Page 87 of The Last Promise You Made

I wanted to toss aside the sorrow and heartache until there was none left so this beautiful, gruff man could love and trust again.

Those thoughts scared me, shooting waves of unease through my veins, and yet I didn’t break the kiss. It was Ryder who stepped back, fisting his hands on his hips, staring at my deliciously bruised mouth.

“What are you doing to me?” he asked, as if I was the one bewitching him rather than the other way around.

“You act like I’m the one who kissed you. You act like I’m the one weaving a spell around you when you’re the one tossing all your breathtaking pieces at me, making it impossible to keep my barriers up. To keep my focus.”

He looked startled by my words, and I knew I should stop, knew I should retreat and take back what I’d said or at least prevent myself from digging in further. Instead, the words continued to slip out of me. “I’m entranced by the beauty you craft so carefully for others. The gentleness with which you treat those you love. The fierce way you look after your family.”

My voice sounded breathless and tortured instead of calm and sure, and I still didn’t stop.

“I find myself wanting to be part of the group you shield and protect and care for, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve never wanted to belong to anyone…” I finally was able to jam my mouth shut, looking down and away from those blue eyes that hypnotized me. I could see why Ravyn made up fairy tales about this man. He was worthy of fairy tales.

But did I really want to belong to him? To this life? On a ranch in Tennessee?

I shook my head. No. It would mean giving up everything I’d worked too damn hard for. No way I’d just walk away from it all for a man. No way I’d walk away from the life I’d earned at the cost of my own heartbreaks.

I tried to slide past him, but he caught me with one large hand gripping my elbow. It was a light hold. One I could have easily broken but didn’t. Instead, I found my eyes meeting his again. The emotions that swam in them slashed into me, securing the lure he’d thrown out, snagging my heart in a way that would make it nearly impossible to break free.

“She was my soulmate. That was what I thought. But now…” He trailed off, and the intensity of his gaze as it bore into me unraveled me further, leaving me exposed. Raw. Scared. “How could she be the one for me when I didn’t even really know her? When what I feel touching you seems a thousand times more.”

His words dug deeper into me, making it harder to breathe. This man, the epitome of masculinity, talking about soulmates and true love and weaving his own fairy tales, grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go.

“I’ve never believed in soulmates and one true love,” I whispered.

“Not even when you were a little girl?” he asked as his thumb rubbed along my arm.

“I wanted to play spies with my brother and was bored with the Disney princess movies. And when I did watch them, I loved the battles and mysteries more than the kisses. When I was a teenager, we moved three times while I was in high school. I barely made friends, let alone boyfriends. The closest I got was this guy in college…” I trailed off. I hadn’t talked about Kieran with anyone in more years than I could remember.

“What happened?” he asked. My first instinct was to toss it aside as I always did, but looking into those intense eyes, I knew he’d see through it if I did. He was good at seeing between my half-truths. Not even my parents had known how much Kieran had hurt me.

“I thought we were perfect for each other.” I rarely let myself think of those days and nights in Kieran’s tiny apartment in Philly, surrounded by computers, getting lost in each other’s skin after the high of an exhilarating hack. “We were two computer nerds working our way through college together in the tech repair department of the local box store. What I thought was us having fun, hacking and coding and exploring our limits in multiple ways, was really Kieran embezzling money and setting me up for the fall.”

Ryder’s face turned dark, and he tucked a strand of my hair that had escaped behind my ear. His touch burned, sending chills over my spine in the very best kind of way. “He pointed the finger at you?”

“I caught on to it before he could get that far. Turned him over to the authorities instead.”

“What did Kieran say?”

I swallowed, looking away, not wanting to retreat to those memories. “I didn’t give him the chance to say anything. It wouldn’t have mattered. He’d taken everything I thought we had and tossed it away by using my signature code to steal—the exact opposite of what he knew I wanted for my life. I double majored in law enforcement and computer science. I wanted truth and justice, not virtual robbery.”

I never saw him again after the night I’d stumbled onto what he was doing. He’d been naked and asleep behind me when I’d found the hidden folders on his computer. I thought it was a test. A game. We often devised these little traps for each other. What I’d seen had turned my insides to ice.

Ryder bumped my chin up with a knuckle, forcing me to meet his gaze again, and the compassion and understanding I saw there nearly made me weep. Except, it wasn’t for the woman I was now, but for the college girl who’d thought she’d found someone who wouldn’t disappear just because her family moved.

Ryder’s hand had settled on the curve of my collarbone, gently stroking as he said, “For years, I wished I’d been able to say a few words to Ravyn after she left. But I bet getting revenge must have felt just as good.”

“Instead of destroying me and my reputation as he’d tried to do, he actually helped build it. What I’d done to trace him and turn him in got flagged somewhere in the NSA’s systems, and they came knocking. I’ve spent nearly six years doing what I’d always wanted to do.”

“And protecting your heart against anyone else who has come along,” he said softly.

I shrugged. “Even if I believed in true love, not many people get the fairy tale.”

“That’s where I went wrong with Ravyn,” he said, and it was the first time I’d heard her name from his lips without an echo of pain behind it.

“What do you mean?”

“Believing love was a fairy tale. Just because someone is your soulmate doesn’t mean it’ll magically work if you don’t put in the effort. My parents love each other more than any couple I know, but even they have to work at it. They get angry. The baggage of their childhoods rears its head and strikes. The beauty of their relationship isn’t in the easy times. It’s in the hard ones. In the sacrifices they made to keep each other. It’s in the times they choose to stay when it would be easier to walk out the door. Ravyn may have stayed at the first hurdle we faced—when she got pregnant—but she ran when her past came knocking. She didn’t even give me a chance to go with her. To face it together.”

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