Page 23 of Blue Moon

“Lunch was a smoothie, so yes.”

“They’re not feeding you at the Nile Palace?”

“There’s food, but today, I had a meet-and-greet for contest winners, and it ran late.”

Mainly because the organiser forgot to mention that each winner was allowed to bring two guests, so instead of posing for ten photos, I had to pose for thirty, and everyone wanted to ask questions. If Mom had been there, she would have had a conniption and insisted on only ten photos total, but most of the people who showed up were teenage girls, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.

Ryder tipped prawn crackers into a bowl, and I nibbled on one as I considered what to ask him. In the end, I kept it simple.

“Tell me about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“All the things you avoided telling me before.”

“Yeah.” His shoulders slumped. “I should’ve brought wine.”

I could have told him there was a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, a house-warming gift from Julius, who should have known better. I didn’t drink in private, and he was the reason. Bad things happened behind closed doors. I’d only kept the bottle because I knew from experience that it would make a good weapon in a pinch.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

“No, you should know. You deserve to know.” A pause. “I met Neve at a football game when I was sixteen and she was fifteen.”

“You played football?”

He made a face. “Not for long. Coach kicked me off the team after that day.”

“Do I dare to ask?”

“I was a quarterback, and Neve was on the other team’s cheer squad. Their tight end cornered her after the game and held her wrists while he made a bunch of suggestions she didn’t appreciate. And she just looked so fuckin’ scared.” Ryder’s hands balled into fists as fury clouded his green eyes. “The asshole had forty pounds on me, but I told him to get his hands off my girl. He told me she was a slut who sucked every cock in Gladeland High, and I knocked out three of his teeth.”

I dropped the cracker I was about to eat. “Are you serious?”

Stupid question. Of course he was serious. Ryder was always serious.

“I thought I was going to get expelled at one point, but Neve stuck with my story and said we’d been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. My dad told me I should have done things by the book and raised my concerns in a more appropriate manner, but secretly, he was proud of me for defending her, and since he was—still is—a big deal in the Navy, the principal went easy on me. A three-day suspension and no more football.”

“One day for each tooth,” I said, and he choked out a laugh.

“I never thought of it that way before.”

“But you kept seeing Neve?”

“Much to her father’s irritation. She was meant to marry into money, not a military family.”

“Wait, you were engaged?”

He nodded. “Nobody knew. Well, you do now. And my therapist.”

I’d wanted honesty, and now I was getting it. But judging by the tension in Ryder’s body and the anguish in his eyes, the story was going to get a lot worse. I mean, I already knew the ending, and that was awful, but… I reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“I’m so sorry.”

He gave me a sad smile. “So am I. We loved each other, but the engagement was out of necessity. Married couples get military housing privileges that others don’t, and we would have been living on my salary, at least to begin with.”

“I thought you said she was rich?”

“No, her family was rich. They told her that if she chose me over a college boy with the right connections, they’d cut her off.”

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