Page 87 of Something to Someone

“The big purple one is from me,” he said, tilting his head toward the kitchen table where it proudly sat. His eyes dropped to the white bouquet, and he took a deep breath. “This one, I bought for…Daniel. Or on his behalf, I guess.”

My hands froze and emotion welled in my throat. Immediately, I looked from the flowers up into Ryder’s sincere blue eyes.

“What?” was all I could manage to ask.

He sighed, and his grip on my hip tightened, his thumb idly rubbing the small strip of skin where the hem of my top met my jeans. “I kind of feel stupid now, but I don’t know. I was picking up the other one and saw the all-white one in one of the display cases. After everything you told me, it felt right for him to be represented, too. I think he would have wanted that.”

“Ryder,” I said quietly, unsure what else I could say in that moment. I turned to face him, glancing from him back to the flowers. My sweet, kind man. And that was just it, he was mine.

He chuckled wryly and shook his head, dragging his hand over his jaw. “I know, it’s stupid, but?—”

“It’s not stupid, Ryder. Not at all. It’s really sweet, and…he would have appreciated it. I appreciate it.” The hesitance in his expression slowly faded. “Although the idea of youalsogetting me flowers probably wouldn’t have been so popular.”

He cracked a crooked smile, and I kissed the corner that was tilted upward. Finally, he laughed and lifted me up, setting me on the counter next to the little white bouquet. I giggled uncharacteristically as he stepped between my legs and planted his hands on either side of my hips.

He kissed me softly once, then again. He lingered against my lips, and I cupped his cheeks in my hands. I liked the rough feel of his stubble against my palms and the heat of his breath against my lips. It was a balm to my heart as it grew with the love and care I could feel in his every touch and word and action.

“I really hate that so many things had to go wrong—really,reallywrong—to get us here, but I’m so fucking happy we are,” he said. “Because all I want to do is love you more than you ever thought a person could love someone else.”

“And I’m so lucky to be loved by you, Ryder. It’s…amazing.”

I sighed, and our kiss resumed. More urgent and hurried than before. A tangle of lips and teeth and tongues, I wrapped my legs around him as he tugged me closer to the edge. I rakedmy fingers through his hair, and I could feel his need meeting mine as his hands groped at my hips and dragged up my back.

“Oh, holy shit!” A voice—not mine or Ryder’s—bellowed from my left. I startled and pulled back from Ryder as he did the same. Both of us swung our attention in the direction of the sound to find Natalie covering her eyes and Theo directly behind her, trying, and failing, to suppress his smile.

I rolled my lips like it was going to hide my own smile and felt bad for how sweet I thought Ryder’s blush was. He dropped his head against my shoulder as Natalie peeked out between her fingers.

“Is it safe?” she asked.

Theo kissed the side of her head and walked farther into the kitchen. “Yes, baby girl. It’s safe. It was payback for the time he found us together.”

Ryder scoffed and straightened, helping me down off the counter. “If you’d given us another five minutes, thenthatwould’ve been payback. Catching us making out doesn’t exactly make us even.”

“Yes, yes,” Natalie agreed, dropping her purse onto a barstool and skipping over to me. “Anyway, Happy birthday!”

She stretched on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Thank you,” I said, squeezing her back. “Thank you both for coming especially since—” The doorbell rang, and I sighed. “Since my family is going to be here soon.”

Ryder won over my entire family. My sister, mom, and dad already loved him as Natalie’s son, but as my boyfriend, I knew it could be an awkward transition.

But leave it to him to win over everyone. My dad had invited him over to watch football, and my mom was hanging on his every word. Even my niece and nephew thought he hung the damn moon. And of course, Ryder was eating up the attention. He wasalways the life of the party, and with my family, it wasn’t any different.

I was happy it had gone so well, but I was also relieved when I closed the door behind my mother, who was always the last one to leave. She was going on about how proud she was of me for finally finding a nice man to settle down with and blah blah blah. I’d tuned her out the second she said the word “finally.”

With a forced smile, I waved to her and shut the door without a second thought. I let out a long sigh of relief and leaned back against the door. A second later, I could feel Ryder in front of me, his hands smoothing down my arms and his lips against my forehead.

“That went really well, right?”

I nodded and opened my eyes. “Better than I could have hoped.”

“I think so, too,” he said with a smile. “Now, if you want to hear it, I have a plan for the rest of your birthday, because as much as this party was for you, it also wasn’t.”

I hummed in the back of my throat and rested my hands on his chest, against the blue T-shirt that matched his eyes and was stretched across the muscles beneath.

“What’s your plan?”

“To take you back to your bedroom and make you come more than you ever have. Over and over and over again. We can shoot for thirty-four times. What do you think?”

I laughed, and he covered his smile with our intertwined hands, pressing them against his mouth. “I think I’d very much enjoy you trying to get to thirty-four, but that’s a lofty, likely unattainable, goal.”

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