Page 78 of Confessions of a Former Puck Bunny

The items on the table sharpened into relief. A picnic basket sat by a vase of red roses, and a paintball gun rested between the two.

Confusion set in, throwing a wrench in my unplanned plan. I glanced from the weapon to Ryder, smothering the thought about how sexy he looked, because sexy hadn’t done my any favors before. “What’s the gun for?”

Ryder hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. Of course the gesture made his strong shoulders and the muscles on his arms stand out, because life so wasn’t fair. Damn muscles and their ability to make me lose my head. “I figured you’d be mad,” he said.

“And your first thought was to arm me?” Sexiness and math smarts aside, he must be missing a few screws. Clearly he had no idea how pissed off I was at him. If he thought he could just come in, throw me a picnic, and I’d forgive him for everything, he was wrong.

He shrugged. “You’re always a bit more understanding after you work out some of your aggression.”

That aggression he mentioned flared and took over. He’d made me fall in love with him, then he’d made me feel like shit for my past. I picked up the gun and fired it right at the center of his chest.

His steady expression remained, eyes fixed on mine, lips pressed together. My breaths came too fast, and I worried if I let go of my anger, I’d fall to my knees and cry.

Love is a weakness, love is a weakness, love is a weakness…

Ryder took a step closer to me, rounding the table.

I fired again, hitting him in the thigh this time, and he flinched.

“I’m sorry, Lindsay. Sorry for everything. I’ve been completely miserable without you.” He took another step toward me. Being this close to him hurt as much as being away from him had, maybe more.

Don’t let him see you cry, don’t youdarelet him see you cry.

I clenched my jaw and invoked the bitch, begging her to help me keep my too-weak emotions in check. “I told you everything. I trusted you with my past, and you threw it in my face.”

“You’re right,” he said. “That stuff with our parents messed with my head and when I saw you with Daniel… All I can say is that I momentarily lost my mind because of how crazy I am about you, and I’m sorry.”

“Momentarily lost your mind? That’s not good enough, Ryder. Is that really all you’ve got?”

“No, I’ve also got…” He reached for the roses, and I shot them, sending them off the table coated in an explosion of red petals and blue splatters. It’s not like roses would heal my broken heart and it only showed that he had no idea how badly he’d hurt me.

I swiveled the barrel back toward him, no longer fighting back the grief tearing me apart inside but letting it take over. “I tried so hard to keep you away, but you insisted on breaking down every one of my walls. I let you in—like,all the wayin, something I’ve never done before—thinking it made me strong to brush off my past, push away my fears over getting close to someone, and try again. But it didn’t. It made me just weak enough for you to break me. And you did, you broke me.” My voice cracked, so apparently the bitch wasn’t as strong as I hoped she’d be, and that only pissed me off more.

“Shit, Lindsay. I never meant to—”

“Oh, you didn’t mean to? What difference does that make? It doesn’t put me back together. You broke me and then you just walked away like it was nothing. You didn’t even call or text for over a week.” A tear slipped free and more were on the horizon. “And what’s even worse is, I no longer feel like a whole person without you, and I fucking hate it.”

I moved the barrel so it pointed at his crotch, the way I had when we’d first played, but there was no teasing about it this time. For all my talk about not being vindictive or wishing him harm, I suddenly…well, I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t want him hurt, but I hurt everywhere, and I wanted to do something to take away the pain.

“That part of me certainly loves you,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. He swallowed and his gaze latched onto mine again, the intensity swimming in the blue so strong that it made my breath catch in my throat. “But the rest of me loves you even more.”

He cupped my cheek, the move making the barrel press harder against his crotch. “So do whatever you feel like you need to in order to be able to forgive me. I hate myself for hurting you, and I’ve regretted letting you walk away that night without a fight every second of every day, and I should’ve called.”

He brushed his thumb across my cheekbone, making everything inside of me start unraveling even as I worked to hold it together. “What I should’ve done was go to your apartment, beg for forgiveness for being such an asshole, and tell you how crazy I am about you. Tell you that not only are you beautiful inside and out, you make me happy, and you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met, and I don’t feel like a whole person without you, either.”

I shook my head, too scared to believe it, and curled my finger tighter around the trigger to remind me that I was hurt and mad and that I could only rely on me.

“It’s true. I’m so used to keeping everything bottled up, but it’s not even an option when I’m with you, because you make me feel too much. But because I’m also an idiot, instead of just telling you I’d fallen hard for you and that I was scared of losing you, I fucked it all up and tried to bottle everything up again. But it didn’t work. The past several days have shown me that I can’t go back to the way my life was before I had you in it. And I don’t want to. I’ll take feeling everything, even if it’s harder and takes more work, over feeling empty inside.”

My heart squeezed and now I was conflicted all over again. Regardless of how hard I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt that same, consuming emptiness. But feeling everything also sucked, and I didn’t know if I could do it much longer without causing some permanent damage.

“Even though this apology is about a week too late and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, I’m begging you to give me another chance.” He wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger, the slight tug sending tingles across my scalp and making it hard for me to focus. “Please say you’ll give me another chance, baby. I’ll do anything to make it right. Just tell me what to do…”

My finger twitched on the trigger of the paintball gun still pressed against his crotch, and he tensed, but he didn’t step away or make a move to block the impending shot.

“I love you, Lindsay Rivera. I’m in love with you, and I need you, and I wish I had more to give you, but you already have all of me.”

My resolve broke, along with something else inside me, and the dam holding back my tears cracked open. I lowered the gun a couple of inches. “You love me?”

---