Page 88 of Forgotten Pieces

I sit up as he says it. He’s right. I told him about how Cam helped me get over him when I moved to New York so he also knows she hates his guts. Luckily my growling stomach changes the subject.

“Sounds like you are hungry,” he teases as he pokes me in the stomach.

“Well, you did help me burn like two thousand calories. My body needs fooooddd.”

He laughs as he pulls me off the bed. “I’m sure I can find something to feed you,” he says as he grabs his cock.

I lick my lips, wanting to taste him in my throat. “That’s gonna have to wait. I need real food.”

“I’m sure I have something in the fridge,” he says as he throws a pair of basketball shorts on.

I find one of his USMC shirts on a chair in the corner and pull it over my head. “Yeah there is probably enough food to feed half the county in that fridge.”

I look at him and find him staring at me. “What?”

He shrugs and gestures to me. “That is something I could get used to seeing.”

I give him a shy smile as I walk past him and out the room, shaking my ass. I make it to the stairs when his large hands wrap around my waist, his face nuzzling my neck. “We are never gonna eat a thing if you accost me every thirty seconds.”

“I miss this side of you. This fun playful Tacoma hasn’t been around a lot lately.”

I spin in his arms. “She just needed the charming, sexy Ryder in her life.”

He kisses me gently before grabbing my hand and walking me down the stairs. He tells me to sit at the island while he whips up something. I look at the clock in the kitchen and can’t believe it’s almost three in the afternoon. I drove over here at nine in the morning. I didn’t realize we had been fucking and talking for so long.

I jump out of my chair at the island and look for my shorts near the dining table. I grab my phone out of them and see a handful of missed texts from my brother, sister, and Harper. “Shit,” I mutter.

Ryder looks up at me from the sandwich fixings he took out. “What’s wrong?”

“I forgot that Easton was having a barbeque. And I told him I would go.”

“Harper mentioned that to me the other day when she brought over a casserole.”

“She asked you to go?” I question.

“Yeah, she knew that Shelley wasn’t here and said if I was lonely to come over. Said Easton and I could become good friends. No idea what gossip hound told her Shelley wasn’t here.”

I rest my chin in my hand. “Do you want me to start naming options? I mean it could have been a handful of people. Ivy a likely culprit but my money is on your stupid gossip queen cousin, Mac.”

“You are probably right. Mac won’t shut up about whatever is going on in town.”

“If you just start calling him Donald, he might quit with all the gossip talk around you. At least that’s what I do.”

“He would murder me.”

“I’m still alive.”

“True. Are you going to head over to your brothers?”

I groan as I get off the chair and pick my clothes up off the ground. “I need to. It’s one of the reasons Trace shut the bar down today. Stupid barbeque. I’m supposed to bring something too. And I have shit to bring.”

“I made a chicken pasta salad yesterday. You can bring that.”

“You should bring that. I’ll grab a bottle of wine from my apartment. It’s practically fruit salad to me.”

Ryder chuckles. “I’m not going.”

I pull my shorts on and turn back to him. “You have to.”

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