Page 64 of Wild Love
A soft gasp leaves me as I come to a screeching halt and turn to face him.
“Are you okay?” His low voice is rough and gritty as it rumbles in the air between us.
All I can offer back is a nod. “Are you?”
His head tilts, and the motion brings to mind the calculated movements of some sort of apex predator. Reminding me, like he always does, of a lion stalking around a cage. Sleek and powerful and ready to pounce. The way he looks at me sometimes is almost animalistic.
A shiver runs down my spine as he murmurs, “No.”
Such a simple word, yet it hits me in the chest like a ton of bricks.
When he turns and walks away from me, he takes my breath with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROSIE
Ryan looksaround the bunkhouse with an expression of shocked wonder on his face. “This is where you’ve been staying?”
The floorboards creak beneath his boat shoes, and he runs a finger along the condensation that’s gathered into little pearls on the single-pane window.
I immediately feel defensive. He comes from more than me. More money. More property. More fancy vacations.
His parents bought him the condo in downtown Vancouver outright. Mine worked themselves to the bone to build something new for retirement on property they’ve been handed down through generations. Their idea of a fun vacation for us is camping in a tent.
Ford is supposedly a billionaire, a child of an A-list celebrity, and he’s never made me feel as self-conscious of where I’m from as Ryan did with that one sentence.
“Yeah, Ryan.”
There must be something final in my voice because he turns and stares at me. His overnight bag rests at his feet, his jaw is perfectly clean-shaven his blond hair slicked in a perfect little swoop.
If he were properly distressed, he’d have run his fingers through it and fucked it all up by now. Like Ford, who’s constantly pulling at his hair.
“You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?”
I sigh and my arms go limp at my sides. We’re standing in the middle of this tiny cabin, staring at each other like strangers. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off.
I look him straight in the eye like I promised myself I would and blow past all the lines I’ve been practicing. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
A couple of beats pass before he says, “I figured this was coming.”
A sad laugh bubbles up out of me. “Now I feel worse.”
“Don’t.” He cuts me off by holding a hand up between us. “I wasn’t planning on leaving early today, but my boss looked at me like I had two heads when I told him my plans for the weekend. He asked me why I wouldn’t just make a long weekend of it. Insisted I leave early and hit the road.”
I grimace. “Romantic.”
Now it’s Ryan’s turn to let out a sad laugh. “It’s not. It’s not at all. He said to me, ‘Aren’t you itching to see her?’ and I told him I was. But, Rosie, it’s been a month since you left, and I wasn’t itching to see you. And I think I knew this was coming and have just been avoiding it.”
“Why?”
His head tilts, and he gives me a sad look. “Have you been missing me?”
I bite down on my lip a few times, weighing my words. “Not in the way I should.”
“That’s why I’ve been avoiding it. I didn’t want to hear that. But I’ve also had enough time to realize that while I’m happy to see you, I wasn’t itching to see you.”
A physical weight lifts from my body at his admission. The heaviness on my shoulders just—poof—evaporates. I feel like I’ve been carrying an elephant around on my back, and Ryan just pulled it right off. “I think… I think we had so much in common. You know? We were in the same program. Same classes. Same study groups. Same friends…”
