Page 175 of Come Break My Heart Again

I trace a circle on his leg with my pointer finger. “I need to know if you’re going to keep running, Ry. Because I can’t go through it all again. Our whole pattern. It has to … it has to have a different ending this time. You can’t disappear to avoid saying goodbye. You can’t decide shutting me out is what is best for me. You can’t break my heart again.”

He exhales heavily enough that I rise and fall against his chest. “My plan was to leave, Lo. Before I found out about my mom’s cancer, all I wanted was a fresh start.”

“More than you want me?” I ask.

“No. There’s nothing I want more than you. I just … I have no idea what to do with the rest of my life.”

“Me neither,” I reply.

Ryder scoffs. “You went to Harvard Law, Elle. I have no degree and a criminal record. It’s not the same.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“You asked me to be honest. And I’m trying to be realistic about what my life will look like.”

I tilt my head again, trying to see his face. It’s too shadowed to see much more than the outline of his profile. “You seriously think I care about what you do for work?”

“Icare. I want to be able to offer you something. Don’t you get that?”

I turn fully, swinging my legs over his thighs so I’m straddling him. “I wantyou, Ryder. I can’t be around you and not want you. You told me you didn’t want me, and I still wanted you. I showed up at your trailer to have tea with your mom for seven years, just so I could be in a place where you existed. I wrote you letters you never responded to because one-sided communication was better than none at all. I still have that paper flower you made me in the drawer next to my bed. I’ve sabotaged every relationship I’ve ever been in because those guys never made me feel the way that you do. And parts of that are humiliating, but it’s allreal. It’s real, and it’s exhausting. I’m sotired, tired of choosing you and it never being the happy ending. Of picking myself back up and having to keep going alone.”

“Lo …” His voice sounds choked as he swipes away my tears with his thumbs. “You’ve always been my only choice, okay? I’ve never picked anyone else.”

He kisses me first, the collision of our mouths sloppy and urgent and frenzied. Real. Reality, not a fairy tale. A little imperfect, just like us.

“Fuck,” Ryder groans as I grind on his lap. “Elle,you can’t keep doing that.”

“Or what?”

“I don’t have anything,” he says, leaning forward to kiss my collarbone.

My nipples pebble as shivers run down my spine. This time, they have nothing to do with the chilly wind coming off the waves.

“Dude, we werejustat a pharmacy.”

He chuckles, low and wry. “It didn’t seem like the right time to suggest a repeat performance.”

“Might have made dinner last night less awkward.”

“Or you might have stabbed me with a steak knife.”

I shiver again, this time from the cold. “That really would have freaked Tucker and Keira out.”

“I think they find us entertaining.”

“Does that mean you also got thewhat’s going on with you guystalk?”

“Sort of,” he replies. “You?”

“Yeah. From Reese actually.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ryder’s stomach grumbles. He rubs his jaw, his smile sheepish. “Feel like a s’more? I’m still hungry.”

“Only if I can eat it off your abs.”

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