say it.
“It has been years since Adam and I were anything. Years. Whatever goes through me when I see him now, it isn’t that.
It’s an old wound with his face on it, and I have no intention, none, of opening it again.
Not with him. Not with anyone who isn’t you?
” I got a hand to the back of his neck, the way he’d once put his to mine.
“You were never the man I kept waiting to turn into him. You’re the reason I finally stopped waiting. ”
He let out a long breath, one he’d clearly been holding a while, and rested his forehead against mine. For a while neither of us moved.
The air between us was clear. First time in years it had been, and I let myself have it.
But clearing the air between us hadn’t touched the rest of it.
Whoever put those pictures through my door had never been found.
And Monday morning Adam Wright was going to walk back onto our floor in a sergeant’s stripes and that easy smile of his, and sit down a few desks from the man who was holding me now like he’d never once thought about letting go.
Nothing I’d said tonight changed a single piece of that.
I held onto him anyway, and let the rest of it wait for Monday.